Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 12:04:19 +0100 From: Brad Knowles <blk@skynet.be> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, des@flood.ping.uio.no (Dag-Erling Smorgrav) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), noslenj@swbell.net (Jay Nelson), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Merger, and what will its effects be on committers? Message-ID: <v04220803b4f7be29b7bf@[195.238.1.121]> In-Reply-To: <200003162258.PAA12226@usr09.primenet.com> References: <200003162258.PAA12226@usr09.primenet.com>
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At 10:58 PM +0000 2000/3/16, Terry Lambert wrote: > 2) Given that BSDI has binary-only drivers, the source for > which can not be released because of NDA, are the binary > object files, linkable to a FreeBSD kernel using the > process outlined in #1, going to be made available for > use in FreeBSD? Given what I heard at the NLFUG meeting from Jordan, it's my understanding that after FreeBSD 5.0, there won't *be* a separate BSD/OS anymore, because it will be fully integrated into FreeBSD. Therefore, if they want to continue to make NDA drivers available to their customers, they will have no choice but to make them work under FreeBSD. > 3) Given new hardware under NDA, when the hardware is no > longer under NDA because the Linux camp have done our > jobs for us, and gotten documentation released, or have > written a driver without documentation, will the NDA > driver then be released? Dunno. I sure would hope so, but this is a question you'd need to ask of Jordan, the Core Team, or maybe we'll all just have to wait and see what they can manage to do under the terms of the NDA. > 4) If the answer is "no", then will the powers that be permit > a driver written using the Linux driver as a reference to > be committed to the FreeBSD tree, as has occurred with > other drivers in the past? I would assume that if the answer to #3 is "no", then the answer to #4 *has* to be "yes". Even if they don't write such a driver, I'm sure that someone somewhere will, and even if they never allow this person to get that driver committed to the FreeBSD base, or even into the ports subsystem, there's nothing they can ever do to stop them from making it compatible on their own and making it available on their own. The fact that they can't stop someone else from doing it means that they would only be causing harm to themselves if they don't allow this to be included in either the base OS or the ports subsystem (as the author prefers). > 5) Say a division of IBM uses FreeBSD, and a driver for > IBM hardware is written under NDA, and the answer to any > of #1, #2, or #3 is "no". Will the division of IBM be > forced to use BSDI, or not have a driver for hardware > obtained from a different division of IBM, with which the > first division has no political clout? See my above answer to #2. There won't *be* a separate version of BSD/OS, so if someone wants an NDA driver, it's going to have to be written to work with FreeBSD. -- These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy ====================================================================== Brad Knowles, <blk@skynet.be> || Belgacom Skynet SA/NV Systems Architect, Mail/News/FTP/Proxy Admin || Rue Colonel Bourg, 124 Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.13.11/12.49 || B-1140 Brussels http://www.skynet.be || Belgium To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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