Re: GPL Violation of 'sveasoft' with GPL Linux Kernel/Busybox +code

From: David Woodhouse
Date: Mon Nov 15 2004 - 09:51:50 EST


On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 22:14 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Mer, 2004-11-10 at 23:09, Kyle Moffett wrote:
> > GPL. I believe that a single binary firmware image is a single "work"
> > according to the definition provided in the GPL, and therefore by
> > distributing their code as a part of it, they have implicitly applied
>
> The firmware image is a file system so I'd suspect its "mere
> aggregation" just like say a CD of GPL and BSD software, or your root
> file system...

That's possibly true of any userspace applications they've added.

However, if you were arguing that the presence of the GPL'd kernel and
the non-GPL'd modules was OK because it's "mere aggregation", that would
be a different and far less supportable position -- since the beast
cannot even come close to serving its purpose or being at all useful if
you take away either the kernel, or the modules in question.
Distributing a work which depends on both the kernel and those network
driver modules is a clear violation of the GPL. But that's something
that Cisco themselves are doing.

--
dwmw2

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