Opinion on this "license"?

Gene Smith gene.smith at siemens.com
Thu Oct 12 21:56:13 UTC 2006


"This Software is Freeware. It is distributed for free. You may copy,
modify and use it for free as well as distribute it to others. You may
only distribute it as a whole, unmodified and with all trademarks and
copyright notices. You may not distribute it commercially (e.g. as a
Share-/Freeware-Distributor) without the express written permission of
Yoyodynaics, Inc. SINCE THIS SOFTWARE IS DISTRIBUTED FOR FREE,
IT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY 
KIND EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED 

WARRANTIES FOR MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR USE. ANY USE OF THE
APPLICATION EXAMPLE IS ON YOUR OWN RISK AND RESPONSIBILITY.
If you happen to find any faults in it please tell us."

This pertains to a kernel driver for a proprietary board. Could this be 
distributed with other GPL code? I think they are saying you can modify 
it for your own use but if you distribute it it must remain intact.  But 
then they say you can't distribute it commercially as Share-/Freeware. 
What does this mean? Linux and other programs can be distributed 
commercially by companies but are not called share/freeware except by 
the clueless. So what does this mean?

Possibly it would be OK to distribute this code unchanged with other GPL 
files but run patches on it during the build to incorporate any 
necessary changes in the final program.

Thanks,
Gene Smith




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