---------- Forwarded message --------- From: obiwac obiwac@gmail.com Date: Fri, 15 Sept 2023 at 16:10 Subject: Possibility of dual-licensing to ease bringing into FreeBSD To: mmokhi@FreeBSD.org mmokhi@freebsd.org, imp@freebsd.org, jhb@freebsd.org
Hia,
I recently ported batman-adv to FreeBSD as my GSoC project:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/SummerOfCode2023Projects/CallingTheBatmanFreeNetwor...
I'd like to bring this work into the FreeBSD source tree, but they are reluctant to bring in any new GPL code. Would it be possible to dual-license batman-adv to GPL/BSD, or would you rather not (in which case I'll ask FreeBSD's core@ if an exception could be made for batman-adv)?
Thanks! Aymeric
Hi Aymetric,
Nice work!
For my part, I'd be a bit reluctant. We've had requests for batman-adv from big companies in the past for an extra license, which we turned down. So there might unfortunately be vultures out there who'd like to build on top of batman-adv without giving back. And I'd feel a bit uncomfortable to have spent so much free time on this project to just "donate" it to such big companies. Who'd enhance it and use that superior, closed source version in products which are in direct competition to wireles community networks like Freifunk.
If there were some ways that non-commercial wireless community projects like Freifunk were benefitting from a dual license then I might be up for it. But right now I don't see how they would?
Regards, Linus
On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 04:11:44PM +0200, obiwac wrote:
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: obiwac obiwac@gmail.com Date: Fri, 15 Sept 2023 at 16:10 Subject: Possibility of dual-licensing to ease bringing into FreeBSD To: mmokhi@FreeBSD.org mmokhi@freebsd.org, imp@freebsd.org, jhb@freebsd.org
Hia,
I recently ported batman-adv to FreeBSD as my GSoC project:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/SummerOfCode2023Projects/CallingTheBatmanFreeNetwor...
I'd like to bring this work into the FreeBSD source tree, but they are reluctant to bring in any new GPL code. Would it be possible to dual-license batman-adv to GPL/BSD, or would you rather not (in which case I'll ask FreeBSD's core@ if an exception could be made for batman-adv)?
Thanks! Aymeric
On Friday, 15 September 2023 16:11:44 CEST obiwac wrote:
Would it be possible to dual-license batman-adv to GPL/BSD
This is not really likely. There is not a single entity which can re-license the code - instead there are nearly 120 authors recorded in the repository which have some saying over their contribution. There can be even more copyright holders which weren't recorded correctly (especially in the early days).
Akinobu Mita Al Viro Alexey Dobriyan Alexey Fisher Anders Roxell Andrea Gelmini Andrea Ghittino Andreas Langer Andreas Pape Andrew Lunn André Gaul Andy Shevchenko Antonio Quartulli Arnd Bergmann Ben Hutchings Chris Lang Christophe JAILLET Colin Ian King Cong Wang Dan Carpenter Daniel Seither Daniele Furlan Danny Kukawka David Ahern David Decotigny David Howells David S. Miller Def Denys Vlasenko Ding Tianhong Eric Dumazet Eric W. Biederman Felix Fietkau Fengguang Wu Florian Westphal Gao Feng Geliang Tang George Spelvin Greg Kroah-Hartman Gustavo A. R. Silva Himangi Saraogi Jakub Kicinski Jason A. Donenfeld Javier Martinez Canillas Jean Delvare Jean Sacren Jeremy Sowden Jesper Juhl Jiri Pirko Joe Perches Johannes Berg Jonathan Corbet Julia Lawall Jussi Kivilinna Kees Cook Ken Helias Kirill Smelkov Krzysztof Kozlowski Kyungrok Chung Leon Romanovsky Linus Lüssing Linus Torvalds Luc Van Oostenryck Lucas De Marchi Luis de Bethencourt Marek Lindner Markus Elfring Markus Pargmann Martin Hundebøll Martin Weinelt Masahiro Yamada Mathieu Desnoyers Matthias Schiffer Michał Mirosław Minghao Chi Nicolas Dichtel Nikolay Aleksandrov Octavian Purdila Pankaj Bharadiya Patrick McHardy Pau Koning Paul E. McKenney Paul Kot Pavel Skripkin Phil Sutter Randy Dunlap Rasmus Villemoes Remi Pommarel René Treffer Ruben Wisniewski Sasha Levin Scott Raynel Sebastian Andrzej Siewior Shan Wei Shaokun Zhang Shigeru Yoshida Simon Wunderlich Stephen Hemminger Steven Rostedt (Google) Sven Eckelmann Sven-Thorsten Dietrich Sylvestre Ledru Taehee Yoo Tejun Heo Tetsuo Handa Tobias Klauser Tom Gundersen Tracey Dent Vasiliy Kulikov Vladimir Oltean Vladislav Efanov Wilfried Klaebe Xiyu Yang Yajun Deng Ying Xue Yu Zhe YueHaibing Zheng Yongjun
And I don't want to start now any discussion about per country rules regarding copyright and copyrightable work. Just wanted to point out that it is not as simple.
Kind regards, Sven
b.a.t.m.a.n@lists.open-mesh.org
-
Linus Lüssing -
obiwac -
Sven Eckelmann