Re: New licence and driver SDK ?

On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 01:14:22PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
>Hello,
>
>A new problem with the new licence was taken to my attention, concerning
>the SDK. It seems some files of the SDK, which are linked with the
>hardware drivers may be affected by the licence change, which would
>preclude pure GPLed third party drivers.
>
>I have not checked actual files that may be concerned yet, but do the
>XFree86 Project have an opinion already on this point ? 

Why are you asking us?  The XFree86 licence does not place any
specific requirements on what licences may be used by drivers or
other code.  This is a question that only the driver author can
answer.

If the driver author takes a strict view of the interpretation of
the GPL, then they have a problem.  But they had a problem before
if their driver was ever loaded into the XFree86 server executable
at the same time as the GLX module, which has always been
GPL-incompatible.  The GPL FAQ gives an example of how such problems,
if the author considers them so, can be resolved with an exception
clause.

But like I said, this is something that only the driver author can
answer.

David