Re: [gNewSense-users] BSD code

[Sam Geeraerts]

Peter and Jesse wrote:
> > The copyright notice says "The Regents of the University of California" 
> > (plural) so there might be more than one person you can contact?
> >
> > If we could find who put the update-statement in there we could ask that 
> > person. The best thing I could find was 
> > http://lxr.linux.no/linux-old+v2.4.0/drivers/net/bsd_comp.c, which shows 
> > that the update was introduced in 2.4.0. Does anybody know of an easy 
> > web front end to the kernel revision logs so that we can find the author 
> > of the change?
>
> Ooh, you're right. I contacted Paul Mackerras (paulus), but looking at
> the old kernels, his time-stamped name is there before the license was
> changed. Regarding the Regents of the University of California, they
> would have been the copyright holders in the original license, so I
> wouldn't think they would have anything to do with the problematic
> introduction. However, if folks want, I can try to get a hold of the
> appropriate people at the U of C.
>  Peter

Well, the automatic change from original BSD license to modified BSD 
license applied to all code originating from Berkeley. So if they can 
confirm that this code is theirs and that it now falls under the 
modified BSD license then we can give the OK on this code and ask 
upstream to make the update statement more clear (copyright -> license, 
add reference to license change, explain module-only restriction).