On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 10:37, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> Unless you have Linus's blessing. > > The whole issue of binary-only modules in the kernel is actually a > violation of its license, IIRC. Still they exist. This is incorrect. Thus spake Linus: "Well, it really boils down to the equivalent of "_all_ derived modules have to be GPL'd". An external module doesn't really change the GPL in that respect. There are (mainly historical) examples of UNIX device drivers and some UNIX filesystems that were pre-existing pieces of work, and which had fairly well-defined and clear interfaces and that I personally could not really consider any kind of "derived work" at all, and that were thus acceptable. The clearest example of this is probably the AFS (the Andrew Filesystem), but there have been various device drivers ported from SCO too." http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/licensing.txt Read the entire thing if you want the gory details, but it boils down to this: unless you have a piece of code which is clearly seperate and independent from the kernel, one that you has versions for multiple OS and/or predates the Linux kernel (CKPTs FW-1 or the NVIDIA drivers, for recent examples) you're clearly violating the license with binary only modules in the eyes of Linus. People don't usually need to get sued, thus we rarely hear of violators. A polite email is probably usually enough to get someone to comply. There is at least one publicly known such letter sent to the MOSIX team and although the MOSIX people claim that they didn't have to comply (IANAL so I don't understand the reasoning) they still released the kernel code udner the GPL of their own will, so regardless of 'why', the end result was that it worked. In short - if you or your company is seriously thinking of releasing binary only Linux kernel modules, you are highly recommended to: a. Just don't. You are condeming your customer to a world of pain. b. If you must, go see a good lawyer first. <plug type="shameless"> The pro bono legal counsler of Hamakor, Adv. Haim Ravia, is a good choice. He translated the GPL to Hebrew and he actually uses Linux. :-) </plug> Cheers, Gilad. -- Gilad Ben-Yossef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://benyossef.com Proof that even spammers have a sense of humor: "Received: from unknown (HELO MARKETING) (x.x.x.x) by fiasco.org.il" ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
