1 Dec
2013
1 Dec
'13
10:07 p.m.
If Nuno would be accurate, then Virtual Box is in violation of the
DDK/WDK/LPL license, because they are distributing the source of their vbox
drivers which are based on DDK/WDK, and the vbox drivers run on ReactOS.
In fact, any company that uses the DDK/WDK/LPL license would be sued if
their driver worked on ReactOS.
So the real issue is to make sure we are clear that the drivers are
designed to work on Windows -- not on ReactOS. It is ReactOS that is
designed to run Windows drivers, not the other way around. Obviously,
including such drivers in our:
1) Tree
2) Using our build system makefiles/hacks/resource files (all of which talk
about "ReactOS").
3) Packaging them as part of the standard ISO/build image
4) And hacking them to work around ReactOS issues
All weakens the legal case.
I think it would be beneficial to have a project, call it "React Drivers"
or something, which is a distinct tree/etc from the mainline. React Drivers
aims to, let's call it, "enable compilation of DDK/WDK/LPL sample drivers
under clang/msvc/cmake/mingw". It links with an .rc file that makes no
mention of it being anything else other than an open source Windows driver.
You could then make whatever changes you wanted to the sources, such as
reformatting/etc to fix warnings/cross-compiler errors, etc, as long as it
keeps working on Windows.
This would, I believe, survive under scrutiny as fair LPL use.
The flip side of this is that now the ReactOS tree no longer has an inbox
fdc driver. Just like if you want to use USB in VirtualBox, you need to
download the "Virtual Box Extensions", ReactOS would need a similar system.
We already have the ability during 2nd stage boot to ask the user to
download the Gecko package -- we should probably ask something similar of
users to download the "React Driver Package". This would drop all the
.INFs/etcs as needed -- in the same way, and with the same compatibility as
a Windows user could choose to do.
Best regards,
Alex Ionescu
On Sun, Dec 1, 2013 at 1:02 AM, James Tabor <jimtabor.rosdev(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Well, at this rate, M$ may need to pay us for fixing
their broken (open
source) floppy disk driver......
So, it sounds like we cannot include any MS-LPL code in our trunk without
any prior legal work.
Regards,
Pierre
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