SFLC Completes Review of Linux Wireless Code

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 Software Freedom Law Center Completes Review of Linux Wireless Code

  Nonprofit Legal Services Organization Also Releases Guidelines for
			      Developers

NEW YORK, September 27, 2007 -- The Software Freedom Law Center
(SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), today announced that it has
carefully reviewed the lineage of the open source Atheros wireless
driver for Linux and determined which portions can be distributed
under the ISC license (also known as the 2-clause BSD license).

The licensing situation for the Atheros driver is complex because much
of it was originally derived from an OpenBSD project called ar5k. This
original code is licensed under the ISC license, but Linux code is
typically licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL
places specific additional requirements on distributors of software to
ensure that its users are able to obtain the software's source code,
and freely to copy, modify, and redistribute all subsequent modified
versions.

Ultimately, all the copyright holders of the Linux ath5k-driver code,
derived from ar5k, have been contacted and have agreed to license
their changes under the ISC license, thus allowing improvements to be
re-incorporated into OpenBSD. One of the three historical branches of
the code reviewed by SFLC, however, included portions that are only
licensed under the GPL, and SFLC has determined that it would be very
difficult to re-incorporate that code into OpenBSD.

To share its knowledge with the FOSS and legal communities and to
share background regarding its analysis, SFLC today has also released
two documents of general interest. One document is a set of guidelines
for developers who wish to incorporate code with a permissive license,
such as ISC, into a GPL-licensed project. The other paper discusses
the legal standards of originality with regard to computer programs
under U.S. and international copyright law.

The two general papers, as well as a detailed document explaining
SFLC's review of the Linux Wireless team's ath5k driver, are available
at http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/

"We're pleased to help bring clarity to the Linux Wireless Developers
as they work towards inclusion of their code in the Linux kernel,"
said Karen Sandler, SFLC Counsel.

This is not the first time that SFLC has worked with the Linux
Wireless developers. In July, SFLC announced that it had performed a
confidential audit of the open source Atheros driver and determined
that no portion of it was illegally copied from Atheros' proprietary
code.


About the Software Freedom Law Center

The Software Freedom Law Center -- directed by Eben Moglen, one of the
world's leading experts on copyright law as applied to software --
provides legal representation and other law-related services to
protect and advance Free and Open Source Software. The Law Center is
dedicated to assisting non-profit open source developers and projects.
Visit SFLC at http://www.softwarefreedom.org.


Media contact:

Jim Garrison
Public Relations Coordinator
Software Freedom Law Center
+1-212-461-1910
garrison@softwarefreedom.org

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