What is the code in question by the way? You might be able to find some
FreeBSD/DragonyflyBSD implementation if this is Linux kernel code we
need to emulate.
On 06/06/2017 22:26, Vivek Roy wrote:
Okay thanks James Taylor and Urias McCullough.
On Wed, Jun 7, 2017 at 2:20 AM, Urias McCullough <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 1:42 PM, Dewey <james.dewey.taylor@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:james.dewey.taylor@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Reverse_engineering
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Reverse_engineering>
Not specifically reverse engineering, but it's what would be
called a clean-room reimplementation. One person or group
documents the existing code and another writes new code based on
the documentation. This allows new code to be written and
released under any license without infringing the license of the
existing code. At least two participants/groups MUST be involved
because the person(s) writing new code cannot be allowed to see
the old code whatsoever to prevent inadvertently writing code
that is too similar to the original code.
There is another option...
If the code in question is relatively small, and copyright by one or
two people only - you may be able to just contact them and ask
permission to relicense it under MIT/BSD or similar for your project.
Sometimes that's all that is needed.
If, on the other hand, the copyright has been assigned to some
larger body, and they are anal about GPL licensing, you may have to
do the clean room implementation or find another similar version
that is licensed the way you want.
- Urias
