Re: [NTLK] FW: Fwd: Hacked WiFi driver

Milan Votava <votava@mageo.cz> wroye:
> At 19:43 7.1.2007, you wrote:
> >~~~ On 2007/01/07 16:12, Dale Raby at daleraby@gmail.com wrote ~~~
> >
> >
> >I reluctantly say this, but I'm in agreement with most of what Dale has
> >written, even though my own leanings are against capitalism. But although
> >I'm writing from a different perspective, most of my conclusions are the
> >same or at least similar.
> >
> >It's all well and good talking about this kind of the thing from the
> >perspective of those who will profit, if not benefit, from being the takers,
> >but from the standpoint of the "takees", it still looks more like theft.
> >
> >Even the word "abandonware" could be seen as a handy bit of casuistry rather
> >than as a name for anything real. Someone has suggested that the "real
> >question" should become ""Is Hiroshi's WaveLAN driver abandonware...?" I'm
> >still inclined to think the real question remains "Is Hiroshi's WaveLAN
> >driver *his*?"
>
> *his*
>
> Good point. As you can read at
> http://www.kallisys.com/newton/morewifi/en, the Hiroshi's driver is
> probably based on an opensource code so his rights to sell the driver
> (without a source) can be questionable...

That link (which as far as I can tell is not official) claims that the code
came from FreeBSD. That is the operating system I use. FreeBSD is not
released under the GPL. It has its own license, which does allow
incorporation into products which can be sold so long as creadit is given.
Release of souce code is not required. Microsoft's orriginal NT TCP/IP
stack was taken from the FreeBSD code, although they had to be -- cough
cough -- reminded to give credit.

For more on abandonware see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware>

Gary Dunn
Honolulu
MP110, MP2100

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