Re: GPL only modules [was Re: [GIT PATCH] more Driver core patches for 2.6.19]

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Well said, and I agree with ALL of your statements contained in this post. About damn time this was addressed.

Jeff

Linus Torvalds wrote:

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006, Greg KH wrote:
Numerous kernel developers feel that loading non-GPL drivers into the
kernel violates the license of the kernel and their copyright.  Because
of this, a one year notice for everyone to address any non-GPL
compatible modules has been set.

Btw, I really think this is shortsighted.

It will only result in _exactly_ the crap we were just trying to avoid, namely stupid "shell game" drivers that don't actually help anything at all, and move code into user space instead.

What was the point again?

Was the point to alienate people by showing how we're less about the technology than about licenses?

Was the point to show that we think we can extend our reach past derived work boundaries by just saying so? The silly thing is, the people who tend to push most for this are the exact SAME people who say that the RIAA etc should not be able to tell people what to do with the music copyrights that they own, and that the DMCA is bad because it puts technical limits over the rights expressly granted by copyright law.

Doesn't anybody else see that as being hypocritical?

So it's ok when we do it, but bad when other people do it? Somehow I'm not surprised, but I still think it's sad how you guys are showing a marked two-facedness about this.

The fact is, the reason I don't think we should force the issue is very simple: copyright law is simply _better_off_ when you honor the admittedly gray issue of "derived work". It's gray. It's not black-and-white. But being gray is _good_. Putting artificial black-and-white technical counter-measures is actually bad. It's bad when the RIAA does it, it's bad when anybody else does it.

If a module arguably isn't a derived work, we simply shouldn't try to say that its authors have to conform to our worldview.

We should make decisions on TECHNICAL MERIT. And this one is clearly being pushed on anything but.

I happen to believe that there shouldn't be technical measures that keep me from watching my DVD or listening to my music on whatever device I damn well please. Fair use, man. But it should go the other way too: we should not try to assert _our_ copyright rules on other peoples code that wasn't derived from ours, or assert _our_ technical measures that keep people from combining things their way.

If people take our code, they'd better behave according to our rules. But we shouldn't have to behave according to the RIAA rules just because we _listen_ to their music. Similarly, nobody should be forced to behave according to our rules just because they _use_ our system. There's a big difference between "copy" and "use". It's exatcly the same issue whether it's music or code. You can't re-distribute other peoples music (becuase it's _their_ copyright), but they shouldn't put limits on how you personally _use_ it (because it's _your_ life).

Same goes for code. Copyright is about _distribution_, not about use. We shouldn't limit how people use the code.

Oh, well. I realize nobody is likely going to listen to me, and everybody has their opinion set in stone. That said, I'm going to suggest that you people talk to your COMPANY LAWYERS on this, and I'm personally not going to merge that particular code unless you can convince the people you work for to merge it first.

In other words, you guys know my stance. I'll not fight the combined opinion of other kernel developers, but I sure as hell won't be the first to merge this, and I sure as hell won't have _my_ tree be the one that causes this to happen.

So go get it merged in the Ubuntu, (Open)SuSE and RHEL and Fedora trees first. This is not something where we use my tree as a way to get it to other trees. This is something where the push had better come from the other direction.

Because I think it's stupid. So use somebody else than me to push your political agendas, please.

		Linus
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