Strawman licensing policy

[Alex Deucher]

On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:48:07 -0400, Adam Jackson <ajax at nwnk.net> wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 September 2004 11:16, Matthieu Herrb wrote:
> > Jim Gettys wrote:
> > >  Strawman policy on X.org licensing
> > >         ==================================
> > >   Jim Gettys
> > >     9/20/2004 version .1
> >
> > I fully agree with this policy.
> >
> > Licensing on parts of X should not prevent it from being ported and
> > distributed as part of the different systems that use X.
> >
> > In particular, the kernel drivers should have a liberal enough license
> > that allows one to port them (or write the corresponding bits from
> > scratch using the existing code as documentation) without causing any
> > licensing trouble, for free or non free systems.
> 
> This last is the sticky bit.  It's never been clear to me how much someone
> reimplementing GPL code has to distance themselves from the code they're
> reimplementing.  Is anyone enough of a lawyer to clarify that?

driver code can be a bit tough.  I mean in most cases there is one way
to do something set bits X, Y, Z, clear bits, A,B,C. so I think you
are ok so long as you don't cut and paste the code. OTOH, IANAL. 
Perhaps Thomas could comment?

Alex

> 
> - ajax
> 
> 
>