> > ...if you have indeed signed an nda agreement, then you will NOT be
> > able to release any code you may develop from it, and for anybody to
> > accept ANY patches from you and incorporate them into the Linux kernel
> > would destroy Linux...
>
> That depends entirely on the agreement. I have worked with several vendors
> where documentation & their source is NDA but you can write a Linux source
> from it. One good reason for this is that Linux source is very hard to use
> to clone the hardware, but the vendor docs would make hardware cloning too
> easy
AFAIK, Linus has permitted to make available binary-only modules, provided
that they use available kernel interfaces. With kind of painware as
losemodems, it is probably possible to deal with the hardware in some
module or driver supplied in object form. For the rest, users like me that
are not going to use binary only stuff, will just ignore such random set
of bits.
And if available kernel interfaces are not enough, a patch in source form
that provides the needed interfaces will do the trick.
Gérard.
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