[linuxsh-dev] DC Support on the linuxsh CVS.

[NIIBE Y. <gn...@m1...>]

Rene Malmgren wrote:
 > Hi I have discoverd someting strange, and was wandering if you could
 > help me shead a light on the subject. Acording to the Changelog found i
 > the CVS kernel (at http://www.linuxsh.com) You have added the following
 > files on the 26/12-00

Wow, you got a pretty domainname!

The files are not commited to the CVS repository (yet).  Sorry for
your inconvenience, but we need to avoid troubles and confusion, at
the beginning.  Please wait a week or two to get them from CVS.  If
you need, I could send the patches in private..

Let me explain the current state.  The work of DC port has been done
around August, it took more time to find better way to include the
code, than I expected.  Still not solved.

The files maple.c and maple.h are almost verbatim copy of the files by
Marcus Comstedt <ma...@id...>, we got it from his web site, and
try to include them into Linux.  Because there's no copyright notice
in the original code nor the license or conditions to distribute the
code, I've asked him about our inclusion of the code (on Dec 26th) ,
got no response yet.

Other files (keyboard driver, frame buffer driver and such) are
basically written by Takeshi Yaegashi.  Before distributing the code,
we've decided to assign the copyright of the files to somewhere, in
order to arrange better cooperation among SEGA and others.  I've asked
FSF at first, but you know, the possible risk is unclear, so we got no
agreement yet.  I'm still negotiating, to find other site.

With the assignment (and the attribution towards Free Software), I'd
like to state our position clearly, as clearly as possible, to avoid
unneeded troubles.  Our position is _NOT_ against SEGA _NOR_ against
video game industry.  We have _NO_ intention to destroy SEGA's
business with the code.  Our purpose is to enlarge the usefulness of
GNU/Linux environment, or the new (GNU!?)  style of development of
Free Software as a whole.  You see, Dreamcast is very good platform to
do that, ten years ago, the platform for Free Software was the
workstation, then PC and Linux came, Dreamcast would be the next.

Actually, it seems that there're people who (try to) support the
development of GNU/Linux on Dreamcast within/around SEGA.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, I couldn't know), SEGA's business on
Dreamcast seems to be not so good nowadays, so to say.  I'm afraid
that things will get worse if they will find the development of
Dreamcast Linux is not in cooperation and uncontrollable.

How conservative I am, I know,

Perhaps, we may get the technical information officially, if SEGA find
our work is useful.
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