Re: Intel PRO/100 drivers

Hi,
On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 06:32:38PM -0600, D. Joe Anderson wrote:
> This one has a GPL license and claims to work with 2.4.18:
> 
> ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/2896/eng/e100-2.1.29.tar.gz
> 
> The only place I find reference so far to patent issues are in the
> web pages for the aforementioned Debian package, and in this
> particular version of the driver intermediate to the two listed
> above:
> 
> ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/2896/eng/e100-1.8.38.tar.gz
> 
> I'm Cc:'ing the Debian maintainer, Ard van Breeman, who perhaps might
> be able to point us to some discussion (on debian-legal or elsewhere)
> illuminating what, if any, patent issues are a concern with this
> driver.  
> 
> Ard van Breeman, if you could help clarify this, I would appreciate
> it.

Once upon a time I was contacted by Wichert Akkerman about the
e100 driver. He talked to a redhat guy that said there were some
patent issues with the code. I then decided to ask intel
directly, and they said it was "in a state of flux", and that
they will contact me if anything has settled. As a safety
precaution I moved the package to non-free, and warned people
about it.
Intel still has not contacted me...

BTW: Intel refused to disclose to redhat which patents the code
might cover.

Currently I have been looking at the new package. But still:
patent != copyright, so something might be GPL'd, it does not say
anything about the patents it covers. You might be free to
compile and modify the code, but the patentholder can forbid you
to use it.

I've already packaged the latest version, but I have to do that
again, and test it...

As far as I know the intent was to open the patents whenever
somebody complied to the GPL. That's probably the reason that the
BSD license also contains someother legal stuff. Because GPL
means always free, I guess the GPL was a straightforward thing to
do.

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