Re: sym2 2.1.18k

[Matthias Andree <ma@dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de>]

Matthew Wilcox <willy@debian.org> writes:

> On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 11:33:05PM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
>> Urgh. There was a time when the driver was shared among deveral OSs,
>> among them FreeBSD. The BSD world ain't gonna like this for practical
>> reasons, the consequence is that they'll either stop merging patches
>> from Linux or remove the sym driver from their GENERIC kernels if they
>> want your patches.
>
> They already aren't using it.  I went and trawled their CVS trees for any
> bugfixes they might have done to the driver since Gerard went missing.
> FreeBSD is using 1.6.5 (ie the driver we removed shortly before 2.6).
> NextBSD and OpenBSD have their own driver (siop).

OK, no harm done, as you vigilantly checked before.

> Given that, I don't see the benefit to retaining BSD licence
> compatibility.  In addition, retaining dual BSD licencing allows others
> to take this driver and use it in proprietary OSes.  I don't like people
> being able to take without giving back.
>
> Now, if there's actual real interest from the BSD camps in using this
> driver, let's hear it, and I'll revert this change.  But keeping the
> BSD licence on it at this point looks like no benefit and only liability.

Sounds very reasonable.

Thanks for your quick response.

-- 
Matthias Andree

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