T. Lodewick schrieb:
> Siegbert Baude schrieb:

>> Please, stop spreading FUD. The judgments were about urging the
>> manufacturer (network routers using iptables, IIRC)to give their
>> modified GPL code to the public, which they held closed before. Nowhere
>> are there 3rd party binaries involved.

> as I have written already here in the thread, I don't have the (printed)
> papers anymore: it was an article in the paper "c't" from "heise" in the
> year 2004. I don't have an archiv of the old ones, so I can't tell you
> the exact number.

I will check at home, I have the c't archives on CD (nice service, just
spend the few extra Euros for your abonnement). But I'm quite sure, what
the content of the German judgments were, i.e. the need to publish
modified code, which is just not our problem here.

>>> so if they do, there should no
>>> legal way to offer them [kernel + driver] together. and it mid not your
>>> view that offering a distro [with kernel] in one folder of a server and
>>> closed-source-drivers in another folder is the same - but for the courts
>>> it is.)

>> So the kernel folks can tell what to host on your servers? Brave new GPL
>> world. Can you please cite the court, which gave this judgment?

> as this is the base for holding copyrights and acting against offence
> against it you don't realy say that I need to post a link to somewhere,
> don't you ?

The base for getting rid of unwanted software on somebody else's server
is a copyright violation. This violation has to be judged by a court. So
as long as there is no judgment, there is no violation, there is no
urged removing of software. You however claimed that it is a _court's_
view that distributing proprietary modules is illegal. Without citing a
 court's judgment this ist just untrue. Please stop this in the future.

>>> not every developer that is involved in the kernel, the modules etc.
>>> think about that way. there are a lot of discussions on the mailinglist
>>> about that topic. while some developers accept that there are
>>> closed-source-drivers, there are others that don't.

>> So you say yourself that the situation is not clear.

> the situation is mutch clear then some people like. but in fact not all
> holder of copyrights act gainst offence.

So please make the situation clear for me, too, and dispute my arguments
from Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Until then, may we agree to
disagree?

>>> "same server = distro":
>>> the view of the courts ( in a realy short way ! ): if you offer access
>>> to a product A with licennce LIC_A and you offer also access to a
>>> product B that can only run on top of product A but hits the licence
>>> LIC_A you are violaiting the LIC_A. so it is the right of the holder of
>>> licence LIC_A that you don't offer access to both products A and B.

>> Please again, give some links or infos about which court said this. 

> again, this is the base for holding copyright. if you offer access to a
> program I've written ( so I have the copytights and I choose the licence
> of the program ) and you also offer access to another program that used
> something from my program but hits my licence I have two choises:
> 
> 1. asking you to stop the access to that other program
> 2. don't give you permisson to distribute my owen software anymore.
> 
> thats real basic, and you can read about that evey time on any
> IT-relaited news-site.

The first point is "product B that can only run on top of product A",
which is not the case for Nvidia drivers (see
http://fbsd-nvdriver.sourceforge.net/), the second is "violating the
license", which is just a claim by some kernel folks, but not based on
court facts. Until now there is nothing which makes this "basic
copyright facts" apply to removing drivers from servers. Maybe you
should broaden your sources of information to some non-geek-IT-related
news sites, to get rid of hardliners dominating the discussion.

>> And just for your info, the binaries are not only to run on top of Linux
>> kernel's GPL license, but also e.g. on top of BSD licensed FreeBSD
>> kernel. So the first assumption is already wrong.

> ok. you think also that even if you can do that you also have permission
> to do that ? or do I missunderstand you here ?

Exactly, because then this is a clear indication that the driver is no
"derived work".

> I have to say I don't know BSD-licence axactly - but in a lot of
> discussions in forums ( mainly at the ones at www.heise.de ) about GPL
> versus BSD I've read that a source code released under GPL can't be also
> compatible to BSD as BSD gives permissions that GPL doesn't. but correct
> me if I'm wrong here.

Search for just my name in this forum and you can find my opinion to GPL
vs. BSD. For our case it is just important, if drivers are "derived
work" and therefore violate GPL. I doubt this, to be honest.

Ciao
Siegbert
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