-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 10 February 2003 01:36 pm, Ben Reser wrote: > On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 09:10:20AM -0500, Greg Meyer wrote: > > "Some of your hardware (insert specific's) is from a vendor that prevents > > us from providing full support in the GPL download edition of the > > Mandrake Linux Distribution. They have chosen to release their drivers > > under a proprietary license and MandrakeSoft cannot legally distribute > > them within a fully GPL compliant release. You will find that this > > hardware will not work properly with the download edition until you > > acquire these proprietary drivers from the manufacturer. As a service to > > our customers, some of these drivers are available in the Mandrake Linux > > boxed sets and as a download from the MandrakeClub" > > Are we sure that it's a violation of the GPL to distribute those > drivers? I really don't think that's the case. And somehow I don't > think the situation is that nVidia wouldn't let Mandrake ship the > drivers. I think it's more of a moral stance and an attempt to try and > force nVidia to open their drivers.
It is not a violation of the GPL, it is a violation of nVidia's license, which would allow distribution only with permission. MandrakeSoft can get permission for the boxed sets, because those are not redistributable. They can also get permission from nVidia to allow download from Club site. But to include them on the redistributable GPL set would prevent the GPL set from being redistributable. If I downloaded the GPL set and wanted to redistribute, I would have to get permission from nVidia to do so, and so would anyone else that wanted to do the same. - -- Greg -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+SA5LwDpHP6GALAARApEUAJ9stFFe1R2oO8ZHUw+CuvpGDGA7UQCfSb5D VNfVVtjx47XsNjaA3BVvlcA= =wYDU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
