On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 12:00:56PM +0100, Xavier Bestel wrote: > On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 12:51 +0200, Mohammed Gamal wrote: > > I am still a kernel newbie, and I am still not very much aware about > > the GPL vs. Non-GPL drivers debate. I personally think it'd be better > > that all drivers should be GPL'd but if that's the case, what would be > > the legal position of such vendors as ATI or NVIDIA who supply closed > > source drivers? Would it be illegal to use them? > > Yeah, this is a recurrent debate, and the positions are mixed. Linus > said that the nvidia driver isn't developed only for linux but also for > windows, so it's not a true derivative of the kernel, so the GPL doesn't > really apply. But not everyone (I mean core developpers) fully agrees > IIRC.
to further expand on the above question it isn't really crystal clear whether this (from the ATI driver) is legal.. (psuedo diff vs the kernel agp drivers) +#ifdef STANDALONE_AGPGART MODULE_AUTHOR("Jeff Hartmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>"); MODULE_PARM(agp_try_unsupported, "1i"); #ifdef MODULE_LICENSE MODULE_LICENSE("GPL and additional rights"); +#endif and then linking the result to their binary blob. I assume ATI's lawyers think its legal, as it's been a year and a half since I first brought this questionable act to their attention. Dave -- http://www.codemonkey.org.uk - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/