On Sun, 2006-11-26 at 21:43, Todd Zullinger wrote: > NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel > services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use > of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work". > Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software > Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the linux > kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it. > > Linus Torvalds > > This is not an exception for modules, but a clarification for > user-space programs - or so says Linus in the many emails cited in > COPYING.modules in the Fedora kernel documentation: > > http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/*checkout*/rpms/kernel/devel/COPYING.modules?rev=1.5 Well, thanks to google, you can still find something closer to what he really meant back when he wrote it. Here is an excerpt from an interview circa 1998: "The reason I accept binary-only modules at all is that in many cases you have for example a device driver that is not written for Linux at all, but for example works on SCO Unix or other operating systems, and the manufacturer suddenly wakes up and notices that Linux has a larger audience than the other groups. And as a result he wants to port that driver to Linux. But because that driver was obviously not _derived_ from Linux (it had a life of its own regardless of any Linux development), I didn't feel that I had the moral right to require that it be put under the GPL, so the binary-only module interface allows those kinds of modules to exist and work with Linux." I don't see much room for doubt about his intent then or any reason to question that moral judgement. Does someone imagine that the Linux versions were the first instances of ATI's or Nvidia's drivers? If he didn't actually say that, he should have clarified the position years ago before vast amounts of work were contributed to kernel development by people who believed it. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
