Re: Grub & accessibility

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 10:51:04AM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> Quoting Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault@ens-lyon.org>:
>
>> (sorry phcoder for the duplication)
>>
>> Robert Millan, le Fri 10 Jul 2009 19:22:48 +0200, a écrit :
>>> We've made some exceptions, but in general, we'd like to keep the GRUB
>>> codebase made entirely of FSF-copyrighted code, or at least code we
>>> have disclaimers for.
>>>
>>> OTOH, we don't want to discard valuable work that wasn't written   
>>> specifically
>>> for GRUB.  Perhaps Marco or Okuji will allow an exception for this case.
>>
>> The thing is that it would be sad to re-implement these drivers, as
>> getting hardware to make sure they work is hard.
>
> One of the main advantages of Free Software is that it allows code  
> sharing.  For a GNU project to reject accessibility code solely because 
> it's copyrighted by others would be a very bad move from the PR 
> perspective.

Hi,

We're not going to reject that code, or duplicate their work.  I discussed
this with Marco two days ago.  He approves of the grub-extras project, and
thinks we can make this the recommended approach for situations in which we
want to import code that wasn't written specifically for GRUB.

Had I known about his position, I'd have proposed that some things like LUA
be put there.  Anyhow, I look forward to more stuff being added to it.
grub-extras is integrated with the Debian package, so additions there are
merged with it semi-automatically.

I won't allow, however, grub-extras to be used as an excuse to avoid
paperwork for code specifically written for GRUB.  We've had some bad
experience with uncooperative developers who refused even signing a
disclaimer (which essentially said they wrote the code themselves without
infringing someone else's copyright).

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."