From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932598AbWBED6k (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Feb 2006 22:58:40 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932599AbWBED6k (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Feb 2006 22:58:40 -0500 Received: from CPE-24-31-249-53.kc.res.rr.com ([24.31.249.53]:13264 "EHLO tsurukikun.utopios.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932598AbWBED6k (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Feb 2006 22:58:40 -0500 From: Luke-Jr To: "Christopher Friesen" Subject: Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2006 03:58:47 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.9 Cc: Lee Revell , Ian Kester-Haney , linux-kernel References: <1138906199.15691.54.camel@mindpipe> <43E25976.6090109@nortel.com> In-Reply-To: <43E25976.6090109@nortel.com> Public-GPG-Key: 0xD53E9583 Public-GPG-Key-URI: http://dashjr.org/~luke-jr/myself/Luke-Jr.pgp IM-Address: luke-jr@jabber.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200602050358.49454.luke@dashjr.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thursday 02 February 2006 19:11, Christopher Friesen wrote: > Lee Revell wrote: > > What nvidia is doing is already illegal under the GPLv2. > > I don't think that's been legally proven. > > The question is whether it is a derivative work. The LGPL deals with only derivative works. The GPL also deals with mere *linking*. If glibc were GPL'd, it would be illegal to make an OS based on it with a single C program incompatible with the GPL. > If they ship the binary blob as well as code that interfaces the binary > blob with the kernel, and the end-user compiles the code together and > loads it into the kernel, does that necessarily violate the GPL? The 'code that interfaces the binary blob with the kernel' would then be illegal, because the code cannot be both GPL and proprietary. If the code is GPL and acceptable for kernel-linking, then under the terms of the GPL, the code cannot link to a GPL-incompatible binary blob.