Re: [BK] upgrade will be needed

Andrea Arcangeli
2005-02-18T08:32:31Z

On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 12:05:44PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> That's not how others are reading it and when we requested clarification
> from the legal firm we use for contracts (Fenwick&West if you care) they
> said that it could well be interpreted that if you use BK you are giving
> up your right to hack on another system. That wasn't our intent but nor

You know I'm not a lawyer but that's exactly the way I read it too:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/25/224
http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/25/400
http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/25/249

I've been too harsh in the past on this, but the no time limit was
unbearable to me, and finally some sanity showed up today and things
become bearable for the first time ever as far as I'm concerned.

Now it seems that many folks misunderstood the old licence if they're
complaining about the licence change. Complaints about the new licence
are a no sense as far as I can see.

I'm only amazed you didn't clarify this earlier if your intention was
really to allow hacking on other systems after a certain amount of time.
You had ton of chances to clarify it before the layers lined things up,
including in answer to the above messages. Anyway I don't care since a
clarification by email wouldn't been enough as far as I was concerned,
so I'm glad eventually the licence is changing.

A big thanks to Fenwick&West from my part.