On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 12:00:56PM +0100, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 12:51 +0200, Mohammed Gamal wrote:
> > I am still a kernel newbie, and I am still not very much aware about
> > the GPL vs. Non-GPL drivers debate. I personally think it'd be better
> > that all drivers should be GPL'd but if that's the case, what would be
> > the legal position of such vendors as ATI or NVIDIA who supply closed
> > source drivers? Would it be illegal to use them?
>
> Yeah, this is a recurrent debate, and the positions are mixed. Linus
> said that the nvidia driver isn't developed only for linux but also for
> windows, so it's not a true derivative of the kernel, so the GPL doesn't
> really apply. But not everyone (I mean core developpers) fully agrees
> IIRC.
to further expand on the above question it isn't really crystal clear
whether this (from the ATI driver) is legal..
(psuedo diff vs the kernel agp drivers)
+#ifdef STANDALONE_AGPGART
MODULE_AUTHOR("Jeff Hartmann <[email protected]>");
MODULE_PARM(agp_try_unsupported, "1i");
#ifdef MODULE_LICENSE
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL and additional rights");
+#endif
and then linking the result to their binary blob.
I assume ATI's lawyers think its legal, as it's been a year and
a half since I first brought this questionable act to their
attention.
Dave
--
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
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