OK, so Which bsd and which driver?

[gregory.menke at gsfc.nasa.gov]

Joel Sherrill writes:
 > 
 > 
 > gregory.menke at gsfc.nasa.gov wrote:
 > > 
 > > Ralf Corsepius writes:
 > >  > Am Mit, 2003-03-26 um 18.16 schrieb gregory.menke at gsfc.nasa.gov:
 > >  > > Joking aside, Joel, please don't take this the wrong way- but this
 > >  > > kind of thing is EXTREMELY frustrating.  I really wish these licensing
 > >  > > issues were made more plain.
 > >  > You are mixing up things, here:
 > >  > Basically, RTEMS comes with no restrictions on licensing.
 > >  >
 > >  > Linux is GPL'ed.
 > >  >
 > >  > => Nothing prevents _you_ from using Linux-code with RTEMS if obeying
 > >  > the restrictions of the GPL.
 > >  >
 > >  > It's only that GPL'ed code can not be merged back into the "official
 > >  > RTEMS sources" because this would imply having to put RTEMS under the
 > >  > GPL.
 > > 
 > > Of course- thats my point.  I <want> to put my work back into RTEMS,
 > > without imposing any sort of constraints on RTEMS.  I am quite aware
 > > of the license issue- and am only annoyed because the incompatiblity
 > > is not made public in any obvious way ahead of time.
 > 
 > Very good point.  Where would you have looked to find this information?
 > 
 > This is definitely a problem that comes up from time to time and if
 > a writeup somewhere will solve it, then it is an easy fix.

I would probably have seen something like a README.GPL in the top
level directory.  All I would have needed was a paragraph saying OAR
cannot accept GPL'ed code into the RTEMS tree.  I don't have any
problems with the policy, but it would have saved a bit of work if I
had known it previously.



 > >  > > Sure, I could use it in-house, which I probably
 > >  > > would, but thats not helping the RTEMS community any.
 > >  >
 > >  > Well, the idea of setting up a GPL'ed RTEMS and a non-GPL'ed one has
 > >  > been discussed several times before, but AFAICT hasn't made it, so far
 > >  > ....
 > > 
 > > I'm not advocating such a thing.  I don't get religious about software
 > > licenses as such- the GPL and the bsd model serve somewhat different
 > > constituencies, they both have advantages and I personally support
 > > them both, morally and financially.  However, my grumpiness is due to
 > > the fact that I would not be able to contribute a GPL derived driver
 > > back into RTEMS- and that policy is not clearly stated ahead of time.
 > 
 > It is a pain.  But I believe it is necessary to ensure RTEMS does not
 > impose any license burdens on applications.

I have no problem with the pain- I completely respect OAR's licensing
policy, as I respect also respect the GPL.  I'm just grouchy because I
had to throw away the work I had begin- I guess I should have broached
the subject before diving in.


 > > So, I'm dumping the work I did and will work off one or another bsd's
 > > driver, which I'll run to ground at some point.  I'm looking at
 > > freebsd's if_xl.c at the moment, which looks like it supports a
 > > variety of 3com devices.
 > 
 > FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD have been used by various people to
 > grab drivers from at different times.

Cool- so no license issues.

Gregm