[openbeos] Re: Drivers & the GPL

The point I was making was that in many ways the FreeBSD is much better and
less restictive, BUT the problem it has is that it isn't always as up to
date on a particular BSD as it is on another...

Linux's kernel model seems to be way behind BSD's, but the amount of macro's
can be annoying on BSD's :)

I'd use as much code as I could to understand what was going on! What one
does well, the other may not and vice versa.

david

----- Original Message -----
From: "François Revol" <revol@xxxxxxx>
To: <openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2002 11:07 PM
Subject: [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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