On Jul 28, 2005, at 5:52 PM, Keith M Wesolowski wrote:
However, I do expect drivers that are open except for one component or
set of components needed to initialize the hardware or otherwise
provide legally restricted functionality to be given the option of
being included. Wi-Fi drivers are one of many very good examples.
And that's something we're talking about right now. For example, it
seems to me that firmware is fair game for delivery in binary form; I
don't likely have a compiler or assembler for it anyway and although I
might like to change it there's no real argument that it's part of the
operating system or even of the driver; it's equivalent to delivering
code in a ROM, which is part of the device.
Oh, that's no problem at all. Chunks of data don't have to be
open source -- they just have to be redistributable as chunks
under terms that don't cause the rest of the distribution to be
non-open source. I don't consider binary data to be part of
OpenSolaris because the chunks have to be provided (authored)
by some third party, and thus are under some other organizations'
release control. They can certainly be included within an
OpenSolaris-based distribution. Whether or not that distribution
is entirely open source is something for the purists to argue
about (I'm not one of them).
BTW, it is the same reason that I would not say Apache httpd
is part of OpenSolaris. Whether or not it is open source is
orthogonal to who controls editing of the content, and Apache
forbids redistributing modified distributions under the
Apache name.
....Roy
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