Subject: Re: OpenBSD bcw: Possible GPL license violation issues
From: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
To: Theo de Raadt <deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org>
Cc: Michael Buesch <mb@bu3sch.de>,
	Marcus Glocker <mglocker@openbsd.org>,
	Jon Simola <jsimola@gmail.com>,
	Stefano Brivio <stefano.brivio@polimi.it>,
	Martin Langer <martin-langer@gmx.de>,
	Danny van Dyk <kugelfang@gentoo.org>,
	Andreas Jaggi <andreas.jaggi@waterwave.ch>,
	Larry Finger <larry.finger@lwfinger.net>, Quaker.Fang@sun.com,
	Joseph Jezak <josejx@gentoo.org>,
	John Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com>,
	Greg kh <greg@kroah.com>, bcm43xx-dev@lists.berlios.de,
	linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org,
	license-violation@gpl-violations.org
In-Reply-To: <200704042222.l34MMYCr009965@cvs.openbsd.org>
References: <200704042222.l34MMYCr009965@cvs.openbsd.org>
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Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:35:51 +0200
Message-Id: <1175726151.7388.58.camel@johannes.berg>
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On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 16:22 -0600, Theo de Raadt wrote:

> > "What if Broadcom decides to take our LO measure state machine and
> > put it into the original driver? (The Rev Engineers told me they have
> > a very different weird solution for this in their code).
> > I really don't want to see this happen."
>=20
> For the record, I want to warn you that you CANNOT COPYRIGHT
> A STATE MACHINE, which is what the above sentence implies.

That was in a different discussion, quoted out of context. Another part
of Michael's email gives some context:

> bcw_phy_lo_g_state()
> This exactly matches bcm43xx, although the specs only have an abstract
> description and diagram of the state machine.

Hence, it'd be only fair to say that he did, in fact, talk about the
expression/implementation of the state machine.

johannes

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