Dtrace port status

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:06:30 +0000
> From: ttw+bsd at cobbled.net
> Sender: owner-freebsd-current at freebsd.org
> 
> On 21.09-02:14, Darren Reed wrote:
> [ ... ]
> > >Only if it is clean-room coded.
> > 
> > So find someone who hasn't read that email, write up a spec for the missing
> > fields that dtrace requires and ask them to implement and commit the change
> > to the dtrace branch on freebsd.org ? :)
> 
> this has merit.
> 
> to be honest, within copyright (UK and EU), i think you could
> reasonably use structure definitions as they are fundamental to the
> interaction, not the operation of the code.  this has support, though
> it's not been specifically ruled on in court (certainally not that
> i'm aware of).  there is a much bigger problem around patents and no
> amount of clean room coding is going to avoid those.
>  ... having said that, nethier is adding some secondary structure --
> that is not how patent coverage works, only copyright.

IANAL. Maybe the FreeBSD Foundation can help to get advice from a real
lawyer, but this came up at least twice in past court cases, AT&T
v. University of California, et. al. and the more recent SCO v. IBM
Linux licensing case.

The former is clearly directly applicable to FreeBSD. If the header
files can be generated by someone who has not been exposed to the Sun
code based on descriptions from someone who has the code, they should be
fine. That's what was done for BSDlite and I don't see this as any
different.

Of course, anyone who this thread is not disqualified. (Actually,
probably not as the short example would almost certainly meet fair-use
qualification. 
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
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