Subject: Re: NetBSD-Mach?
To: Rob Pelkey <mercutio@rpelkey.bates.edu>
From: Christopher R. Bowman <crb@glue.umd.edu>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 12/09/1996 22:27:09
>On Mon, 9 Dec 1996, The Great Mr. Kurtz [David A. Gatwood] wrote:
>
>> > (FreeBSD has a port of the ext2fs fs now. It should make a nice lkm, or,
>> > for development work, you could compile it in. You just couldn't
>> > distribute that kernel)
>>
>> I'll have to look into that.  That would probably save a lot of pounding
>> on the Linux code.  :-)
>
>The terms of the GNU General Public License (under which Linux is
>released) prevent Linux code from being used in {Net,Free,Open}BSD, and
>vice versa - at least not without tracking down the code's original author
>and getting permission to re-license their code under different terms.  So
>if you want an ext2fs implementation, you wouldn't be able to use the one
>in Linux.  (Yeah, that sucks, I should know...)

I believe you are correct on putting GNU GPL code into {Net,Free,Open}BSD,
but it seems that taking {Net,Free,Open}BSD code and using it in GNU code
and thus making derivatives of that GNU also is a perfectly valid thing to
do, and thus follows the insideousness of the GPL (if you happend to
believe it is, I don't want to debate this point)

---------
Christopher R. Bowman
crb@eng.umd.edu
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