On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 08:25:40PM +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:
> > Sven Luther writes:
> > >
> > > Maybe a decision on both parts on this would be ok ? XFree86 could make
> > > sure the licence of the driver code would not conflict with the GPL,
> > > keeping the old one for example, and the fbdev driver authors would
> > > dual-licence the code, both GPL and the old xfree86 licence would do
> > > just fine. Benjamin, what do you think about this ?
> > >
> > > BTW, CCing this to the linux-fbdev mailing list.
> > >
> >
> > Yes, a personal agreement between driver developers would also work.
> > However they tend to change and other people will make contributions
> > who all would have to agree also.
> > I don't know if a general dual license agreement in the kernel
> > file header would be possible. Also it could get removed once
> > the author changes. Just like the license in the XFree86 driver
> > could be amended.
>
> I guess already some drivers have such a dual licencing.
>
> > Doing this now for existing fbdev driver would involve to ask
> > anyone who has contributed little more than a typo fix.
>
> Yeah, that would be rather problematic, but anyway, most of the things
> move from the XFree86 code to fbdev code, and most often, it is not code
> that is copied, but the register information and such. It is always
> easier to get specs if you are working for XFree86 than if you plan to
> do some kernel driver work.
>
You can take an XFree86 driver, regardless of what the copyright
says, and completely rewrite it as an fbdev driver (which is what
I believe usually happens) and this is not a violation of the
XFree86 copyright or even of the GPL. Copyright doesn't apply to
ideas or algorithms in a work. It's not a patent. It only applies
to the reproduction of the code.
Mark.
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