On Sep 13, 06 18:53:32 +0200, T. Lodewick wrote: > but I have also written about an act between some kernel maintainer > against a hardware vendor ( or to be more clear: a router vendor ) that > has used code from iptable in his software. in that case the german > court agreed with the maintainers, and give a clear statemend about the > GPL and the german law. > if you didn't read that, let me know, I can post the links again.
I vaguely remember that, and it was a completely different case. AFAIR what the router vendors did (there were several) was a pretty rock solid breach of the GPL. This is not perfectly clear in the binary driver situation. They do not ship GPL code without revealing the source. > I know that this ( using GPL-licenced code in closed source progarms) > isn't the same then linking a ( closed sourced ) driver against a > (GLP-licenced) kernel module it shows 2 importend views: (should read before answering ;) > - the GPL is accepted at german courts so it is conform to german law > - there are ways for the maintainers to get there rights at a (german) court Nobody ever neglegted that. > I agree total with you that this all is a "gray zone" as you wrote. and > I also agree with a lot of people on this list that there must be a > solution for a) the users to don't get in conflict with the licence and > make it easy for them to use a driver b) for the maintainer of distros > to don't get also in conflict with a licence and to include as mutch > drivers at needfull and c) also the kernel maintainer that there get the > rights they have. Ok, peace :) And world domination =) > > I think we all agree that open-source drivers are to be preferred and > > might be the best solution. However, from my point of view the cheap > > propaganda that some people make against closed-source drivers does not > > help to solve the problem at all! > > thats your point of view. I have another one. and others maybe have > there owen. to name that views "cheap propaganda" is not realy nice, and > with that your owen posts ends to the same: not nice "cheap propaganda" > against people that believe more in open sourced drivers and it doesn't > solve the problem at all too. I agree here. The kernel developers have a valid point, and calling that propaganda doesn't help anyone. Matthias -- Matthias Hopf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> __ __ __ Maxfeldstr. 5 / 90409 Nuernberg (_ | | (_ |__ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone +49-911-74053-715 __) |_| __) |__ labs www.mshopf.de --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]