[ale] Are our Ethernet drivers in danger?

Wed Jul 4 00:02:49 EDT 2001

"Bao C. Ha" wrote:
> 
> Bite me!  Not all of the Ethernet drivers are written by
> Donald Becker.  The copyright of a few of them were
> reassigned by Donald to the NSA, not NASA, in 1993,
> probably required by his terms of employment.  And I
> wrote my driver in my free time while working for the US
> government.  There was no requirement to give the copyright
> back to Uncle Sam.

??? No one asserted that Donald Becker was the sole source
of Linux Ethernet drivers, though he did write a significant
number of them. And as I understand it, he is a NASA
employee, and there is a specific provision in federal
law that any technology developed by NASA be made
available to the public (though whether it is
explicitly required to be put in the public domain
is unclear to me). That's all I know about the subject,
it could be wrong, and I won't say any more about it,
but I'm sorry if my post offended you.

> I have a lot of respect for Bruce Perens.  He is, however,
> well-known to shoot-off his mouth.  In this case, somebody
> interprets his comments to the extremes.  And, there is no
> doubt that Microsoft has studied this issue to death as a
> way to slow down Linux.
> 
> And what is wrong with the GPL?  All GPL asks is that to
> be fair, we show our intellectual works, and would like to
> see yours if you happen to use ours.  Besides, it only
> happens if modifications are made to the kernel itself.
> Everything else can run under Linux, linked to the LGPL
> libraries, and still have source codes protected if desired.
> The kernel is less than 5% of a typical Linux system.  The
> rest of the software is released under GPL, LGPL, BSD, Perl
> Artistics, JPEG, or even commercial licenses like Oracle.

Sure. But the GPL has legal consequences about which
commercial vendors have legitimate concerns. Look at,
eg, the Human Genome Project's research results. Had
they been released under the GPL, no pharma research
firms would touch them, because they'd have to spend
millions of dollars to produce a saleable product,
which they would then be prohibited from selling
due to GPL provisions. (Example cribbed from someone
else, can't remember who at the moment.) That's
why it seems best to require *publically funded*
development to be released with no strings attached.

> I am still puzzled why Microsoft is making such a fuss 
> against Linux.

1 Linux sale/download/whatever --> loss of 1 NT or W2K sale.
Similarly for Open Source equivalents of MS Office, Visual
Studio, etc. Linux seems to be rapidly catching up with
Windows in terms of market share. People seem to be
recognizing that Open Source is an effective and fast
way to produce high-quality software. MicroSoft's
hegemony is threatened, and Linux is the most prominent
symbol of that threat.

I think that's great. Let MicroSoft whine all they want,
but in the long run, Open Source wins, and developers
will have to make their money doing support and
consulting (which is also just fine, IMO). Sale of
software packages is already obsolete, only M$ hasn't
figured that out yet. Well, probably they have, and
thus the fuss :-)

I think ultimately the GPL is a non-issue. Open Source
is so obviously (IMO) a superior development model
wrt proprietary methods that it can't fail to
produce higher-quality product. So commercial
software development will die, with or without
the GPL - natural selection at work. Stallman wins,
but he could have done so on the BSD license and not
come off as such a kneebiter.

-- Joe

> Bao
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-ale at ale.org [mailto:owner-ale at ale.org]On Behalf
> > Of Joseph A.
> > Knapka
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 6:30 PM
> > To: Darin Lang
> > Cc: ale at ale.org
> > Subject: Re: [ale] Are our Ethernet drivers in danger?
> >
> >
> > Darin Lang wrote:
> > >
> > > 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.
> >
> > I agree that MicroSoft's line on the entire Open Source issue
> > boils down to a huge steaming ball of FUD. However, there
> > are a couple of actual points buried in there.
> >
> > An argument made elsewhere in the same forum, and which makes a lot
> > of sense to me, is that any product (software, human genome, etc)
> > whose development is funded by taxpayer dollars should be placed
> > in the public domain, unencumbered by any sort of IP restrictions
> > whatsoever, be they GPL, patents, or what have you. Private
> > companies could pick up those products and develop them further
> > using a proprietary model; open-sourcers could pick them up
> > and develop them further using the Open Source model. Everyone
> > wins, basically. Donald Becker's work would fall into this
> > category - though if this policy were in place, he probably
> > wouldn't have actually been able to develop the Linux Ethernet
> > drivers on NASA time, since a PD release would violate the
> > terms of the GPL.
> >
> > I can see why for-profit developers are wary of the GPL - it
> > prevents them from making a profit on their own work which
> > is derived from GPL code. Sure, they're free not to use GPL
> > code in their products, but when a GPL'd piece of software
> > is the highest-quality candidate for a particular function,
> > everyone loses when a developer chooses *not* to use that
> > code in their product - especially the user. (And personally,
> > I expect that in almost every case, when a proprietary
> > solution and an Open Source solution for the same problem
> > exist, the Open Source solution will win on quality every
> > time, in the long run.) And the "derived work" language
> > in the GPL seems to prohibit one from even *looking at*
> > the code of a GPL'd product if one wants to avoid
> > GPL encumbrance. (Note: I don't really know what I'm
> > talking about when it comes to the legal implications
> > of the GPL, but my naive reading seems to largely agree
> > with the opinions of several knowledgable folks who
> > posted to the SV forum.)
> >
> > -- Joe
> >
> > >
> > > -- 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=596800989
> > 7410465&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?
> > > >
> > > >> | Search | Send to a Friend | Help
> > > >> << Prev Msg | Next Msg >>
> > > >>
> > > >> Author
> > > >> Message
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> 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. *
> > > > --
> > > > To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe
> > ale" in message body.
> > > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe
> > ale" in message body.
> >
> > -- 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. *
> > --
> > To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale"
> > in message body.
> >
> --
> To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.

-- 
"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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