From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263769AbTLJRRb (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 12:17:31 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263667AbTLJRPi (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 12:15:38 -0500 Received: from sj-iport-1-in.cisco.com ([171.71.176.70]:10680 "EHLO sj-iport-1.cisco.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263811AbTLJRPU (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 12:15:20 -0500 Reply-To: From: "Hua Zhong" To: "'Linus Torvalds'" , "'Andre Hedrick'" Cc: "'Arjan van de Ven'" , , "'Kendall Bennett'" , Subject: RE: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause? Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 09:15:15 -0800 Organization: Cisco Systems Message-ID: <00af01c3bf41$2db12770$d43147ab@amer.cisco.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4024 In-Reply-To: Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4927.1200 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > The inlines have nothing to do with _anything_. > > Trust me, a federal judge couldn't care less about some very esoteric > technical detail. I don't know who brought up inline > functions, but they aren't what would force the GPL. Great! > What has meaning for "derived work" is whether it stands on its own or > not, and how tightly integrated it is. If something works > with just one particular version of the kernel - or depends on things like > whether the kernel was compiled with certain options etc - then it pretty > clearly is very tightly integrated. Many userspace programs fall into this category too. For example they depend on /proc to be there. They probably only work with a certain version of the kernel because the next version changed some format in /proc. Is /proc a stable API/ABI? Yes? No? > Don't think that copyright would depend on any technicalities. > > Linus > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe > linux-kernel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ >