Re: RFS: xnbd
Hi Arno,
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 11:45:20AM +0100, Arno Töll wrote:
> Hi Wouter,
>
> On 21.02.2011 11:34, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > If true, that would be a breach of copyright. NBD is GPL2 *only*, and
> > the number of people who have contributed to NBD in the past is too
> > numerous to change this anymore (if I had the motivation to do so, which
> > I don't).
>
> I contacted the upstream author already and he is willing to fix this
> confusion by changing the license agreement to a clear GPL-2 statement.
> He said, he uses NBD *headers* only. IANAL but as of my understanding
> this makes xNBD a derivate work.
Oh, that's fine then.
The headers you're talking about are presumably <linux/nbd.h>, which are
provided by the kernel. The kernel people have stated on multiple
occasions that writing software which uses public and published
interfaces (as this is doing) is not deriving from the kernel, so
there's no problem in that case.
However, if he's talking about a different set of headers, I'm not sure
then.
> However I suggested him to contact debian-legal for this particular use
> case. I don't think he was aware GPL-2+ is different than GPL-2, so this
> was not an intentional infringement.
Yeah, that's what I was assuming.
> > Please talk to your upstream to get them to clarify this; and while
> > you're at it, might want to let them know that I'm always interested in
> > taking useful patches for vanilla nbd :-)
>
> I already did for your first concern. When writing him the next time, I
> will mention your second as well. :-)
Great :-)
--
The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters
works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is
trying to fool the system.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html
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