On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, Andrew C Aitchison wrote: >> 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. > >On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote: >> The fact that it is mostly a one way is mostly due to the fact that the >> main problem here is seeking for HW informations. > >For several years the mga fb kernel driver has supported dual head and/or >dvi on cards which aren't supported by the XFree86 driver (unless you >use the mga_hal). I've wanted to use kernel code to add this support to >XFree86, but been put off by the licence problem.
David Woodhouse was in contact with Petr Vandrovec about this a long time ago, and if I'm not mistaken, there was no problem with using the kernel code to enhance the XFree86 mga driver. I don't know the details so I've cc'd David. I don't know Petr's email address. Various people have tried to get me to implement G400 dualhead support in the XFree86 driver, but I've never been that personally interested, and most people tend to be happy enough once they know hallib exists. Matrox G400 specs were available from Matrox developer relations for quite some time, and might still be. I know I had no difficulty getting ahold of them anyway. So, I think the above argument is a bit of a misnomer IMHO. I totally consider the problem to be purely "communicational" in nature. Any time I've contacted a kernel developer about stuff like this, or any other person who had code that wasn't under MIT license (ie: GPL), I've had absolutely no problem at all in getting them to permit it to be used in XFree86 if I desired. The only exception was Alan Hourihane's vnc driver stuff, however if I remember correctly, he is unable to relicense that because it contains or is based upon GPL code taken from other authors originally which he isn't the copyright owner of, so can't relicense it. In this case, it is totally understandable, and if I (or someone else) felt it that important, we could probably track down all of the relevant authors by hand. The "synaptics" driver is GPL licensed. Some of the authors of that were contacted to see if they'd consider relicensing it as MIT/X11, and to my knowledge everyone who was tracked down so far, has agreed. I don't know if there are remaining authors who still need to be contacted for that or not. So it isn't a case of it being a one way road IMHO. It might be a case of engaging in some friendly collaborative chatter with developers of other projects, perhaps even convincing them to dual-license things. That doesn't mean there isn't or never will be problems per se., but I think that it is possible to solve the problems, or most of them simply via open and polite communication between the various people involved. I don't know about others, however I at least, would never purposefully copy code into something else and not give credit for it to the original authors of the code, even if the license of that code didn't demand it. It's just courtesy if nothing else, even if not legally required on something. It also has a tendancy to encourage collaboration and code sharing. If someone came to me and pointed out I'd used their (or someone elses) code without giving credit, I would be embarassed for having somehow letting such a mistake happen, and would immediately provide proper accreditation. That's just the right thing to do. And it is of course possible for people to occasionally make mistakes with things like this unintentionally too. IMHO, the best way to work through such problems is to discuss them with the people in question privately, or publically depending on which is best under the particular circumstances, and try to straighten such matters out in a polite and rational fashion. It's just common courtesy to everyone involved in the particular code, wether that is kernel code, XFree86 code, or code from elsewhere. Just some personal thoughts... TTYL -- Mike A. Harris _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
