> which is why I asked for RMS' opinion. He said that what is being done
> is clearly not "mere aggregation", and that such firmware should be
> moved out of the kernel (and even the tarball) to stop violating the
> GPL and make Linux be free software.
Given that the firmware is a seperate work (try loading it under windows
and you'll find its quite useful without Linux and does not depend on Linux)
and that the folks I have raised this with - who should know their law -
disagree with Adam I'm not currently persuaded.
The relationship between a USB driver and the kernel is no different to that
between say a web browser and server chatting over a network. In this case
the network is USB not IP based that is all. Clearly mozilla does not cease
to be free software or a seperate work because you looked at microsoft.com
with it.
Now if you want a plausible example of the kind of thing Adam is talking about
you should take a hard look at the ACPI code, where ACPI bytecode is linked
into the kernel by interpreting it
Alan
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