Bug#456413: [Etherboot-developers] cs89x0 driver in etherboot

Hi Jan,

you are looking at the end-result of a long history of license changes=20
in Etherboot. Way back at the dawn of time, Etherboot consisted of code=20
from different contributors that had licensed their contributions as=20
BSD, GPL or PD, respectively.

While we were careful in paying attention to the different (partially)=20
incompatible license conditions, this was awkward, as it restricted how=20
we could release the code. And it made it complicated to determine=20
whether certain combinations were valid.

If my records are accurate, the team finally got all these issues sorted=20
out some time before 2000, when we had tracked down all the different=20
sources of the code and decided that everything in the core of Etherboot=20
was either BSD licensed or PD licensed (i.e. any license compatible with=20
but even less restrictive than BSD). At the time, the core of Etherboot=20
was released as a BSD licensed package, and the CS89x0 driver lived as a=20
separate GPL'd patch in the contrib directory.

Since we knew that this approach might still violate the spirit of the=20
license on the CS89x0 driver, even if it was OK from a legal point of=20
view, we asked Russ if he was OK with this arrangement. I have an old=20
e-mail saying that he gave us permission to do so, but asked for the=20
extra statement clarifying that this permission only applied to the=20
Etherboot project and not to just any open source project. He was=20
arguably concerned that somebody might get confused into believing he=20
had meant to relicense his code as BSD, and wanted to clarify that this=20
was not the case. This is the statement that you now stumbled across.

A little while later, BSD licenses changed, and were now believe to be=20
fully compatible with the GPL. At that point in time, we tracked down=20
all the contributors to the Etherboot project that we could find, and=20
asked them whether they would be OK with relicensing the whole code base=20
as GPL. We believed that the new BSD license already gave us permission=20
to do so, but we wanted to make sure that everybody on the team agreed=20
with this choice.

At that point, the special notice in the CS89x0 source became=20
irrelevant, as it only ever applied to the aggregation of the GPL'd=20
patch file with the BSD licensed core package. But for some reason it=20
never got removed.

We also informed Russ of the licensing change for the rest of Etherboot,=20
and as far as I remember he was happy with it.

So, I do not believe there really is a problem with this particular=20
statement in the Etherboot version of Russ's CS89x0 driver. But I do=20
agree that its intention is hard to discern from current context, and=20
its need has long been obsoleted. If Russ is OK with this, I suggest=20
that Marty remove this particular line from future downloads of the=20
source available from rom-o-matic.net and etherboot.org.

The point about GPL version 1 versus version 2 is valid, though. I had=20
not noticed that before, but I am sure Russ will be able to clarify his=20
intentions. I do suspect that it again has historical reasons more than=20
legal ones, but would not want to presume to speak for Russ.



Markus

Jan L=C3=BCbbe wrote:
> Hello Russ,
>=20
> Your driver for the cs89x0 network card is used in the etherboot
> package. The copyright/license statements are a bit problematic for
> Debian as cs89x0.h file states "This program is free software; you can
> redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
> Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 1.=
"
>=20
> This license statement is currently also in the Linux kernel source
> (which makes it incompatible to the rest of Linux).
>=20
> This license makes it incompatible with the rest of etherboot which is
> GPLv2.
>=20
> cs89x0.c states: "Permission is granted to distribute the enclosed
> cs89x0.[ch] driver only in conjunction with the Etherboot package.  The
> code is ordinarily distributed under the GPL."
>=20
> Could you please clarify what you mean by "only in conjunction with the
> Etherboot package", as this conflicts with the GPL.
>=20
> Would you be willing to relicense your contributions under the GPLv2
> without additional restrictions?
>=20



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