New driver questions: Attansic L1 gigabit NIC

New driver questions: Attansic L1 gigabit NIC

[Jay Cliburn]

I recently purchased an Asus M2V socket AM2 motherboard that comes with
an onboard Attansic L1 Gigabit Ethernet Controller.  The CD that came
with the motherboard contains GPL'd driver source for the NIC.  The
driver builds, installs, and functions cleanly in Fedora Core 5. Despite
the clear assertion of GPL licensing in the license file[1], an
accompanying readme file says:

     This driver is only supported as a loadable
     module at this time. Attansic is not supplying
     patches against the kernel source to allow for
     static linking of the driver.

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.

First question: Can anyone who purchases a device that ships with GPL'd
driver source code submit said source code for inclusion in the kernel?

Second question: If I'm not qualified to maintain the driver, what are
its prospects for inclusion in the kernel?  How does one go about
soliciting a maintainer?


[1] [root@osprey atl1]# head -n 15 license

"This software program is licensed subject to the GNU General Public
License (GPL). Version 2, June 1991, available at
<http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html>"

GNU General Public License

Version 2, June 1991

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.

---
Thanks,
Jay

Re: New driver questions: Attansic L1 gigabit NIC

[Jay Cliburn]

Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:11:42 -0500
> Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@bellsouth.net> 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.

Jay

Re: New driver questions: Attansic L1 gigabit NIC

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:23:19 -0500
Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:11:42 -0500
> > Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@bellsouth.net> 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.

Re: New driver questions: Attansic L1 gigabit NIC

[John Haller]

Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:23:19 -0500
> Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> 
>> Stephen Hemminger wrote:
>>> On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:11:42 -0500
>>> Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@bellsouth.net> 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).

Re: New driver questions: Attansic L1 gigabit NIC

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:44:43 -0500
John Haller <jhaller@lucent.com> wrote:

> Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:23:19 -0500
> > Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > 
> >> Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> >>> On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:11:42 -0500
> >>> Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@bellsouth.net> 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().

Re: New driver questions: Attansic L1 gigabit NIC

[Chris Leech]

I thought that support statement sounded familiar, large portions of
the source code and documentation are modified from an older release
of e1000.  Nothing wrong with that as it's released under the GPL,
except that the copyright statements have mostly just been switched
from Intel to Attansic.  It's interesting to see a company that was
founded in 2000 claiming copyright back to 1999.

- Chris