[ale] Are our Ethernet drivers in danger?

[Darin Lang]

No law is violated.  GPL'd software IS available for the private sector.  In
fact it is the only software that truly is available to the private sector.
Someone perhaps does not understand the term private sector which means
non-governmental sector. Nasa's research and development and in fact all
governmental research is paid for by public money, therefore the technology,
etc belongs to the people. That's the theory anyways, anybody can see that
it doesn't work that way, or perhaps it does it just takes 30 years for it
to be declassified (ecryption, GPS, etc).

What is actually being pushed below is M$'s latest propoganda campaign to
discredit Open Source, Free Software Foundation, GPL, Linux, etc. The
semantics are being attacked and it is being contended that the law means
that the gov't should sell the tech to a "private company" (like, oh I don't
know...hmmm....maybe M$) and give them a Monopoly on the
technology/development. "private company" and "private sector" are two
entirely different things.

-- or Consult the Oracle Temple of the Magic Chicken
    http://MoonBughead.com/Oracle/
Darin


on 7/3/01 6:21 PM, Joseph A. Knapka at jknapka at earthlink.net wrote:

> This is a quite from a message in the siliconvalley.com forum
> on open-source vs commercial software:
> <URL:
> http://forums.siliconvalley.com/msgshow.cfm/msgboard=5968009897410465&msg=4951
> 219996565791&page=1&idDispSub=5145094516046185>.
> 
> Essentially, the argument is that Donald Becker's release under
> GPL of Ethernet drivers developed with NASA funding is a violation
> of federal law. Does anyone here know enough about IP law to have
> an informed opinion about this matter?
> 
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>> Author 
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>> 
>> Brett_Glass 
>> 06/28/01 10:31 PM
>> 
>> RE: RE: The government should not sponsor
>> GPLed work 
>> 
>> You [Bruce Perens - JAK] write:
>> 
>> 
>> NASA has sponsored a good deal of [work on Linux].
>> For example, many of the ethernet drivers by Donald
>> Becker were sponsored by NASA.
>> 
>> 
>> If so, it is contrary to Federal law for those drivers to have been
>> licensed under the GPL, because Federal law requires that the fruits of
>> NASA's research and development be available for use by the private
>> sector to develop new products. A vendor that wishes to use the code
>> might well want to pursue this.
> 
> 
> 
> -- Joe Knapka
> "You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
> can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
> // Linux MM Documentation in progress:
> // http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
> * Evolution is an "unproven theory" in the same sense that gravity is. *
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