On Thursday 2009 January 29 21:14:39 Ron Johnson wrote: >On 01/29/2009 05:27 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: >[snip] > >> Still, that's much easier than building proprietary or dual licensed work >> on top of GPL software. The FSF's interpretation is basically that >> anytime GPL licensed code is integral to the functioning of the larger >> work (dynamic linking, static linking, IPC, *anytime*) the larger work >> must be licensed under the GPL, effectively forbidding proprietary or dual >> licensed works from being built on it. > >Note that Linus doesn't agree with that idea, which is why, for >example, the nvidia driver is allowed. Not quite. Linus does not completely buy in to the FSF's interpretation (and neither does at least one lawyer) -- that much is true. However, the reason the NVidia is driver is allowed is that virtually no one distributes a combination of GPL source and proprietary source. Instead, a GPL'd "shim" is compiled against the kernel and that loads the proprietary code at runtime. The running image of a tainted kernel is generally assumed to be non-distributable, but no one wants to distribute it in the first place. It's old, but http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html talks about this issue about half-way down. (The entire thing is a good read.) This is more recent: [pdf] http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/gregkh/lkm_position_statement/lkm_pos_statement.pdf -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/
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