Re: GNU Mach glue code update

[Thomas Schwinge]

On Thu, Aug 03, 2006 at 10:31:39AM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> Richard Braun <syn@hurdfr.org> writes:
> > On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 21:07:51 +0200, Richard Braun wrote:
> >> I have already begun working on it. Although I'm only begining, I've
> >> already managed to compile some drivers (they don't link yet).
> >
> > It looks like some important files are licensed under BSD-style licenses
> > with advertising clause. It compromises the usability of this project a
> > lot, and I'll stop working on it for now. I plan to include OSS support,
> > which eventually looks like the easiest solution, backporting drivers if
> > necessary, and try to work on the GNU Mach device interface ASAP.
> 
> Who is the copyright holder?  Lots of people will happily drop the
> advertising clause if requested.

I have already (yesterday) been talking with one of them, Bill Paul, who
is author of most of FreeBSD's device drivers, as it seems.  (Well, at
least a really huge bunch of the networking-related ones.)  He indeed
gave permission to remove the advertising clause from the files of him
that we'd install in our tree.

But there are quite a number of other files (and thusly different people)
left, even though I don't know exactly which files Richard would need to
import.  And as he told us yesterday on irc, he didn't want to continue
this effort without being sure that the outcome would be (legally) usable
for us, i.e. he can't really estimate so far if it's only a handful of
other people we'd have to get to drop that clause for us or more.

If it's only problematic with respect to specific device drivers, I
suggested to just leave out those, but as it seems, there are also
infrastructure files like for isa bus access and general FreeBSD header
file are affected, requiring advertising of the ``NetBSD Foundation,
Inc.'', the ``University of California, Berkeley'' and a number of
individuals.  (Is it feasible to assume that NetBSD and UCB will drop
that clause for us?)

If people could estimate which files they'd need for sure (or most
probably) then we could indeed work on contacting these parties.


Regards,
 Thomas

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