Subject: Re: NetBSD Copyright (Was: Re: Last chance: Copyrights is OK ?)
To: None <current-users@netbsd.org, e.delcamp@wanadoo.fr>
From: Ross Harvey <ross@ghs.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/08/1999 17:54:09
> From: "Eric Delcamp" <e.delcamp@wanadoo.fr>
>
> Hi !
>
> (Huh ! I found Ross's message a little rude about Greg's work and mine).

Err, sorry...the point wasn't to disparage your work or Greg's.

In fact, as I wasn't even talking about or refering to your work (the
daemon, right?) at all, I don't see how my comments on the driver could
even do that! Please explain.

And regarding the driver, and its copyright that makes an existing, known
problem, worse: well, to discuss this people needed to know:

	 1. How critical is this driver?
	 2. How difficult would it be to get a replacement?

Did you want me to say it _was_ critical? Did you want me to say it's a
difficult chip with bad documentation requiring arcane expertise? Would
any of these things have been remotely true? Did you want me to just not
comment on these issues .. and without understanding them, how do we decide
whether to aggravate our well-known license problem?

For those who don't know...this EXACT problem with the BSD license has been
the subject of a Stallman diatribe on www.fsf.org, as well as being a very
real problem for big companies that have tried to ship NetBSD.

I even tried to look at the source, it's nice that you have a NetBSD projects
page notice and a notice on your home page, but you do not seem to have
even made the source available for download under the proposed license,
much less one of the preferred ones. (That is: I can't find the source.)
Therefore, all I could do was project from the inherent (lack of) complexity
of the chip.

And, sigh, for the record, your part of the project (the daemon) could
certainly be arbitrarily complex. I have no idea at all how difficult it
would be to replicate that part of the work.

	Ross.Harvey@Computer.Org