Sven LUTHER <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, ... > > I was thinking about doing a package for the Bewan ADSL PCI st modem, > but have some questions relating to the licence problems, and to how > (and if) we can distribute this package. > > Bewan (www.bewan.com or www.bewan.fr) does distribute linux drivers in > source format, but without any kind of licence agreement, so i contacted > them, and after discution with them, i found out the following : > > The modem is a kind of 'software' modem, having some part physical, > and some part done by software. The driver is composed of linux code > written by Bewan, and a binary only library whose licencing they do > not control, and for which STmicroelectronics does not release > sources. They are willing to rebuild for other arches than just ia32 > though. This may well change in the future though, but for now it is > like that.
This sounds like the body of Bewan's code + STmicroelectronics code is just a driver, just like NVidia graphics card drivers. Assuming it is really just a driver, then Bewan can license the code however they want, as long as it is compatible with the STmicroelectronics code. That should probably be BSD or GPL+exception. In that case, Debian can distribute it in non-free. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
