Re: [PATCH] USB: mark USB drivers as being GPL only
From: Chris Friesen
Date: Tue Feb 05 2008 - 18:35:46 EST
David Newall wrote:
That being said, a module can be written such
that it only dynamically links with the kernel. Ndiswrapper is an
example of how this can be done: None of the drivers that work under
ndiswrapper make any direct use of the kernel, not in any way, indeed a
wrapper could be written for a different operating system.
The issue is all about "derivative works" in copyright law.
Ndiswrapper is in a good position because the closed-source drivers were
originally written for another OS so it's pretty well impossible to
argue that they are derived from linux.
However, if I were to write a new GPL shim and then a new closed-source
module that uses the shim to access kernel symbols, it is entirely
possible that a court could rule that my closed-source module is a
derivative work of the linux kernel because it was written specifically
to run on linux.
On the other hand if I were to sit down and write an OS-agnostic
proprietary chunk of code, and then write a new GPL shim to use it under
linux (and maybe other shim layers for other OS's as well), I _might_ be
okay. But I would have to be prepared to prove that the proprietary
code was not derived from the Linux kernel.
Chris
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/