----- Original Message ----- From: "Francois-Xavier KOWALSKI" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "David Grothe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Matthew Gierlach" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 3:20 AM Subject: Re: [Linux-streams] Re: Performance enhanced LiS
> > > This protection has been explicitly declared as non-applicable by L. > Torvalds: "Using function pointers won't save you from the GPL". Exact > quote below. > > > > > The _only_ thing that allows for non-GPL modules is copyright law, and > > in particular the "derived work" issue. A vendor who distributes non-GPL > > modules is _not_ protected by the module interface per se, and should > > feel very confident that they can show in a court of law that the code > > is not derived. > > > > The module interface has NEVER been documented or meant to be a GPL > > barrier. The COPYING clearly states that the system call layer is such a > > barrier, so if you do your work in user land you're not in any way > > beholden to the GPL. The module interfaces are not system calls: there > > are system calls used to _install_ them, but the actual interfaces are > > not. > > > > The original binary-only modules were for things that were pre-existing > > works of code, ie drivers and filesystems ported from other operating > > systems, which thus could clearly be argued to not be derived works, and > > the original limited export table also acted somewhat as a barrier to > > show a level of distance. > > I believe this speaks to almost 100% of STREAMS drivers/modules in Linux. Is anybody not porting 'works of code' from other systems and using LiS? If I were writing drivers from scratch I'd probably force myself to use the native Linux mechanisms, such as they are, rather than force the STREAMS architecture (which is wonderful imho) onto Linux. Our STREAMS drivers/modules have a long history and can be clearly shown to be derived works (ports) from older Unix drivers and we fully expect they are protected under the same copyrights as in those works. Nonetheless David's goal, that of allowing STREAMS drivers/modules to be ported without adding any "ifdef LINUX" constructs, must strengthen that claim. As to the original thread, of where to keep Linux'isms, it's always good coding practice to isolate the operating system/environment components as much as possible to one source such as linux-mdep.[ch]. A portable Linux environment is another laudable goal, I for one can think of at least one other operating system family that desperately needs it - Windows NT and successors ... we just haven't had the time or customer requirement to force us to do the port. Ragnar _______________________________________________ Linux-streams mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://gsyc.escet.urjc.es/mailman/listinfo/linux-streams
