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Re: Contribution of a DHCP server (µDHCP) port to eCOS


sebastien Couret wrote:
Hello eCOS gurus,

I'm pleased to contribute back to eCOS with this DHCP server port.
The original code (v0.9.8, 31 Oct, 2002) was found on
http://udhcp.busybox.net and is covered by GPL Licence.
So this release will also be covered by GPL.

Thanks!


I'm not sure what the best thing to do with this is. We want to keep it that code which people get as part of eCos is not covered by anything more, shall we say, rigorous than the eCos license, which is GPL plus a special exception.

At the same time, I don't want good stuff to go unnoticed even by those who don't mind the GPL.

To other maintainers, I have a suggestion in general: to add a new and separate CVS module called ecos-gpl, which has full GPL'd (or LGPL'd) stuff in. This is not checked out by default, nor would the packages in it be part of the standard set in a full eCos release (not without explicit user effort so they can recognise the license implications). Users can use the functionality added not so long ago to specify multiple ecos repositories if needed, although I think the wxwindows config tool may still not have been updated?

So users would do something like:
export ECOS_REPOSITORY=$HOME/ecos/packages:$HOME/ecos-gpl/packages

I'm not sure how we'd deal with documentation - it would probably have to be kept separate too.

Alternatively we can just continue putting (L)GPL stuff on the FTP site.

Hmmm... it's just occurred to me that full GPL code is incompatible with BSD plus advertising clause code, which we have a little of in the networking stacks (UCB doesn't count). Perhaps we should resist all GPL code for this reason. Elios needs to be aware of this too as strictly they can't use the FreeBSD stack with the DHCP server in that case (<http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/bsd.html>)

garibaldi:~/ecos-clean/packages/net$ grep -r "includes software developed" common bsd_tcpip |grep -v "University of"
common/current/doc/manpages/net/inet_net.3:.\" This product includes software developed by the NetBSD
common/current/doc/manpages/sys/poll.2:.\" This product includes software developed by Jason R. Thorpe.
common/current/tests/bridge.c: * This product includes software developed by Jason L. Wright
bsd_tcpip/current/include/netinet/ip_flow.h: * This product includes software developed by the NetBSD
bsd_tcpip/current/include/sys/endian.h: * This product includes software developed by Niklas Hallqvist.
bsd_tcpip/current/src/sys/netinet/ip_flow.c: * This product includes software developed by the NetBSD
bsd_tcpip/current/src/sys/netinet/ip_id.c: * This product includes software developed by Niels Provos.


The man pages are irrelevant in relation to the GPL. A test is also a non-issue. <sys/endian.h> appears to be different in FreeBSD and NetBSD from what we have, so the origin is unclear. The current file in free/netBSD has no advertising clause. That leaves ip_flow.h/ip_flow.c and ip_id.c. The former two have been rewritten in current BSD and are non-advertising clause. The latter remains.

So any issues could be dealt with with a stack update (or maybe just the files with some mods?), save for ip_id.c, and I could approach Niels Provos and ask if he would waive it for eCos.

Thoughts?


It has been heavily modified to be integrated to eCOS and is mainly
configurable via configtool.

It's helpful that you've done an EPK, thanks.


Would it be possible for you to do a copyright assignment for your changes? We have a policy in general that we can include stuff from recognised external projects, but for individual changes, we prefer the security of a copyright assignment. In this case, because we know about the GPL, the reason not being so much the assignment itself, as the copyright disclaimer from your employer, so that we know that the work you have done is stuff you are permitted by your employer (who may also be the copyright owner, depending on your employment contract) to contribute.

For the moment i have validate it with FreeBSD TCP/IP stack on the Linux
Synthetic target, a Rattler board and a PQ2FADS board.

I have not much time to improve things such documentation/debug and propose a
few tests, so i post it has it.

Anyway I hope it will be usefull.
Any feedback or questions will be greetly apreciated.

I'm on my way to post also a DNS server port (nsd). You will got it soon.

That looks good, and probably smaller than many. The modified BSD license will be no problem for inclusion in the main repository, although again a copyright assignment for your own changes would be required as per above, again largely to verify legally that you are entitled to make the contribution.


http://ecos.sourceware.org/patches-assignment.html

Have a nice day.


--------------------------------
Hum well, anytime I attach the epk file with this mail, my mail is bounced back and tagged as spam ... What should I do ?

I don't know - it came through here fine.


Thanks again,

Jifl
--
eCosCentric    http://www.eCosCentric.com/    The eCos and RedBoot experts
--["No sense being pessimistic, it wouldn't work anyway"]-- Opinions==mine


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