Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:31:08 +0000 From: Vincent Hoffman <vince@unsane.co.uk> To: Saifi Khan <saifi.khan@twincling.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ASL 2.0 based software contribution to FreeBSD code base Message-ID: <4978670C.4000708@unsane.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <9a52b1190901220320p66f69d4eg5c7032fff74b469f@mail.gmail.com> References: <9a52b1190901201015v68473203w649af60b08fca0d2@mail.gmail.com> <4976F5E2.7090907@unsane.co.uk> <9a52b1190901220320p66f69d4eg5c7032fff74b469f@mail.gmail.com>
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Saifi Khan wrote: > On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Vincent Hoffman <vince@unsane.co.uk> wrote: > >> Saifi Khan wrote: >> >>> Hi: >>> >>> Is Apache Software License (ASL) 2.0 based software contributions >>> accepted in FreeBSD code base ? >>> >>> Specific case to consider would be: >>> a. device driver code released under ASL 2.0 >>> b. code contributed to kernel (eg. scheduler implementation) under ASL 2.0 >>> c. code contributed to userland (eg. new implementation of ctags) under ASL 2.0 >>> >>> Can some of the experienced members share how things work within the >>> context of FreeBSD project ? >>> >>> >>> >> I was going to answer with >> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/pref-license.html >> however in a recent discussion on the -current list >> (http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=163526+0+current/freebsd-current) >> Brooks Davis <brooks@freebsd.org> said >> "This file is outdated. While this remains our prefered license, the >> current >> OpenBSD prefered license is the ISC licesed which is allowed by the license >> policy we published to developers last year. We should probably replace >> this >> page with that policy." >> >> I'd ask for a copy of the current policy on freebsd-current@ if you dont >> get any answers here. >> >> >> > > Hi Vince: > > Thank you for your kind reply. > > Please see my writeup on ASL at http://www.twincling.org/node/277 > > While i understand ASL, i'm keen to know what are the technical > deviations (if any) in the BSD licsense followed by FreeBSD project. > > eg. if i write a device driver and release it under ASL 2.0, can it > legally make into FreeBSD project ? > > I'm in no way a licence expert and I'm not a FreeBSD developer, however my understanding (from sources such as [http://wiki.freebsd.org/VendorInformation]) is that in answer to your original questions a) Device drivers - yes but it cannot be included in the GENERIC config, but thats what modules are for anyway. b) Kernel/base system - No - I belive this would need to be BSD licensed. c) userland - Yes but probably needs to be in the contrib directory as an example, all the ZFS stuff is CDDL licenced , This had to be kept separate from pretty much everything but it's there. However I could well be wrong and its almost certainly worth asking these questions again on the freebsd-current mailing list where developers who might actually know the answers hang out. Vince
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