[U-Boot] [PATCH] drivers/ddr/fsl: Dual-license DDR driver

[Marek Vasut]

On 02/13/2018 05:30 PM, York Sun wrote:
> On 02/13/2018 04:49 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
>> Dear York,
>>
>> In message <VI1PR04MB20785EF7D2578E39C048EE219AF70 at VI1PR04MB2078.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com> you wrote:
>>>
>>> Nobody said anything. Some addresses bounced. And most changes made out
>>> people outside Freescale/NXP are minor changes, except twice the files
>>> were moved during U-Boot structure change. What options do I have?
>>
>> Ask all people who contributed to that code for their explicit
>> permission.  Legally it is a huge difference between actively
>> confirming approval and not reacting at all.
>>
> 
> 
> All,
> 
> If you haven't responded, please give your explicit approval to change
> Freescale DDR driver to dual-license so it can be re-used by other
> project(s) with BSD license. Here is the list I compiled from the git
> history. All commits made by Freescale/NXP employees are removed from
> this list.

[...]

> cd84b1f - Marek Vasut, marek.vasut at gmail.com, 6 years ago : GCC4.6:
> Squash warnings in ddr[123]_dimm_params.c

I do NOT approve.

My previous experience with dual-licensed code was with wpa-supplicant.
A certain company manufacturing handhelds took it, modified it and was
selling the binary. While we were porting Linux onto the device, we
asked for the modifications to get the WiFi operational in the Linux port.

What we got from this company was "it's BSD licensed, go away". Were the
code GPL, they would be legally obliged to provide the changes, but it
was BSD, so the company in question could make profit and the community
lost.

This was a prime example of how BSD license is harmful to software
freedom and how the community lost because of the BSD license. I do not
want to see this happening ever again and I like GPL for that very much.

-- 
Best regards,
Marek Vasut