Hi,
> Just to be sure that I got the point...
>
> Letīs say, a company plans to build a stand alone device that internally
> uses Linux as operating system. In order to keep size small and so on
> DOCs are used to load the operating system. As far as I understood now
> the DOC driver has to be included in the kernel image which is on the
> DOC. In order to mount the root device and so on which actually is the
> DOC, the driver is needed.
Yup. The DOC driver from M-Systems needs to be statically linked into the
kernel. The GPL requires that all sources are to be available for before
and after GPL'd code has been altered.
You don't have the sources for the M-Systems driver so the kernel with the
statically linked DOC driver cannot be distributed without violating GPL.
Now creating and using such a kernel is just fine for your own personal
use. GPL kicks in when you want to distribute the thing.
So there is no problem distributiong the kernel sources and a patch and
have someone compile their own kernel.
> So, what about the concequences for this company when distributing
> (selling) this device in the described setup? I doubt that, if it is
> correct what you wrote, it wonīt be ok. Right or wrong?
There are three ways to eliminate the GPL problem with the M-Systems
driver:
- Boot the kernel and ramdisk from a FAT16 patition from DOC with
syslinux. You don't need DOC support in the kernel unless you need to
access the DOC after averything is booted.
- Compile the M-systems driver as a module. You can distribute binary only
kernel modules without violating GPL. Apparently it's been done but I
haven't had any luck in doing it myself.
- Don't use DOC but use Compact Flash or IDE flash.
I don't know about the consequences. If your customer asks you have to be
able to produce all the sources for the kernel including the DOC sources
you don't have. So your customer could sue you...
TTYL,
Adi
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