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 agree with Linus on these points. The kernel should not be enforcing
these issues. Leave the lawyers to do that bit. If companies want to
play in the "Grey Area", then it is at their own risk. Binary drivers
are already difficult and expensive for the companies because they have
to keep updating them as we change the kernel versions. If they do open
source drivers, we update them for them as we change the kernel
versions, so it works out cheaper for the companies involved.
The open source community tends to be able to reverse engineer all
drivers eventually anyway in order to ensure compatibility with all
kernel versions and also ensure that the code is well reviewed and
therefore contains fewer security loopholes, e.g. Atheros Wireless open
source HAL. This also tends to make it rather pointless for companies to
do binary drivers, because all it does is delay the open source version
of the driver and increase the security risk to users. One other example
I have, is that I reverse engineered a sound card driver so that we had
an open source driver for it. Once I had manually documented the sound
card, so we had details of all the registers and how to use them, the
manufacturer finally sent the datasheet to me! A bit late really, but it
certainly did encourage the manufacturer to pass datasheets to
developers. I now have a large array of datasheets from this
manufacturer that save me having to reverse engineer other sound cards
in their range.
Making binary drivers is therefore not a viable way to protect IP. We
are slowly removing the excuses that companies can hide behind as
reasons for not releasing datasheets to open source driver developers.
James
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