On Wed, Mar 08, 2000 at 01:26:43AM +1100, Darren Reed wrote:
> Sorry to disturb you folks, but someone has pointed out to me
> that there are some files (e.g. linux/drivers/net/bsd_comp.c)
> which are licensed under the BSD license and not the GPL.
> Whilst the Linux kernel itself is `meant' to be GPL'd, there
> would appear to be some doubt about whether the GPL would allow
> such files to be included (no sub-licensing, etc). Has anyone
> received legal advice about whether those files do in fact
> represent a further restriction that would conflict with the
> GPL ? If so, can they still be (re)distributed with Linux ?
> Afterall, it is not appropriate to just remove the offending
> lines...
I may be wrong on this but I believe that is why the BSD
compression routines can only be built as loadable modules. They
can not be configured and compiled hard-linked into the kernel.
That was suppose to be deemed sufficient to satisfy the requirements
of the GPL. I don't believe there is any problem with distributing
non-GPL files with GPL files in agregates, you just can't compile and
link them into one binary.
> Darren
> p.s. This is just to settle an argument elsewhere about this, so
> I thought I'd ask the "experts"...
Mike
-- Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | mhw@WittsEnd.com (The Mad Wizard) | (770) 331-2437 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/ NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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