Re: License questions

["Simon 'corecode' Schubert" <corecode@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ciol wrote:
> - If someone send you a code of a driver for instance which is not under 
> BSD, neither GPL: something like the LGPL, will you accept it? Because 
> if I understand well, the only issue with the GPL, is you can't use it 
> in a BSD code, without licensing it in GPL too. Am I right? Therefore, 
> with LGPL, there is no problem?

Actually, we don't have a licensing problem with GPL ourselves, because we 
distribute the complete source code anyways.  People who want to use our 
code as a base for a proprietary product however can not use the GPL code 
in the kernel without having to open all kernel sources.

The BSD license is rather an ideological choice, giving people the freedom 
to do whatever they want to do with the code.  Of course we hope to 
receive improvements from (theoretical) commercial users.

More important than the license is the quality of the code, IMO.  Of 
course we would prefer to get BSD licensed code.

> - [optional] You do not want the GPL, ok. But why didn't you change or 
> why don't you change your license to something between the GPL and the 
> BSD? (Like the LGPL or I don't know, put a non-viral license here).

First of all, we can not change the license of existing software, as this 
would require consent from all license holders (all contributors).

Second, why would we want to change the license?  What's wrong with the 
license we're using right now?

> - Unrelated: is your goal to be used for desktop too? Because when I 
> read http://wiki.dragonflybsd.org/index.cgi/nutshell.html , I have the 
> feeling dragonfly is just for servers.

A lot of people (relative to the whole installation base) seem to use 
DragonFly as a desktop, and I think we are and should be targetting 
desktops as well.

cheers
  simon

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