[PATCH] b43/b43legacy - Credit Broadcom with enabling the development of the drivers

[Michael Büsch]

On Tue, 2010-09-21 at 15:38 -0700, Larry Finger wrote: 
> 
> NACK on the patch that started this thread. Broadcom got caught
> violating the GPL and had to provide the binary drivers to compensate
> for that. They did not provide anything voluntarily.

Hm, I actually planned to not reply to this thread, but I think
I do have to comment on that one. :)

I'm not speaking for Broadcom or anybody else. However, I think first
of all Broadcom wasn't caught of anything. (I guess you are talking
about the WRT issue, right?). It's the _vendors_ who violated the GPL.

Second thing is that I do not think it's possible at all to compensate
for a GPL violation by providing binary object code. I don't
have to explain why this is the case. It's obvious.

Back to the original patch. I do think that David is misunderstood here.
I also misunderstood him when we talked about that earlier.
Here's the original comment again:

+  Broadcom enabled the development of this driver, by providing all required
+  hardware information in the form of binary software drivers.

Let me rephrase the comment a little bit. I will not change the
meaning :)

+  Certain lawyers are wrong, and this driver proves it.
+  http://tinyurl.com/ybl83uw

That's basically all it says. No more, no less.

In the end, I am not interested in these legal fights at all. So I do not
have an opinion on whether the patch should be applied or not. I am only
interested in technical issues and I'll leave the rest to others who might
know better (or not).

-- 
Greetings Michael.