I’ve decided to remove the non-commercial use restriction from my driver license. The original reason for having it was to prevent 3rd parties profiting from what I’m releasing for free, though in reality it’s unlikely to add great value to anything. The change also frees it up for use by small chargeable projects, which I had no problem with anyway.
It’s also a stepping stone to possibly releasing the driver as open source in the future, which is something I’ve been asked to consider. Though at least one of the requests was just so the driver could be used by GNU GPL programs, which I didn’t think was a problem anyway. I’m unclear on whether the driver is seen as a library dependency or part of the OS, and whether it’s only a problem if the calling program is useless without the driver.
Another reason for postponing an open source release is the confusion about Vista x64 driver signing. A binary release for would need to be signed, effectively making the digital certificate another project dependency. Nobody would be willing to distribute their own certificate to allow an equivalent binary to be built, which seems to violate the GNU GPL. Or am I missing something?
Why exactly the GNU GPL? The “modified” BSD licence is much less restrictive and still GPL-compatible.
GNU GPL seems like a better option for allowing 3rd party changes to be fed back into the main project. If I’m going to open it up, I’d prefer it to stay open for everyone – and BSD doesn’t /require/ that.
What makes you think BSD would be a better option?
I only want to say thanks for your very well driver!!!
Regards, Peace