PF_CAN

Hi Uwe,

Volkswagen is a Car Manufacturer - not a software company. So it was quite hard for Urs and me
push our work to the public. When we had been able to license our work under GPL end of 2005
this was archived by the fact, that we had a government supported project
(http://www.network-on-wheels.de) together with BMW and Daimler, where we had been able to
share our LLCF/socketcan source. From this point (when the source was available for the
competitor) we had a good position to push our code to GPL in 2005 ;-) AFAIK the GPL forces
your own patents to be used for free, when you put your code under GPL (which we did). And
anyway there is no patent. Only a registration/publication which might be looked at in 7 years
- i think you know about the German patent office workflows. So regarding that software
patents in Germany are not granted and it turned out to be a good thing for Volkswagen to
license our work under GPL, there is no need nor any effort to be spent on this (not even
existing) patent. We've learned that now. Btw. Microsoft had 'adopted' our concept in their
latest "Windows Mobile for Automotive" with their 'WinsockAPI' - so our publication was worth
the work.

Finally Urs and me started end of 2002 with our first ideas. We used our software for our
vehicle prototypes (e.g. in the VW Up! instrument cluster on IAA2007). And even if Urs and me
are working on PF_CAN 50/50 in our spare time now (we do not have git behind the VW firewall)
Volkswagen IS that generous that we can work on OSS even if there is no new benefit for our
current projects. And i'm personally very proud of many positive feedback to us and Volkswagen
to support OSS.

Best regards,
Oliver