Re: Please open sysfs symbols to proprietary modules

From: Jonathan A. George
Date: Wed Feb 02 2005 - 23:13:10 EST


As an observation:

The Linux kernel appears to contain the GPL copyright notice. This appears to explicitly releases the right to alter anything in a copy written work which shares that copyright notice. Therefore, all exported symbols would appear to carry equal weight; thus making the GPL_ prefix a notation of dubious value. Furthermore, it seems as if that the copyright might allow changing the GPL_ prefix notation to anything including BSD_HOOK_FOR_PORTING_DRIVERS_TO_THE_LINUX_KERNEL_ instead.

It would seem just as surprising if the U.S. courts were to stop considering history of enforcement in copyright law as it would if they were to start considering in cases of patent law.

(I would love to see the opinion of an IP lawyer who has conclusively tested these aspects of copyright law in court.)

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A paranoid approach it to develop your driver targeted at FreeBSD, and then develop a glue layer abstraction for porting to other OS's. Then you simply might GPL your glue layer code as a module using any symbols you want for your GPL copy written code per the observations earlier in this email.

In this way you will have created a work with no intrinsic dependencies on the Linux kernel which avoids presenting your work as an obvious target for those who prefer to spend their time looking for targets. :-)

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P.S. Sorry about breaking mailer threading. :-(
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