Subject: Re: Support for Olimex CS-EP930x board
To: Ivan Vasilev <ivan@l123.org>
From: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com>
List: netbsd-ports
Date: 07/31/2006 17:13:08
On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 06:29:59PM +0200, Ivan Vasilev wrote:
>
> The second question is a legal one. From my reading of the
> redistribution page ( http://www.netbsd.org/Goals/redistribution.html ),
> we(Olimex) can distribute the boards with a NetBSD kernel preloaded
> in flash, as long as the board's documentation includes the relevant
> licensing information(along with NetBSD's source code and binary
> installation sets). But that's my reading and I will appreciate it if
> somebody clarifies this point.

Only a lawyer can give you legal advice, so you should consider asking
one if you do not consider the license sufficiently clear.  I am not a
lawyer.

However, I don't find anything unclear about the license on the files
in our kernel.  It is a common and well-understood license and requires
only acknowledgment (in some cases, acknowledgment in any advertisement
mentioning "features or use" of the licensed material, not just in
documentation) and notification of the license and copyright status of
the work.  There is, though, code in our kernel that bears this license
but with the names of many different copyright holders (though most of
the code is owned either by Berkeley or by The NetBSD Foundation), so
you must do a little work to be sure you acknowledge each required name.

You are not required to distribute source code, nor to distribute the
binary code in any particular form.  It is not the GPL; we are not
interested in dictating to you how you should want to use our product;
we just want proper credit when you do.

Thor