Re: Gigabit Intel NIC? - Intel Gigabit Ethernet Pro/1000T

[James Sutherland <jas88@cam.ac.uk>]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Ralf Baechle wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 13, 2001 at 03:25:22AM -0700, Ion Badulescu wrote:
> > Date: 	Wed, 13 Jun 2001 03:25:22 -0700
> > From: Ion Badulescu <ionut@moisil.cs.columbia.edu>
> > To: Riley Williams <rhw@MemAlpha.CX>
> > Cc: Shawn Starr <spstarr@sh0n.net>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
> >         Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
> > Subject: Re: Gigabit Intel NIC? - Intel Gigabit Ethernet Pro/1000T
> >
> > On Tue, 12 Jun 2001 18:20:58 +0100 (BST), Riley Williams <rhw@memalpha.cx> wrote:
> >
> > > Shawn, I'd suggest you tell the said sales guy that IF he can get you
> > > the FULL specs TOGETHER WITH permission to freely distribute them, AND
> >
> > Permission to freely distribute the specs isn't necessary, although it
> > is nice indeed. All that's needed is permission to GPL the driver sources
> > written using knowledge from said specs.
>
> Which would still be a problem.  You then have a GPL'ed driver which still
> cannot be sanely modified in the way the GPL would like to guarantee.

That isn't a problem - the GPL doesn't attempt to guarantee users the
INFORMATION needed to make sane changes, just that they have the facility
to do so. Just as the kernel doesn't come with a copy of the POSIX specs,
the RFCs, etc. - some of the standards the kernel implements aren't
available publicly, but that doesn't stop the kernel being freely
modifiable!


James.