Re: [future of drivers?] a proposal for binary drivers.

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Dave Neuer wrote:
A "work based on one or more preexisting works [in] any other form in
which a work may be recast, transformed or adapted" sure sounds like
it fits someone compiling software with my symbols in it to me.
Elaboration sure sounds like it fits program code calling my program
code to me.


No, because the individual names of functions are not covered by the copyright, only the body as a whole ( or significant part ). That's why the first person to write hello.c can't sue everyone who uses printf().

You _might_ be able to
argue that they use your headers to compile their driver, so that
violates your copyright, but they are free to develop their own
compatible headers to produce compatible binaries which are in no way
derived from the Linux kernel.  See Wine's win32 compatible headers and
libraries for examples of this.

I'm sorry, I don't think that analysis is correct for software, see
for example: http://community.linux.com/article.pl?sid=02/11/13/117247&tid=87&tid=41&tid=12&tid=42,
and Linus' previous explanations as I pointed out in my reply to
Xavier.


The key question is does work A contain substantial parts of work B? In the case of a source library that is compiled and linked into an executable, then you can argue that the executable image is a work substantially derived from the library. In the case of linking to a shared object however, the binary does not actually contain any of the material from the library, so it is not a derived work.

This is why gcc is not infringing on Microsoft's copyrights whenever they create a win32 executable image that links to windows' dlls and this is why ndiswan and captive NTFS are not infringing on MS's copyrights.

In the case of wine, it is not infringing on Microsoft's copyright because they wrote their own win32 api headers. They contain the same function names, but that does not make them a derived work.

In the case of ATI's drivers at least, they distribute their own object files which they hold the copyright to, and are not derived from the linux kernel in any way, and the user must link them with the correct objects of kernel code to create the actual loadable module. At best if you could show that the final module contains substantial code from the kernel you might argue that it is a derived work, but since ATI only distributes their own object code, there's no way you can claim they are infringing on your copyright.


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