Siegbert Baude wrote: > Let me first say, that I perfectly understand the wish for open specs > for open drivers. > [...] > So what was never judged in front of a court was the "derived work" part > of the GPL. The interpretation of some kernel folks (again there are > also contradicting opinions over there) is (in nice words) very > "embracing". > [...] > As long as no court has said was is fact in this case and what is not, > nobody should argue that the "GPL forces proprietary drivers to be > thrown out". And as long as there is no illegal action, also > distributing cannot be forbidden. > [...] > My personal opinion is, there is just an abuse of the GPL in order to > force hardware vendors to open specs by social pressure. The GPL never > wanted to forbid any use of software together with GPLed code or you > could never use any other non-GPL programs on top of your GPL-kernel. > The purpose of the GPL is to get modified code back, which is the real > interpretation of "derived work". And therefore, if there is some > non-derived work it should be o.k. to use it together with GPLed code > independent of using syscalls vs. header files. Non-derived in a > sensible manner means that the biggest part of the work was done without > using anything of GPLed code, which for me is clearly the case for > graphics card drivers. > [...]
I am in complete agreement with this statement! Cheers, Th. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
