[LEDE-DEV] NETSHe mac80211 GPL sources

[Alberto Bursi]

On 02/03/2017 11:40 AM, Daniel Golle wrote:
> Hi Stas,
>
> Obviously you could easily avoid that legal requirement by just not
> offering a free download of the binaries, so don't get me wrong, I
> do appreciate your openness! Yet, it'd be great if we had a shared
> codebase for TDMA instead of a growing number of competing
> implementations (ubnt, mikrotik, Deliberant's iPoll, NETSHe, ...) each
> being developed behind closed doors.

Not gonna fly, they are making it for money, they don't want a "shared 
codebase", they want to sell their NETSHe.

What might be interesting for a commercial entity like them is that if 
they do like Qt does (dual-license, either proprietary for paying 
customers or GPL for everyone else, contributors sign a license 
agreement that allows Qt to do this dual licensing), the NETSHe's 
position will be strenghtened.
They will receive a boost for public awareness and contributions, as 
open firmwares and Linux OS will likely use their implementation by 
default so that's what people will be more likely to 
know/learn/test/contribute to.
While since many companies don't like GPL they will still make money 
selling proprietary-licensed code to them.

Assuming it isn't just a massive GPL violation where they just do ugly 
hacks to the GPLed drivers and make these new version closed source, anyway.
I'm probably very biased but tricks like the above are very very common.

-Alberto