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From
SubjectFW: DPT, I2O, SmartRAID driver sound info
Date
Here was the response I got on the DPT SmartRAID Linux
driver issue.

Very interesting indeed. I'm no copyright guru (and quite
frankly legalese does nothing but confuse me =)--Does this
proposed coyright make it able to be integrated in to the
actual distribution? Or with the advent of the generic I2O
support Alan mentioned now in 2.3.x, does this make the time
that would be invested putting it in moot?

::: Jason A. Diegmueller
::: Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
::: 513/542-1500 WORK // jason@bertke.net
::: Systems Administrator, Bertke Systems Innovations

-----Original Message-----
From: support@dpt.com [mailto:support@dpt.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 1999 7:40 AM
To: jason@bertke.net
Subject: Linux Kernel info




Hi Jason,

I'm alive and well and I even found the mail I was looking for BONUS! I
didn't
read through this entirely, but I think it gives an idea as to why we
haven't
adopted GPL. Let me know if you were looking for something else, or if
you have
any questions or comments and I'll be glad to get that mail to the
correct
person.

Best Regards,
Liz Brainard
Technical Support Engineer

My name is Roger Cummings, and for my sins I get to represent DPT at the
I2O
SIG.

I told the folks in Tech Support that I'd respond to your question
regarding the
license in the I2O SIG header files. Please be assured that it is our
intention
to make maximal use of, and participate fully in, the Open Source
community, and
we've investigated a significant amount of effort into getting ready to
do just
that. However here's how we arrived at the current situation.

When we were getting ready to release the source for our Linux driver a
few
months ago, it became very clear to me that we were the first to follow
this
route because until then nobody had complained about the copyright
notices in
the I2O header files. On making enquiries from the I2O SIG, the first
thing I
was told was that I couldn't distribute the files to people who were not
members
of the SIG ! And, by the way, I'm on the SIG's steering committee, so it
isn't
like somebody else could do something I couldn't. Therefore, because we
were up
against a deadline, all I could do was get the SIG to agree to the
copyright
wording that you tripped over, which as onerous as it is did at least
allow me
to take the significant step of publishing the header files to non SIG
members,
so that it was useful for us to publish our source as well !

Anyway, fortunately the SIG decided, after some prodding, that it did
indeed
want to work with the Open Source community, and therefore I got the job
of
sitting on a task force with a bunch of copyright lawyers to revisit the
copyright notices :-(. The resulting notice follows at the end of this
message,
FYI. It clearly states that derivative works are possible, that the
headers can
be used "for any purpose" (I fought at least 2 months to get that in),
with the
only proviso that the copyright notice remains. We were advised against
just
adopting the GPL by several people, by the way, because of concerns
relating to
the status of derivative products which incorporate the header files
e.g. just
because Novell happens to use the headers in creating some drivers for
Netware 5
doesn't mean that they agree to give out source to the entire OS !

This work finished over a month ago, but for some reason the SIG office
has not
followed through and actually modified the files that it makes available
to us.
I've therefore got a message in to them requesting permission to modify
the
files that we have on out web site, and will do so just as soon as they
agree.

Therefore, assuming that the copyright below is acceptable to you, we
should be
out of this bind in the VERY near future.

Regards,









Roger Cummings

DPT

cummings_roger@dpt.com


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