From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S269435AbUH0AWv (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Aug 2004 20:22:51 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261232AbUH0AUh (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Aug 2004 20:20:37 -0400 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:13762 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S269816AbUH0AEU (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Aug 2004 20:04:20 -0400 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 17:03:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Christoph Hellwig cc: Craig Milo Rogers , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Termination of the Philips Webcam Driver (pwc) In-Reply-To: <20040827004757.A26095@infradead.org> Message-ID: References: <20040826233244.GA1284@isi.edu> <20040827004757.A26095@infradead.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > It's not up to him to decide. He can step down from his maintainership, > but he can't force the driver to be removed. Yes and no. From a legal standpoint you're right. However, we should also be polite. If he's the sole author, and he asks for it, I think it's reasonable to honor his wishes. Of course if some new maintainer shows up and decides to infer how the device worked by looking at the original open-source code, that's also clearly fine. I don't want people to play lawyer. Honoring peoples rights to the code they write is more important than just the law. Linus