Yeelong and SiliconMotion driver: asking for developers

[Owain Ainsworth]

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 02:49:13PM -0400, Brett Smith wrote:
> Some of the developers who were packaging software for the machine
> pointed out that this license was unfortunate for them, because they
> were interested in getting GRUB running on the box as well, and of
> course, GPLv2-only is not a compatible license for a GPLv3-covered
> project like GRUB.  With that issue in front of him, RMS asked
> SiliconMotion to allow the code to be used under the terms of GPLv3, one
> way or another, which they agreed to.
> 
> Please don't read any malice into that request, because I assure you
> there was none.  The FSF has consistently advocated that developers
> should use licenses that are consistent with the larger projects they
> interact with (as long as those licenses are free and GPL-compatible),
> and that advice definitely applies to Xorg drivers.  If we made a
> mistake here, it was a failure to connect the dots.  As weird as it
> might sound, I don't think it was clear at the time that we were talking
> about the licensing of an entire Xorg driver.  If we had known that, we
> would've asked SiliconMotion to switch to the X11 license, if possible,
> to stay consistent with Xorg generally.
> 
> And I'm happy to talk to SiliconMotion about that now.  I don't know if
> you have a usual way of handling licensing requests like this, but if
> you want me to keep anybody or any lists in the loop on that thread,
> that's no problem either; just let me know.  And either way, if you have
> any other questions or concerns about this, please don't hesitate to ask
> me.

A switch in the siliconmotion improved stuff to MIT/X11 would be very
beneficial to the BSDs, and X as a whole since it could be part of the
main X distribution.

I would appreciate it if you would keep me (at this address or
oga at openbsd.org) informed about any progress on this.

on another note, I have a lemote in the post, so I may be able to look
at some of the Lynx EM+ issues. I was considering doing a kms driver
when i've got OpenBSDs kms infrastructure thrashed out.

-0-
-- 
There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.