RE: legal problem with cs89x0 driver

[Gregg C Levine]

Hello!
This is going to be a real headache.
All of his original packet drivers were released under the GPL; the zip
files contained on his site actually contain the original text of the GPL
there. The problem for the cs89x0 was that it was written for an actual
customer. 

Ideally the customer should have gone along with releasing it that way.
However I suspect that the customer if that name still exists may not want
to be released that way. We do need to contact Mr. Nelson and ask him.

Side issue: Robert what mail client are you using this week? It's causing
the messages to arrive here as UTF-8.
--
Gregg C Levine address@hidden
"The Force will be with you always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
  


> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden
[mailto:grub-devel-
> address@hidden On Behalf Of Pavel Roskin
> Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 4:26 PM
> To: The development of GRUB 2
> Subject: Re: legal problem with cs89x0 driver
> 
> On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 23:52 +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > What do we do about the cs89x0 driver?  Remove it?
> >
> >   https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?20720
> 
> I suggest that we ask Russell Nelson nicely to change the license to GPL
> v2.  If he doesn't answer, or if the answer is anything less than an
> unequivocal "yes", the driver should be removed and another version of
> GNU GRUB released.
> 
> It's not like it's a clear case of a driver we cannot distribute.  A
> good and well-paid lawyer could likely find several loopholes allowing
> us to distribute the driver.  It could be argued that the code is
> distributed with the Etherboot package, which is a part of GNU GRUB.  Or
> that GPL supersedes the comments in the file.  Or that the original file
> was a Linux driver under GPL, and Russell Nelson did not have exclusive
> copyright to relicense it (the Linux driver mentions Donald Becker as
> well).
> 
> However, I really doubt it's worth the trouble.  Either Russell Nelson
> agrees to GPL with no conditions, or the driver is thrown out.  If there
> are users who depend on it, it's their problem.  Let them care about
> licenses, not us.
> 
> --
> Regards,
> Pavel Roskin
> 
> 
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