> On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 10:44 AM Brandon Taylor > <donnie126_2...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > > I've just installed FreeDOS 1.3-RC4 on a virtual machine, and, > > upon running FDIMPLES, discovered that FDNET is nowhere to be > > found. What's the issue here?
On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 10:58 AM Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: > > I had asked that we not include FDNET in FreeDOS 1.3 RC4 due to > license confusion in the FDNET package. You can see it documented in > the wiki: > http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Releases/1.3/Packages#Networking > > I've been thinking about this since RC4, and I'm starting to think > that the package will be okay to include in RC5. But for now, it's not > in RC4. I've been distracted with other work, and it appears I never followed up on this one. I meant to send this note a month ago. I'd thought a lot about the FDNET issue. Thanks to everyone here for the conversation we've had about it, going back to to June. I especially appreciated the comments from Tom and Eric and Paul. You've convinced me, I agree with you; I now think the license issue for FDNET is actually a non-issue. To recap: Many of the source files have confusing/contradictory license statements. But the sources show that Russ's GPL and public domain claims came first. Most of these are in the PCNTPK directory. For example, many of these files have this disclaimer at the top: ;Copyright (c) 1993 ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES, INC. All Rights Reserved. ;This software is unpblished and contains the trade secrets and ;confidential proprietary information of AMD. Unless otherwise provided ;in the Software Agreement associated herewith, it is licensed in confidence ;"AS IS" and is not to be reproduced in whole or part by any means except ;for backup. Use, duplication, or disclosure by the Government is subject ;to the restrictions in paragraph (b) (3) (B) of the Rights in Technical ;Data and Computer Software clause in DFAR 52.227-7013 (a) (Oct 1988). ;Software owned by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., 901 Thompson Place, ;Sunnyvale, CA 94088. But the same source files also have this, below the AMD statement: ; Copyright, 1990, Russell Nelson, Crynwr Software ; ; ; This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify ; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by ; the Free Software Foundation, version 1. ; ; This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, ; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of ; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the ; GNU General Public License for more details. ; ; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License ; along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software ; Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. ..or a "public domain" statement like this: ; Copyright 1988-1992 Russell Nelson ; ;put into the public domain by Russell Nelson, nel...@crynwr.com I don't know why the sources later had an "AMD" statement put on them, but you cannot claim "proprietary" or "copyright" on something that was previously released under the GNU General Public License. It appears that somewhere along the line, someone (at AMD?) had access to the sources, probably in a larger source tree, and ran a batch job or script to apply the "AMD" statement to a bunch of source files. And that happened to catch these GPL and public domain source files. I believe that was done in error. The original public domain and GPL declarations trump the latter "AMD" statement. Resolution: (1) Let's re-accept the FDNET package into the next FreeDOS distribution. (2) I'll make a note about this decision in the FreeDOS wiki at http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Releases/1.3/Packages (this currently has a red "do not include" note on it .. I'll update to change it a green "include" message) (3) To prevent future confusion, I'll create a new version of these source files that *removes* the "AMD" statement, where a previous GPL or public domain declaration was already made. (I think that's all of the files in question.) I'll also create (or update, if it exists) a README file to note the changes to the source files, and why. I look forward to including networking support again in the next distribution, which should be FreeDOS 1.3 RC5. *If you agree or disagree, I'd appreciate your reply to this email. Agreement can be simply "agree" or "+1". If you disagree, please discuss. (But consensus from the last discussion favored including FDNET, so if no one disagrees now, I'll assume no concerns on this.) Jim _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
