Re: licence problem with ADSL modem drivers.
On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 11:11:50AM -0700, Walter Landry wrote:
> Sven LUTHER <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> wrote:
> > Hello, ...
> >
> > I was thinking about doing a package for the Bewan ADSL PCI st modem,
> > but have some questions relating to the licence problems, and to how
> > (and if) we can distribute this package.
> >
> > Bewan (www.bewan.com or www.bewan.fr) does distribute linux drivers in
> > source format, but without any kind of licence agreement, so i contacted
> > them, and after discution with them, i found out the following :
> >
> > The modem is a kind of 'software' modem, having some part physical,
> > and some part done by software. The driver is composed of linux code
> > written by Bewan, and a binary only library whose licencing they do
> > not control, and for which STmicroelectronics does not release
> > sources. They are willing to rebuild for other arches than just ia32
> > though. This may well change in the future though, but for now it is
> > like that.
>
> This sounds like the body of Bewan's code + STmicroelectronics code is
> just a driver, just like NVidia graphics card drivers. Assuming it is
> really just a driver, then Bewan can license the code however they
> want, as long as it is compatible with the STmicroelectronics code.
> That should probably be BSD or GPL+exception. In that case, Debian
> can distribute it in non-free.
Yes, it is, but it is different in a way from nvidia's drivers, i guess,
since we don't have sources for the STM proprietary part. And as it is
distributed, it will only be available for i386, we need to ask them to
get the stuff built for other arches.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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