Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause?

[Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>]

Rob,

> The fact you personally were off in a corner talking about little green men
> from mars is remarkably irrelevant to what I wrote to Hua Zhong (who I'm
> fairly certain is not you.  His english is better.)

Gee, I love the insults.  I seriously doubt you have ever paid a lawyer
to even have the knowledge to allow you to pump out the bovine piles you
are spraying in the air.

Correct, I am not a lawyer, and you admit you are not one.

I have paid lawyers for advice and some damn good ones.

Can you say the same?

Cheers,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Rob Landley wrote:

> On Thursday 11 December 2003 15:20, Andre Hedrick wrote:
> > Rob,
> >
> > Help me out?  Who is cloning what ?
> >
> > I am talking about original works, to talking about talking somebody's
> > stuff out of the kernel, hacking it up and distributing the work as an
> > original (that is clearly a derived work).
> >
> > So your arguement is bogus, try again.
> 
> If you'd read the message, you might have noticed that I was talking about why 
> web browser plugins may be considered to be different from kernel modules.
> 
> The fact you personally were off in a corner talking about little green men 
> from mars is remarkably irrelevant to what I wrote to Hua Zhong (who I'm 
> fairly certain is not you.  His english is better.)
> 
> I have no intention of "trying again" because I wasn't talking to you in the 
> first place.  (I don't find what you have to say on IP issues particularly 
> interesting, and don't read the ones that aren't cc'd to me...)  Neither of 
> us are lawyers.  The difference is that I know it.
> 
> Rob
> 
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Andre Hedrick
> > LAD Storage Consulting Group
> >
> > On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Rob Landley wrote:
> > > On Thursday 11 December 2003 02:11, Hua Zhong wrote:
> > > > > For one thing, the plugin was made by someone without access
> > > > > to Netscape or IE's source code, using a documented interface
> > > > > that contained sufficient information to do the job without access
> > > > > to that source code.
> > > > >
> > > > > Yes, it matters.
> > > >
> > > > _What_ matters?
> > > >
> > > > Open source? (if you write a plugin for an opensource
> > > > kernel/application, you are not plugin anymore and you are derived
> > > > work.) I am sure you don't mean it.
> > > >
> > > > Documented interface? Hey, there are sources which are the best
> > > > documentation. :-)
> > >
> > > If you write software by referring to documentation, the barrier for it
> > > being a derivative work is higher than if you write it by looking at
> > > another implementation.
> > >
> > > > Seriously, even if I accept that there is never an intent to support a
> > > > stable ABI for kernel modules, some vendor can easily claim that "we
> > > > support a stable ABI, so write kernel modules for the kernel we
> > > > distribute".
> > > >
> > > > Anything can prevent that? I cannot see GPL disallow it.
> > > >
> > > > So OK, Linus and other kernel developers never intended to provide a
> > > > stable ABI, but someone else could. The original author's intent is
> > > > never relevant anymore. This is the goodness of opensource, isn't it?
> > >
> > > Once upon a time, Compaq did a clean-room clone of IBM's BIOS.  Group 1
> > > studied the original bios and wrote up a spec, and group 2 wrote a new
> > > bios from that spec, and group 1 never spoke to group 2, and all of this
> > > was extensively documented so that when IBM sued them they proved in
> > > court that their BIOS wasn't derived from IBM's.  (Of course compaq used
> > > vigin programmers fresh out of college who'd never seen a PC before,
> > > which was a lot easier to do in 1983...)
> > >
> > > I didn't make this up.  This was a really big deal 20 years ago.  It
> > > happened, and it mattered, and people cared that they created a fresh
> > > implementation without seeing the original code, entirely from a written
> > > specification that was not a derivative work of the first implementation,
> > > so no matter how similar the second implementation was (hand-coded
> > > assembly performing the same functions on the same processor in the same
> > > amount of space), it could not be considered a derivative work.
> > >
> > > This was a strong enough defense to beat IBM's lawyers, who were trying
> > > to claim that Compaq's new BIOS WAS a derivative work...
> > >
> > > Rob
> 
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