[haiku-development] FW: (Belated) answers to your questions...
- From: "Thom Holwerda" <slakje@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 00:13:44 +0100
Ladies,
Back when QNX contacted me (under embargo) about opening up the QNX source
code, I was very curious about the possibilities this would mean for Haiku -
mostly on the driver front.
So, I asked them if a MIT licensed project could use their driver code. It
took them a while, but they ran it through their legal department, and this
is the answer (see below).
Maybe this helps you driver people. Do with it as you please.
Thom Holwerda
---
Managing editor at http://www.osnews.com
-----Original Message-----
From: someone
Sent: maandag 5 november 2007 23:18
To: 'slakje@xxxxxxxxxx'
Cc: someone
Subject: (Belated) answers to your questions...
Hello Thom. I must apologize: You asked the following question back in
September, but I forgot to follow up:
"I have one remaining question - this question is for personal reference
only. I'm not sure if either you or someone else inside QSS can answer this
one.
Can the driver code be used by other not-for-profit operating systems
(licensed under the MIT or BSD license)? What about Linux (GPL)?"
Here, at last, is an answer from someone in our legal team:
As for the driver code that we have published under Apache 2.0, the answer
is yes. They can use it for whatever they want on whatever platforms they
want to target (Apache does not restrict this). The only issue that would
limit where they could take the code would be license-compatibility.
The Free Software Foundation recently confirmed that the Apache license is
compatible with GPLv3 (but not with GPLv2). The Linux kernel is only
licensed under GPLv2 (i.e., you are not allowed to upgrade to GPLv3). I do
not believe that the Kernel Load Module approach to using drivers within
Kernel Space in a Linux system is effective to insulate proprietary driver
code from the copyleft provisions of GPLv2. This means that our Apache
licensed drivers could not be used to target Linux, unless or until the
Linux community elects to adopt GPLv3 for the kernel code. I do not see any
problem using the Apache license code for any BSD or MIT licensed OS.
Let me know if you need further info.
Cheers,
- a name
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