Re: Contribution of a DHCP server (µDHCP) port to eCOS

[Andrew Lunn <andrew.lunn@ascom.ch>]

>     jifl> To other maintainers, I have a suggestion in general: to add
>     jifl> a new and separate CVS module called ecos-gpl, which has
>     jifl> full GPL'd (or LGPL'd) stuff in. This is not checked out by
>     jifl> default, nor would the packages in it be part of the
>     jifl> standard set in a full eCos release (not without explicit
>     jifl> user effort so they can recognise the license implications).
 
[Snip]

> A separate repository is a sensible minimal requirement. We do not
> want users to accidentally include GPL'd code in their application
> without realizing it. However I don't think a separate repository is
> sufficient, we also want explicit support in the host-side tools.
> There is already limited support for this in ecosadmin when installing
> a new package, but I don't think that is good enough. I haven't
> thought through the issues in detail, but two possibilities spring to
> mind:
> 
> 1) add a new CDL property license, probably only usable inside a
>    cdl_package. This would take an arbitrary string, so e.g.:
> 
>      cdl_package CYGPKG_SOMETHING {
>          license GPL
>          ...
>      }
>    
>    or
> 
>      cdl_package CYGPKG_OTHER {
>          license "Proprietary, see http://www.xyzzy.com/OTHER/license.html"
>          ...
>      }

I like this, but i think we are only addressing one of the two
issues. Ownership is the second issue. Code which is not owned by
RedHat, eCosCentric or the maintainers should also be placed into a
separate CVS tree. Its then clear what we can change the license on
and what not. JFFS2 and Gary's NAND flash driver thus should be in the
second tree, even though they both have mod GPL licenses. I would
suggest an "owners" property which is an arbitrary string. It would
take values like:

     owners "FSF"
     or 
     owners "Redhat+Maintainers"
     or 
     owners "Diverse"
     
The last case being used for example for jffs2 and the NAND flash
driver.

        Andrew