From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: New driver questions: Attansic L1 gigabit NIC Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:16:43 -0700 Message-ID: <20060816141643.7ae773d6@dxpl.pdx.osdl.net> References: <44DFBFBE.1070201@bellsouth.net> <20060815143457.5fde176b@dxpl.pdx.osdl.net> <44E25767.6010208@bellsouth.net> <20060816110501.0d7502a8@localhost.localdomain> <44E3679B.4030603@lucent.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Jay Cliburn , netdev@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:41703 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932234AbWHPVQw (ORCPT ); Wed, 16 Aug 2006 17:16:52 -0400 To: John Haller In-Reply-To: <44E3679B.4030603@lucent.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:44:43 -0500 John Haller wrote: > Stephen Hemminger wrote: > > On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:23:19 -0500 > > Jay Cliburn wrote: > > > >> Stephen Hemminger wrote: > >>> On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:11:42 -0500 > >>> Jay Cliburn wrote: > >> ...snip... > >>>> I've read the LKML FAQ regarding new driver submissions, but it implies > >>>> that the submitter be willing to maintain the driver, which I'm not > >>>> qualified to do. I haven't contacted Attansic to request a change to > >>>> the above support statement, because my past attempts to contact vendors > >>>> on matters of this tenor have been greeted with silence. > >>> I would recommend the module author to see if they would GPL it. > >> Thank you for your reply. I've contacted the author as you suggest. > >> > > > > IANAL but because they used GPL code in the driver, one could argue > > that they created a derived work covered by GPL already. But I learned in > > preschool it is always better to ask than take. > Not exactly. What they wrote is covered by their copyright, > and there is no permission to use it in any way other than > how they licensed it. Use of GPL code in their driver > would allow the author of the GPL code to sue them for > violating the license agreement, which would likely result > in the code being released under GPL. > > IANAL either, but to paraphrase another preschool saying, > two wrongs (copyright violations) don't make a right > (legally licensed). In this case, though the vendor put a license file in the source that says GPL. But they just forgot and put a different value in the MODULE_LICENSE().