Re: licence problem with ADSL modem drivers.

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

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.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu