On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 06:44:27PM -0500, Pavel Roskin wrote: > On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 00:57 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 04:22:45PM -0500, Pavel Roskin wrote: > > > Hello! > > > > > > It have come to my attention that a patch has been committed to the > > > kernel with the explicit purpose of tainting ndiswrapper - the kernel > > > module allowing Windows NDIS drivers for Ethernet and Wireless cards to > > > be used by the kernel. > > >... > > > Just to reiterate some points from the old discussion: > > >... > > > - no copyright violation is involved, as Windows drivers are not derived > > > from Linux sources > > >... > > > > It is interesting that someone posting with an @gnu.org address claims > > that dynamic linking of not GPLv2 compatible code into GPLv2 code was > > not a copyright violation. > > No, I'm representing myself only. I don't think you represent all > kernel developers when posting from the kernel.org address.
I'm not using my @kernel.org address except for kernel issues and I'm not using a company address in linux-kernel discussions. Mailing lists of a project or a company are something completely different from using a project or company address outside of the project. > I'm actually surprised that you are raising this issue. If the > motivation to ban ndiswrapper is based on the copyright law, doesn't it > meant that we have DRM in the kernel now? Is Linux going to enforce > copyright laws across the world? > > > Is it an official statement of the FSF that such linking is considered > > legal? > > Absolutely not. > > > (RMS added to Cc) > > I, for one, would welcome an informed position of the FSF. It may have > interesting implications for Wine, ReactOS, mplayer, qemu, Java and many > other programs loading non-free compiled code at the run time. Wine is licenced under the terms of the LGPL. ReactOS is licenced under the terms of the GPL with a licence exception for runtime linking of non-free modules. QEMU is licenced under the terms of the GPL with a licence exception for runtime linking with libqemu.a. GNU classpath (and libgcj) are licenced under the terms of the GPL with a licence exception for runtime linking with it. As you can see, all of the above explicitely address this issue. The only program from your list that has a fishy licencing is mplayer. > Regards, > Pavel Roskin cu Adrian -- "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/