[openbeos] Re: Drivers & the GPL

I think I said it already... the FreeBSD code is really weird, there 
are preprocessor macros all over the place... 
<troll>
the Linux code is clearer :^)
</troll>


En réponse à David Reid <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> However, bear in mind that FreeBSD's USB stuff isn't as up to date as
> say
> NetBSD's and there are plenty of other examples out there :( It's
> worth
> looking at the BSD's, but look at a few different ones, not just one.
> 
> david
> 
> > >>>Who said we couldn't use linux drivers ?
> > >>>Just need to take care about where we put it, but we definitely
> can
> > >>>port a linux driver.
> >
> > If there's a need of porting drivers from other operating systems,
> why
> > not port them from the *BSDs? The've got a beautiful license, and
> the
> > drivers are there. The most promising examples would be the network
> > drivers [lots of them, excellent quality], parts of FreeBSD's USB
> > stack and some sound drivers, as far as I can see. In these cases, I
> > really wonder why people bother with the license issues on Linux
> > drivers if there are better [in terms of licensing] alternatives to
> > choose from.
> >
> > With graphics drivers, the new XFree86 has a kind of generic
> interface
> > to binary drivers. A meta-driver to support binary XFree86 via this
> > generic interface would yield a lot of graphics support, even though
> > in a rather awkward fashion. The problem here would probably be
> > hardware autodetection. XFree86 uses a liberal license too.
> >
> > People porting GPL drivers to OBOS in a third-party fashion
> (releasing
> > them separately) are not in violation of the GPL, as I see it,
> because
> > the MIT license is compatible with the GPL; however, this may very
> > well lead to the awkward situation of not being allowed to
> distribute
> > them with the operating system itself, and this is not what we want.
> >
> > I'm just asking GNU about it.
> >
> > Philipp
> >
> >
> 
> 
>

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