From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Denis Vlasenko Subject: Re: ACX100 (softmac-based) driver ready to merge, but is it legal? Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 19:29:49 +0200 Message-ID: <200607061929.49103.vda.linux@gmail.com> References: <20060604135011.decdc7c9.akpm@osdl.org> <1149524691.30554.23.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20060629142643.GA24463@tuxdriver.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, Jeff Garzik , Andreas Mohr Return-path: Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com ([66.249.92.175]:1982 "EHLO ug-out-1314.google.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030318AbWGFR34 convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Thu, 6 Jul 2006 13:29:56 -0400 Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id a2so2762968ugf for ; Thu, 06 Jul 2006 10:29:55 -0700 (PDT) To: "John W. Linville" In-Reply-To: <20060629142643.GA24463@tuxdriver.com> Content-Disposition: inline Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Thursday 29 June 2006 16:26, John W. Linville wrote: > I apologize for the long copy list. =A0I have tried to include all > known interested parties. >=20 > This is a follow-up to a thread started by Andrew a few weeks ago > about what should be merged for 2.6.18. =A0One of the topics he cited > was the ACX100 driver which he has carried in -mm for quite some time= =2E > I have a slightly different (softmac based) version of that driver > in wireless-2.6 which I think is worth merging now. >=20 > In the aforementioned thread, some questions were raised about the > legality of the ACX100 driver (i.e. tiacx) code base, but no one > had any specific points other than that it is not 100% "clean room" > derived. =A0Others point-out that this is not strictly a requirement. > The matter dropped without a strong defense from the tiacx team. > > I hereby invite the tiacx team to defend their work by making public, > affirmative statements indicating a) how they produced their code; an= d, > b) that they have the legal right to license it as part of the Linux > kernel under the GPL. =A0As an incentive to this, I have already made > the necessary preparations for this driver to be merged immediately. About the part of the acx code which was done by me: I was working upon the already existing acx driver. I do not know how it was developed before I started to play with it, but I certainly never worked for TI and did not receive any code or documents from TI (I was asking for the documentation, but there was no answer). I realize that this info is not enough to determine whether tiacx driver is "clean" legalese-wise. -- vda