At 02:13 PM 2/10/00 -0800, Bill Studenmund wrote:
>On 11 Feb 2000, Julian Assange wrote:
>
>> der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> writes:
>> 
>> > GPLing them will actually make it more difficult for NetBSD to support
>> > them (except, possibly, as LKMs), as we'd then have to reimplement
>> > truly free (or I should say, more nearly truly free) versions of them.
>> > (We don't accept GPLed code in the kernel.)
>> 
>> There is no reason we can not use gnu/sys to do this in the way we are
>> currently for softupdates. Personally I find license ideology getting
>> in the way of features idiotic.
>
>I think gnu/sys would be good. But we need to (well I think we should) add
>some hook so that in this case there's a message, say emitted at config
>and at compile, which says you can't distribute this kernel to anyone else
>due to license restrictions.

Yeah, *that* would be really useful for people using NetBSD as the basis
for a hadware product (and for the GENERIC kernels made available on the
web sites). It's more than just "ideology" - it's "legality". As Bill
points out, allowing GNU stuff into the kernel fundamentally changes what
can and can't be done with NetBSD, not just what people think about it, and
does so in some very limiting ways.

NOTE: as was pointed out to me previously, the softupdates stuff isn't
under GPL, but is temporarily under a license that is more restrictive than
a BSD license. I got the idea from said earlier conversations that its
license is going to change to something more BSD-like in the future,
although I could be mistaken.

(BTW, I agree with Bill that *at least* what he says should be done.
Anything less (and probably even *that*) will only lead to NetBSD slowly
and surely becoming so infected with the GPL that it will be unusable
without it (and due to license conflicts between GPL and other licenses
already in the code (which, by the way, I know nothing about - I'm only
parroting what I've heard on the lists), will render NetBSD undistributable
as anything but source code).