Les Mikesell wrote:
> 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.
He did clarify his position years ago in my reading of the emails
included in COPYING.modules and some other cursory googling. More
importantly, any company that expends vast amounts of effort on
something would be foolish not to ensure that they had a firm
understanding of the legalities surrounding their actions. They'd be
doing wrong by their shareholders at the very least if they didn't.
I'm not here to argue that any specific module is or isn't in
violation of the GPL -- I have neither the knowledge nor the standing
to do so. But it does seem clear to me that there are quite a lot of
folks (many kernel hackers among them) who feel that binary drivers
violate the GPL (their copyrighted work in the case of folks like Alan
or Dave J.). And that is the point I took from Alan's response to the
original post, that is is not really Ubuntu's place to be reaching out
to "embarrassed SuSE devs" while they themselves are embracing binary
drivers that are a clearly contentious issue among the developers to
whom they are reaching out.
--
Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
======================================================================
There are no facts, only interpretations.
-- Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
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