Re: Is Sony violating Linux GPL?

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>]

On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 08:57 -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 14:22 +0100, Salvador Fandino wrote:
> > Then I started mailing Vaio technical support (support@vaio-link.com),
> > asking for the drivers source code, and after several mails they just
> > refused to give me the drivers source code because "These drivers are
> > directly delivered to us by the manufacturers of the hardware and
> > modified by us and therefore we are not obliged to supply any source
> > code for these drivers".
> > 
> > I am not an expert on Linux internals but I doubt a driver for this kind
> > of device could be developed independently enough of the kernel to not
> > be considered a derived work, so is Sony violating the Linux license?
> 
> They are correct. The deal with modules is they don't have to GPL them.

there is no such agreement or deal. There is no exception to the GPL in
this regard at all (but yes that's a semi common misconception/excuse
used by binary driver people)

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