Re: Re: [forum] Re: Announcement: Modification to the base XFree86(TM) license.

[Ryan Underwood <nemesis-lists@icequake.net>]

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On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 09:10:22AM +0000, Andrew C Aitchison wrote:
> 
> For several years the mga fb kernel driver has supported dual head and/or
> dvi on cards which aren't supported by the XFree86 driver (unless you
> use the mga_hal). I've wanted to use kernel code to add this support to 
> XFree86, but been put off by the licence problem.
> 
> As I remember it, the pertinent register information here was reverse 
> engineered, so it is at least arguable that I'd be copying fbdev
> intellectual property here if I'd extracted and reused it.
> Perhaps I was wrong, but my understanding from my days in a software
> house taught me that I'd be breaking copyright not just by lifting
> lines of code, but also by reading the code and copying intellectual
> property, including register information.

Petr Vandrovec, the author of the vast majority of matroxfb code, has
repeatedly granted requests to re-use the code under X11 license.  Did
you even ask him?

-- 
Ryan Underwood, <nemesis@icequake.net>

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