On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 09:20:22AM +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote: > On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 11:11:50AM -0700, Walter Landry wrote: > > Sven LUTHER <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. >
The situation is the same with the nvidia drivers. If you look inside nvidia-kernel-src_*.deb, it is a bunch of scripts to download and build NVIDIA_kernel-*.tar.gz. NVIDIA_kernel-*.tar.gz in turn consists of a handful of small .c and .h files and a huge binary object to which we don't have source. Note that the double step of not including the contents of NVIDIA_kernel-*.tar.gz in nvidia-kernel-src_*.deb is specific to the nvidia license situation and should not be needed in your case. Friendly too Jakob (IANAL, TINLA, IANADD) -- This message is hastily written, please ignore any unpleasant wordings, do not consider it a binding commitment, even if its phrasing may indicate so. Its contents may be deliberately or accidentally untrue. Trademarks and other things belong to their owners, if any.
