Hi Alex, Long time no speak.
On 2013-12-01 23:07, Alex Ionescu wrote:
If Nuno would be accurate, then Virtual Box is in violation of the DDK/WDK/LPL license, because they are distributing the source of their vbox drivers which are based on DDK/WDK, and the vbox drivers run on ReactOS.
Attention, similar case but not necessarily the same. For example, there is the possibility of agreeing on different license terms with Microsoft and this means that either Innotek, SUN or Oracle as owners of vbox in past years could have obtained such agreement.
Also, license terms can vary over the years. Really necessary to see the file and under which license terms they were used. I took a quick look on the vbox web repository but didn't see any mentioning of the DDK at files like https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk/COPYING
I'm quite sure that SUN did a licensing compliance analysis to VirtualBox when they acquired Innotek. Likely the same when Oracle acquired SUN. It is possible that some details also fly under the radar, we can't really know what is happening on their case without looking deeper.
Would you please point me to the files that are under Microsoft copyright on vbox? I can check which kind of license they have.
In fact, any company that uses the DDK/WDK/LPL license would be sued if their driver worked on ReactOS.
With several tones of gray and mist brought into this equation.
So the real issue is to make sure we are clear that the drivers are designed to work on Windows -- not on ReactOS. It is ReactOS that is designed to run Windows drivers, not the other way around. Obviously, including such drivers in our:
In this scenario I see as a good thing that you are "boxing" the software where Microsoft is the IPR holder. I would nevertheless recommend contacting their legal department.
With kind regards, Nuno Brito --- http://triplecheck.de _______________________________________________ Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
