Re: problems on isp1362 driver

Dear Jianliang Lu,

in message <000001c57347$04a45d00$07070a0a@luj> you wrote:

We are using Philips ISP1362 usb controller on our ppc-embedded system. We
have ported the phlips's driver, PHCI, to ppc. The Philips linux driver is
that of  2002.

You cannot do that. The  Philips  driver  comes  uner  a  proprietary
license  which  is  incompatible with the GPL. You must not use their
driver in the context of a Linux kernel or any other GPLed  software.
You  are  either  violating  the  GPL,  or  the  Philips  license. Be
careful!!!

quoted

From the list I've seen that Wolfgang Denk  has worked for that driver and

No!!! We never had any access to the Philips drivers. We are proud of
using Free Software exclusively and will not accepts such a license.

test is for a lot of devices. I'd like to know from Wolfgang which driver is
used? Is the driver that you are using is open source? Where can we get it?

Our version of the driver is Free Software under GPL. It is included
in the linuxppc_2_4_devel module on our CVS server, see
http://www.denx.de/re/linux.html


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de
       There is enough for the need of everyone in this world,
       but not for the greed of everyone.     - Mahatma Gandhi

On Friday 17 June 2005 21:12, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

in message <000001c57347$04a45d00$07070a0a@luj> you wrote:

quoted

We are using Philips ISP1362 usb controller on our ppc-embedded system.
We have ported the phlips's driver, PHCI, to ppc. The Philips linux
driver is that of  2002.

You cannot do that. The  Philips  driver  comes  uner  a  proprietary
license  which  is  incompatible with the GPL. You must not use their
driver in the context of a Linux kernel or any other GPLed  software.
You  are  either  violating  the  GPL,  or  the  Philips  license. Be
careful!!!

IANAL, but I think theoretically at least, it should be possible, if you 
manage to craft sort of a "GPL abstraction layer" around the philips driver, 
to shield it from "GPL influence" in the kernel, just like Nvidia and others 
do. To the letter of the GPL that is not possible, but AFAIK the linux kernel 
license grants an exception that permits binary-only drivers for instance.
Anyway, it probably is a bad and dangerous idea to try to pull this off. As 
for me, I decided it is much safer to stay as far away as possible from the 
philips source. Looking at it could be fatal for an OSS-coder like me (my 
eyes could get poisoned).
Here goes a big "BOOOO" to Philips for doing this in the first place :-(

Greetings,

-- 
David Jander