mirror of https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>
To: "Jonathan A. George" <jageorge@austin.rr.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: "GPL weasels and the atheros stink"
Date: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 14:46:53 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <46DB051D.3010008@garzik.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <46DAF70E.9060800@austin.rr.com>

Jonathan A. George wrote:
> Question #1: Is it _ethical_ (legality aside) to take someone else's 
> actively maintained work (for example an OpenBSD driver) and make 
> changes which can not be shared/used by the original developer/maintainer?

This happens all the time.  It's called a fork.

Forks happen for good reasons, bad reasons, dumb reasons, and smart reasons.

Sometimes the useful changes can be shared back, and that's a good thing 
[for that situation].

Sometimes changes cannnot be shared back, and that's also a good thing 
[for that situation].


> Question #2: Is it _technically beneficial_ to branch an OSS work (for 
> example an OpenBSD driver) in such a way as to diminish the ability to 
> share contributions between projects?

Can only be answered on a case-by-case basis.

The reality OF THE CODE is such that *BSD and Linux share good SOLUTIONS 
quite often.  That's a benefit of open source.  And that's a good thing.

	Jeff



      parent reply	other threads:[~2007-09-02 18:47 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2007-09-02 17:46 Jonathan A. George
2007-09-02 18:31 ` Matthew Jacob
2007-09-02 19:05   ` Jonathan A. George
2007-09-02 19:35     ` Jeff Garzik
2007-09-05  6:05       ` H. Peter Anvin
2007-09-02 18:46 ` Jeff Garzik [this message]

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=46DB051D.3010008@garzik.org \
    --to=jeff@garzik.org \
    --cc=jageorge@austin.rr.com \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox

Powered by JetHome