while we're waiting for Fedora Core (GA) ...

[Chris Ricker]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Bill Nottingham wrote:

> William Hooper (whooperhsd3 at earthlink.net) said: 
> > The "Driverloader" section has a license the resembles pine:
> > "Redistribution of this software is only permitted for exact copies
> > (without modification) of versions explicitly marked and officially
> > released by Linuxant with the word "free" in their name."
> > 
> > This unfortunately makes it just as bad to try to maintain as closed
> > source.  Even if someone fixes a bug and/or security issue they can't
> > redistribute it.
> 
> It also has a binary-only component to it, unless I'm missing
> something...

It does -- it's just a shim around the .SYS drivers from Windows XP for the
hardware. Not only is the licensing troubling b/c it forbids modification,
but there's also the issue of if the Windows drivers are even licensed for
use with Linux....

In addition to the licensing and the general cruftiness of how it works,
there's also the possibility of it becoming a completely commercial product
in the future. The same people make a binary Linux driver (+ wrapper source
to wedge it into whatever kernel) for the modem in many laptops.  They
started out with the driver as a free beta. After the community tested it
for them and they had something usable, they turned around and made it a
commercial-only product. Some of the noises on their web site sound like
they plan on doing something similar with this...

At least in the case of their modem driver, I had to modify the source to
get it to compile for use with the Fedora Core kernel. It does work though, 
after you beat the code into submission.

later,
chris