Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 11:06:45 +0100 From: Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: GPL nonsense: time to stop Message-ID: <20011218110645.A2061@tisys.org> In-Reply-To: <4hzo4hyv3c.o4h@localhost.localdomain>; from swear@blarg.net on Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 09:07:35PM -0800 References: <20011218121011.E21649@monorchid.lemis.com> <4hzo4hyv3c.o4h@localhost.localdomain>
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On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 09:07:35PM -0800, Gary W. Swearingen stood up and spoke: > > From what I've seen so far, Greg's "people like that" attitude is not > common in FreeBSD, so I don't plan to go anywhere soon. I guess the "people like that" statement was indeed a little bit unfortunate, since I don't know who should take the right to say "what kind of people" are welcome by this project. One thing I do agree with, though, is that all this licensing stuff is something the project could better do without. Yet, it is important to make sure that we are on "the safe side" with what we are doing. So having a look at the GPL and Stallman's statement is indeed worthwhile. In my opinion this actually doesn't look as bad as some people have claimed. In the end, the Core Team would probably have to make a final decision, but for our preliminary discussion at this point, I guess we are not actually in danger of losing our code to the GPL if GPLed code was to be included in the kernel. This of course only applies if I can believe what Stallman and the GPL have to say, but I guess I can believe that, because I see no reason why Stallman should be lying. > A problem with that statement is that it isn't true; another effect the > GPL has on a binary is to require the source to be licensed under the > GPL too. One is a mere translation of the other and if one is a > GPL-licensed "program", then the other must be too. It's all spelled out > there in the GPL. That part is even clear. I may be dumb, but I interpreted it like this: 1) Kernal binary is under the BSDL and GPL. 2) GPL source code portions that went into the kernel (as well as any modifications made by us) remain under the GPL. 3) BSD licensed source code of the kernel remains BSD licensed. However, do to the GPL implcations, we are required to make sure that our BSDL code is available for free, along with the GPL code mentioned in 2). Now that our code has always been available for free, I guess that basically means, well, nothing new for us. I'm not a big friend of the GPL and so I want to make sure that any actions we may take in regards of using GPL code will not cause us serious trouble, but right now, this just doesn't really seem to be the case. Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland Ti Systems - FreeBSD in Tiddische, Germany http://www.tisys.org * nils@tisys.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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