My bad... forgot to forward to the list. To sum up what I've tried to say below, this issue is much more about Fair Use (which, in the U.S. is a very specific legal term pertaining to use of an author's copyrighted work _without their permission_) than it is the GPL. If it can be established that Nvidia's use of certain sources and interfaces does not constitute Fair Use, then the GPL is free to reign them in. In the U.S., that requires a court's intervention.
--tim On 12/20/06, Tim Schmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 12/20/06, Lourens Veen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Legal definitions aside for a moment, I think the question is what > constitutes "use". Does nVidia "use" the kernel when they create a > binary module for it? Or are they extending and deriving from it? > Software freedom dictates that anyone can use in any way, copyleft > limits extending and deriving. To muddle the waters, Fair Use isn't > about using at all, it's an exception to the distribution prohibition > that copyright law imposes. Not so much... Copyright (and hence, copyleft) has nothing to say about use. _Distribution_ is where they both kick in. Any use - even extension and derivision - is fair game... the law only limits distribution. > It's interesting to look at Tivoisation in this light. If Tivo builds > hardware running Linux and some proprietary software on top, are they a > user or a redistributor? From Linus' point of view they are apparently > users using Linux to build a product, and therefore he opposes the > anti-Tivoisation clause in GPLv3. From the point of view of the hacker > trying to modify his Tivo box, Tivo is a redistributor, _he_ is the > user, and _he_ should have freedom to use it in any way. But he > doesn't, due to the DRM they put into the box. They are users (again - all use is fair), and distributors. Further, they adhere to the letter of the license (you can grab their changes to the kernel source). But just as Novell and Microsoft performed a sneaky end-run around the exact terms of the GPL, Tivo has as well (by heavily DRMing the machine on which their Linux runs). It's sneaky, but probably legal (at least until GPLv3) > It's smack in the middle of the open source/free software rift. Free > software has always been about consumer rights. Open source is about > software quality and a cooperative development process. These are > orthogonal goals. It's not about either. I can't emphasize that more. It's about the affinity of the GPL across an interface (admittedly a fairly complex and intimate one) and how enforceable the GPL is in this exact situation. Since we can't agree with Nvidia on the issue, a court decision is necessary. > From the point of view of open source then, binary modules are only a > problem in so far that they change the quality of the rest of the > kernel (security issues) and its cooperative development process > (dependency on the (unwilling) vendor to fix things, others can't > contribute). From the point of view of free software, binary modules > are a problem in that they infringe upon the consumer's rights. You're talking about personal justification, which doesn't matter much in court. Either way, it's the same license - the GPL - and the same copyright laws. --tim
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