Re: [gNewSense-users] BSD code

[Sam Geeraerts]

Peter and Jesse wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-25-04 at 20:01 +0200, Sam Geeraerts wrote:
> > Peter and Jesse wrote:
> > > > The copyright notice says "The Regents of the University of California" 
> > > > (plural) so there might be more than one person you can contact?
> > > >
> > > > If we could find who put the update-statement in there we could ask that 
> > > > person. The best thing I could find was 
> > > > http://lxr.linux.no/linux-old+v2.4.0/drivers/net/bsd_comp.c, which shows 
> > > > that the update was introduced in 2.4.0. Does anybody know of an easy 
> > > > web front end to the kernel revision logs so that we can find the author 
> > > > of the change?
> > > Ooh, you're right. I contacted Paul Mackerras (paulus), but looking at
> > > the old kernels, his time-stamped name is there before the license was
> > > changed. Regarding the Regents of the University of California, they
> > > would have been the copyright holders in the original license, so I
> > > wouldn't think they would have anything to do with the problematic
> > > introduction. However, if folks want, I can try to get a hold of the
> > > appropriate people at the U of C.
> > >  Peter
> > Well, the automatic change from original BSD license to modified BSD 
> > license applied to all code originating from Berkeley. So if they can 
> > confirm that this code is theirs and that it now falls under the 
> > modified BSD license then we can give the OK on this code and ask 
> > upstream to make the update statement more clear (copyright -> license, 
> > add reference to license change, explain module-only restriction).
>
> Now I'm a little confused. Is the issue here the ambiguity of the
> update-statement, or whether the code is from the original UCB code base
> or not?
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel/Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--drivers--net--bsd-comp-c
>  clearly says that the code is from the source code from the compress program 
> from 4.3BSD. Can't we take his word for it? Although  
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel/Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--drivers--isdn--i4l--isdn-bsdcomp-c
>  does not say explicitly say where the code comes from, looking through the 
> code I think it's pretty clear that it's that same compress program.
> Regarding contacting upstream, it would be great for the
> update-statement to be a lot clearer. Does anyone know who we would
> contact? The kernel-devel list? I got a pretty curt response from paulus
> (who, indeed, did not write the problematic update-statement).
> Comments?
>  Peter

Sorry, I've gone a little off track. Ignore my previous message.

The bugs are about the code having no license. The initial license was 
original BSD. That license was changed to modified BSD automatically for 
all code belonging to Berkeley. If the code hasn't changed significantly 
so that there are no other copyright holders then these files were also 
subject to that change. Else, the other copyright holders had to also 
agree on that, I think, which they probably did.

Assuming that the update statement is supposed to clarify this and that 
the person who put it in had all the information, it would be good to 
contact him to ask about the meaning of it and possibly change it. If 
that person can't be found then kernel-devel is probably the next best 
thing. If you can't get an answer from them, then we'll just have to 
assume modified BSD and leave it at that.