Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 12:50:20 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@freebsd.org> To: dhass@imagestream.com Cc: tedm@toybox.placo.com, bicknell@ufp.org, kc5vdj@yahoo.com, taylorm@bytecraft.au.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: FYI Message-ID: <20011017125020N.jkh@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1011017111608.30611A-100000@ims1.imagestream.com> References: <009301c15726$797d19a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1011017111608.30611A-100000@ims1.imagestream.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> We certainly support the right for companies to protect their intellectual > property in whatever way they see fit, even if the FreeBSD community does > not. Oh my. I can see that we've gone somewhat polemic here. As someone who's been around since the very beginning, I think I can fairly state that this point of view mischaracterizes the FreeBSD community somewhat. We're not against companies protecting their intellectual property at all, and the number of companies using FreeBSD in closed-source applications with the full "approval" of the FreeBSD community (where approval is construed by a lack of flames and general pride at FreeBSD's role in each instance) is considerable and growing. What I think Ted may be referring to, and you should be clear on the fact that Ted sometimes finds it difficult to express himself in less than hyperbolic terms, is the fact that the base FreeBSD "product" is one that we take special pains to keep unencumbered for exactly the reasons expressed above. If we're to continue to bill FreeBSD as a product which can be used for any purpose, we need to be careful about the licenses used for its various fundamental building blocks so that *third parties* don't get into trouble by perhaps naively assuming that all of FreeBSD is BSD copyrighted. It wouldn't "hurt" the FreeBSD Project at all if we started distributing some drivers in binary form only (though it would add to our tech support load in having to explain that driver foo was only supported by ABI bar), but it would potentially hurt an embedded systems developer to grab the whole ball of wax and productize it, only to have someone in legal suddenly get to that particular part of the audit and go "Hey! This driver doesn't allow commercial re-use! What the hell does engineering think it's doing?!" Sure, it's THEIR problem to deal with and not ours, but those same engineers won't exactly be thanking us for slipping a hand grenade amidst the roses where they didn't notice it. If the project wants to keep making friends in that community, it's encumbent on it to do as much proactive segregation of differently-licensed code as possible and impose some reasonable standards on what's brought into the base and what's kept at arm's length, again not for its purposes but for the purposes of those who might be re-using it later. That's why the GPL code lives in /usr/src/gnu and /usr/src/sys/gnu - not because we hate GPL code but because we want to make it very clear just what parts needs to be subtracted by any 3rd party doing truly closed-source development. It's also why we prefer BSD-copyrighted solutions to GPL'd ones if we have a choice - it's just simpler all the way down the line. I fully support your idea of offering a "bounty" to anyone writing drivers for your cards and think you're being more than generous in offering it. I wish more vendors would do that and I'm sorry that this discussion has gotten as polarized as it has. If people want to change the support situation for T1 cards, they need to get off their duffs and write the code - as a vendor, you're doing all that might be expected and more to facilitate the process. I hope the zealots in the audience realize that too. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20011017125020N.jkh>