Re: [gNewSense-users] BSD code

[Sam Geeraerts]

Peter and Jesse wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-27-04 at 13:50 +0200, Sam Geeraerts wrote:
> > Peter and Jesse wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2008-25-04 at 20:01 +0200, Sam Geeraerts wrote:
> > > > Peter and Jesse wrote:
> > > > > > The copyright notice says "The Regents of the University of California" 
> > > > > > (plural) so there might be more than one person you can contact?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > If we could find who put the update-statement in there we could ask that 
> > > > > > person. The best thing I could find was 
> > > > > > http://lxr.linux.no/linux-old+v2.4.0/drivers/net/bsd_comp.c, which shows 
> > > > > > that the update was introduced in 2.4.0. Does anybody know of an easy 
> > > > > > web front end to the kernel revision logs so that we can find the author 
> > > > > > of the change?
> > > > > Ooh, you're right. I contacted Paul Mackerras (paulus), but looking at
> > > > > the old kernels, his time-stamped name is there before the license was
> > > > > changed. Regarding the Regents of the University of California, they
> > > > > would have been the copyright holders in the original license, so I
> > > > > wouldn't think they would have anything to do with the problematic
> > > > > introduction. However, if folks want, I can try to get a hold of the
> > > > > appropriate people at the U of C.
> > > > >  Peter
> > The bugs are about the code having no license. The initial license was 
> > original BSD. That license was changed to modified BSD automatically for 
> > all code belonging to Berkeley. If the code hasn't changed significantly 
> > so that there are no other copyright holders then these files were also 
> > subject to that change. Else, the other copyright holders had to also 
> > agree on that, I think, which they probably did.
> >
> > Assuming that the update statement is supposed to clarify this and that 
> > the person who put it in had all the information, it would be good to 
> > contact him to ask about the meaning of it and possibly change it. If 
> > that person can't be found then kernel-devel is probably the next best 
> > thing. If you can't get an answer from them, then we'll just have to 
> > assume modified BSD and leave it at that.
>
> Sam, Would you be willing to contact kernel-devel? You seem to have a
> better idea of the issues at hand than I do. If so, another thing you
> might want to mention is that both of the files have
> MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL") in them. I'm not sure how that fits in.
>  Peter

Ah, I didn't know that macro was in there. I was also considering that 
the words "copyright" and "license" are somewhat interchangeable (but I 
don't know for sure because English is not my mother tongue). All in 
all, I think we're left with a pretty weak case just to make some minor 
changes to a comment and we're probably making too much of a fuss about 
it. All the evidence points to the license being modified BSD which is 
all that matters to gNewSense.

If you still want me to contact kernel-devel, I will. But I'm willing to 
let the issue go and just accept the code.