Re: Is it legal for me to do that?

Kurt Garloff (garloff@kg1.ping.de)
Thu, 17 Dec 1998 23:01:39 +0100


On Thu, Dec 17, 1998 at 01:15:00PM +0100, Konrad Rosenbaum wrote:
> that's not enough! Linux is GPL'ed, that means that _all_ software which
> uses source-code-pieces from it or is linked against (parts of) it has to
> be under GPL too. (If you want to survive: don't discuss this with RMS -
> he looks much closer on GPL-paragraphs than any other :-) )

Thanks for correcting me. I overlooked the obvious!

> > Go and check with your supervisor, if they allow you to do that.
> >
> > I guess no: They want you to do your own thing.
>
> Just try to ask that for permission to write some Linux-extensions.
> Another filesystem and another executable-format (eg. an extended ELF
> would be nice). An easier to handle LILO or ..............
>
> This way it would (IMHO) have two advantages: you can profit from a
> running system which is very stable and proved. Your writings would get
> back to community and would (perhaps) get used.

That's a nice idea. However if the university wants to keep some of the work
for their own and not allow GPL, it's not possible, as you said above. And
this also implies that the supervisor must be somewhat familiar with Linux
in order to be able to jugde and help you with what you are doing ...

As somebody else pointed out: Linux is a very very good real life system.
That's what Linux designed it for and that's why so many people use it. If
you are looking for interesting features, you might better look at other
systems, such as Minix, Plan9, and other University developed things. (OS
might be a little bit too much for some of these projects. Don't ask me, I'm
not familiar with those systems.) Also xxxBSD and Solaris have some nice
features.

-- 
Kurt Garloff <K.Garloff@ping.de>  (Dortmund, FRG)
PGP key on http://student.physik.uni-dortmund.de/homepages/garloff

There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux development. I.e. the quality is too high and the speed is too high, in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone else has already done it and is just about to release his patch to Linus soon... [From a posting of Tigran Aivazian to linux-kernel, XXXX = disk stat]

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