Re: Licensing wlc_phy_radio.h and brcm80211 (was: [PATCH 3/3] b43: N-PHY: add 2055 radio regs)

[Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de>]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 07:06:00PM +0200, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
> 2010/10/14 Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de>:
> > On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 06:40:14PM +0200, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
> >> W dniu 11 października 2010 18:24 użytkownik Gábor Stefanik
> >> <netrolller.3d@gmail.com> napisał:
> >> > Doesn't brcm80211 contain register names for B2055?
> >>
> >> I've checked brcm80211 and noticed defines in
> >> drivers/staging/brcm80211/phy/wlc_phy_radio.h.
> >>
> >> Whole brcm80211 driver is licensed as:
> >> MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL");
> >>
> >> Mentioned file contains following comments:
> >> +/*
> >> + * Copyright (c) 2010 Broadcom Corporation
> >> + *
> >> + * Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any
> >> + * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
> >> + * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
> >>
> >> Our b43 driver is licensed as:
> >> MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
> >> and I am not sure if permission above is actually GPL-compatible. The
> >> best option would be to add defines from wlc_phy_radio.h and include
> >> Broadcom's copyright. However comment above wants us to include info
> >> about free copying/modifying/using which is not GPL-compatible.
> >>
> >> Is there any way to solve this issue?
> >
> > I don't understand, are you just wanting to use the names in the .h file
> > for the registers?
> 
> Yes. I want to put lines like:
> #define RADIO_2056_RX0				(0x6 << 12)
> in my radio_2056.h

I don't think that bitfields are copyrightable :)

> > If so, why?  You don't want to support the same devices in the b43
> > driver that the brcm80211 driver does, do you?
> 
> I do. I see many advantages of that plus most of the code is already
> here coming from RE.

"RE"?

> Finishing N-PHY support in b43 does not need much work plus:
> 1) We support SSB devices
> 2) We support older (LP/G-phy) devices
> 3) We share infrastructure (easier to maintain)
> 4) We probably could support modes like AP

If that would be a simpler task than trying to clean up the brcm80211
driver, that seems quite reasonable.

Henry, Brett, Nohee, what do you think about this?

thanks,

greg k-h