Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
On 2/19/07, Trent Waddington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Just in case anyone cares, after speaking with Michael for a few hours I've found he's not nearly as abrasive as this mailing list banter might suggest. He makes some good arguments once you stop him from spouting conspiracy stuff and, although I don't agree with all of them, I think he has some good points. He suggested posting a transcript of our chat but, frankly, I don't think anyone wants to read that. If you can translate what he had to say in English, I certainly would be willing to hear about it. vj. - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
You are trying to cram this in a simple yes or no box, and it just doesn't
fit. There are questions nobody knows the answers to (such as what rights
you need to distribute a derivative work or whether compiling code makes a
translation).
Thanks, all for the discussion. I certainly learnt a lot. I definitely
expected to be flamed and roasted for posting my original message, and
was not disappointed :)
I do not possess all the knowledge ("legal" and technical) that people
who have contributed to this discussion possess. However I will still
comment from a user's perspective, which was my original point.
Many companies in the embedded field still mistakenly feel (or felt
until a while ago) that Linux was not right for them. That they would
have to open source their code, that they would not get adequate
support, and that Linux was too big and heavy to perform well in an
embedded platform. People like me who were Linux Desktop junkies were
actually trying to convince companies of the opposite.
Now the popularity of Linux is exploding in the embedded space. Nobody
talks of VxWorks and OSE anymore. It is all Linux. Perhaps it would be
a worthwhile experiment to study this surge in popularity. I am not an
expert, but perhaps the reason is "it works so goddamn well and has a
wealth of third party FREE software". Sure its a bit of work to make
it work on our platform and we don't have to Enea or Windriver to
write our gripes to. But it definitely is worth it.
Now it would also be worthwhile to contemplate what EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
does to this popularity. I don't know. I am just giving you my
opinion. The moment companies learn of something like this, alarm
bells start to go off. This is not rational. I personally have nothing
against open-sourcing all software. *But*, this is not how companies
think.
Let's think about why Linux became so popular and strive towards
keeping it that way instead of resorting to innovative ways of just
confusing a lot of people.
Having said this, I am committed to contribute back to the Linux
community in any way I can, not withstanding my present employer. Keep
up the good work guys!
DS
vj.
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Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
It's written in black and white, in the license. Please point me to where it says I cannot load proprietary modules in the Kernel. Apart from that, Greg KH has made his opinion clear, and you have said you understand and don't debate that he holds this opinion, and his code is what you said you were linking to (the sysfs/class stuff), so why do you keep saying that "it is not clear". I know his opinion. I don't debate his opinion. It is his code. I choose not to use his code because of the license issue. Do you think that, somehow, Linus' opinion trumps Greg KH's opinion on his own code? No, just that the trend is disturbing. If enough Kernel Developers choose to write their Software in a way that prevents others from using it freely, then that is troubling. Especially when these Kernel Developers are substituting existing interfaces in the Kernel with ones that are NEW and require specific licenses. vj. - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
> So, how are such companies any different from the myriad individuals > and companies that use Linux on the desktop or in their server rooms > without ever modifying it and who also contribute nothing back to the > community? They are also, in many (most?) cases taking advantage of > the free (as in beer) nature of Linux - saving money by using the work > of others without returning anything, but the product builders seem to > get a lot more abuse... if they don't modify it and don't distribute it there is not issue. This is only because of the terms of GPL. Morally, as many here have pointed out this should fall into the same category. it's people who modify it (by creating a derived work) and then redistribute it that get the abuse. Atleast we try and report genuine bugs and submit patches when necessary. We get abuse however because it is not clear what the terms of GPL are WRT loadable modules. If this were written in black and white and we knew what we were fighting against, this would not be an issue. We only get crap because no one here yet knows how to interpret proprietary modules loaded into the kernel. - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
On 2/15/07, Scott Preece <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 2/15/07, v j <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > So far I have heard nothing but, "if you don't contribute, screw you." > All this is fine. Just say so. Make it black and white. Make it > perfectly clear what is and isn't legal. If we can't load proprietary > modules, then so be it. It will help everybody if this is out in the > clear, instead of resorting to stupid half measures like > EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. --- I'm not sure what you're asking for. Greg KH's statement was pretty black-and-white, and there are a lot of comments in this stream, from name-brand developers, that are in line with them. They're the best answer you can hope for on this question. The question you're asking is an issue of interpretation, which only a court can answer. Do you want them to modify the license to make this particular issue clearer? Or do you just want a statement from Linus? Which statement are you talking about? First of all it is not clear to me if proprietary modules need to be GPL or not. If they do, I guess I have nothing to say. If that is the way developers want it, so be it. Assuming these need not be GPL, I have a problem with EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL and the general trend in the direction of making proprietary drivers harder on companies. Our drivers use basic interfaces in the kernel like open, read, write, ioctl, semaphores, interrupts, timers etc. This is functionality we would expect from any operating system. We used devfs before and had no problems there. Greg KH has gone and made the basic sysfs interface, which any generic driver could use as EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. I don't really care, I just don't use sysfs. The point is that old functionality is being ripped off and new ones introduced, and their interfaces are not open anymore. Hence there will be a point where non-GPLed drivers simply cannot be loaded. So why beat about the bush? Just make it illegal to load proprietary drivers, or remove EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. vj. - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
So far I have heard nothing but, "if you don't contribute, screw you." All this is fine. Just say so. Make it black and white. Make it perfectly clear what is and isn't legal. If we can't load proprietary modules, then so be it. It will help everybody if this is out in the clear, instead of resorting to stupid half measures like EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. On 2/15/07, Theodore Tso <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 10:27:10PM -0800, v j wrote: > You are right. I have not contributed anything to Linux. Except one > small patch to the MTD code. However, I don't think that is the point > here. I am perfectly willing to live with the way Linux is today. I am > telling you as a user that if Linux continues on the current path it > will become less and less attractive to Embedded Users. But so what? How will that hurt *Linux*? If the Embedded developers don't contribute changes back, it doesn't hurt us any if they go away and start paying $$$ to VxWorks instead of using Linux for free. Contrawise, if Embedded developers do contribute their device driver changes back to the kernel, they will be fine. Note that we don't even force them to do the work to make it be mainline acceptable; they just have to make the sources available. It could be crap code, but it will fulfill the requirements of the the GPL. Others in the community can make the decision about whether they want to clean up the code and get it mainlined, or it ignore it if it truly is a one-off driver. All you have to do is make the driver available. And if you don't, why do you think that it is at all a credible threat, or that we should shed even one tear, if you go away and use some other OS for your embedded product? It's not like in the case of VxWorks where you get to say, "Do X or we take away a million dollars worth of business." And on the flip side, what I think you will find is that if you do contribute to the community and be a good community member, others will cut you some slack when the time comes because you've built up the good karma. But that requires that you be a good community member. If in contrast you find that it's cheaper to pay $$$ to some embedded OS company, please feel free to do this. No one is forcing you to move from Linux 2.4 to Linux 2.6, or even to stay with Linux. - Ted - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
Oh, I am sorry. Seems like the German courts have spoken. I am not sure about what, but they have spoken. Sorry for the confusion. On 2/15/07, Richard Knutsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: v j wrote: > On 2/14/07, Arjan van de Ven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Wed, 2007-02-14 at 21:16 -0800, v j wrote: >> > This is in reference to the following thread: >> > >> > http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/14/63 >> > >> > I am not sure if this is ever addressed in LKML, but linux is _very_ >> > popular in the embedded space. We (an embedded vendor) chose Linux 3 >> > years back because of its lack of royalty model, robustness and >> > availability of infinite number of open-source tools. >> >> >> I think you have a bit of a misunderstanding... Linux is not royalty >> free. Just the royalty is not in the form of cash, but in the form of >> having to give your improvements back to the open source world. > > Sure. But this is not legally binding. Please clarify! http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/07/23/1558219.shtml?tid=117&tid=123 Richard Knutsson - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
On 2/14/07, Arjan van de Ven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, 2007-02-14 at 21:16 -0800, v j wrote: > This is in reference to the following thread: > > http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/14/63 > > I am not sure if this is ever addressed in LKML, but linux is _very_ > popular in the embedded space. We (an embedded vendor) chose Linux 3 > years back because of its lack of royalty model, robustness and > availability of infinite number of open-source tools. I think you have a bit of a misunderstanding... Linux is not royalty free. Just the royalty is not in the form of cash, but in the form of having to give your improvements back to the open source world. Sure. But this is not legally binding. (this is paraphrasing the intent of the GPL basically, you can argue for hours if drivers are separate or improvements, and I'm not interested in that debate, it has been debated to death before and only lawyers will in the end be able to settle that on a case by case basis). If your mindset is "how much can I take take take without giving back back back" then personally I think you're sort of acting like a parasite in this context Ok so are thousands of others who are using Linux as their OS of choice in embedded systems. They are not doing this because they are eager to give back back. They are doing it because Linux provides compelling reasons for them to choose it. They could have very well chosen VxWorks or OSE too. They chose not to, but not because they were unwilling to be a parasite. - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
On 2/14/07, Randy Dunlap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: At least one of us is confused about that an embedded User is. It seems to me that you are an embedded developer, not User. I doubt that most Embedded Users care what their OS is, or even know what an OS is. I am not sure what the difference is. We are trying to use Linux to support our application. It may be that Linux has a bug, or our application. When it is Linux, that has the problem, I have tried to inform the community of that. > Not everybody has to be a contributor. The reason Linux is popular is > because of its openness. Take that away and see where it goes. We seem to have different definitions of open and closed. Open = 3rd party Linux drivers can be loaded. Closed = No third party Linux drivers can be loaded. - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
I am well aware of what Greg KHs position is, in fact he is the reason I started the whole rant. This is only a plea to the "higher authorities". Linus, please save Linux! vj On 2/14/07, Trent Waddington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 2/15/07, v j <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If adding closed drivers to Linux is illegal, I am perfectly fine with > that. Just say so. I am not at a dead-end yet, until you make that > statement. Once you make that statement, then all bets are off. I am > betting that most companies will not even consider Linux as an > alternative in the embedded space if this were the case. Greg KH has already made that statement. http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html half way down, "Closed source Linux kernel modules are illegal". As was said, welcome to 6 months ago. Trent - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
On 2/14/07, Neil Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Not everybody has to be a contributor. The reason Linux is popular is > because of its openness. Take that away and see where it goes. So tell us? where does it go? You seem to have the experience already. You took an open linux, added some closed drivers and so made it closed. So you yourself (or your company) have taken that (the openness) away - where did the result go? I'm guessing it went into a dead-end or you wouldn't be here talking to us now. If adding closed drivers to Linux is illegal, I am perfectly fine with that. Just say so. I am not at a dead-end yet, until you make that statement. Once you make that statement, then all bets are off. I am betting that most companies will not even consider Linux as an alternative in the embedded space if this were the case. - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
You don't get it do you. Our source code is meaningless to the Open Source community at large. It is only useful to our tiny set of competitors that have nothing to do with Linux. The Embedded space is very specific. We are only _using_ Linux. Just as we could have used VxWorks or OSE. Using our source code would not benefit anybody but our competitors. Sure we could make our drivers open-source. This is a decision that is made FIRST when evaluating an OS. If we we were required to make our drivers/HW open, we would just not have chosen Linux. It is as simple as that. On 2/14/07, Trent Waddington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 2/15/07, v j <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This has nothing to do with politics. I am not a Linux contributor. Here-in lies the problem. I am one of the few people willing to state openly that I wish those who can, would use their legal claims to stop people like you from writing proprietary drivers. Although you (or your company) clearly has the ability to contribute to Linux, you have chosen not to. Instead, you just leach off those that do. As such, I believe you and your ilk are ethically deplorable and the fact that you would come here to try to point out to the contributors that they are going to lose people like you if they don't stop "threatening" your drivers not only baffles me, it sickens me. At least with NVIDIA and ATI they're not actually profiting from the existence of Linux, but you're actually selling the stuff and you don't even consider the very reasonable proposition of sharing your source code in return. It's not like they're asking for money.. man, this is the Linux project, they don't even ask for copyright assignment or allegiance to an ideology.. Do the right thing, cough up your source code, get it integrated into the tree and let the community do what it does so well. Trent - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
On 2/14/07, Dave Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 09:16:28PM -0800, v j wrote: Welcome to three months ago. Here in the future, this was deemed a non-issue. However this does highlight another problem. End-users who take linux for use in embedded systems (especially) tend to live in their own little world rarely contributing anything back to upstream, popping up occasionally when months after decisions have been made on things. Remind me again why we should care about your out of tree binary only modules ? You are right. I have not contributed anything to Linux. Except one small patch to the MTD code. However, I don't think that is the point here. I am perfectly willing to live with the way Linux is today. I am telling you as a user that if Linux continues on the current path it will become less and less attractive to Embedded Users. Not everybody has to be a contributor. The reason Linux is popular is because of its openness. Take that away and see where it goes. - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
On 2/14/07, v j <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: This has nothing to do with politics. I am not a Linux contributor. I realize that people who have contributed to the Linux Kernel have very valid points. It is their sweat and blood. They have a right to protect what they have worked on. I am purely commenting from a user perspective. If Linux becomes closed to external drivers, then it will have repercussions in the embedded space. I can say for certain that a company evaluating OSes and realizing that their drivers will have to be open-source will almost certainly go for the alternative. On 2/14/07, Trent Waddington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 2/15/07, v j <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The drivers which we have written over the last three years are suddenly > > under threat. > > [..] > > The fact that Linux is becoming more and more closed is very very alarming. > > Sigh. Someone remind me of the rules against "politics" on the list > before I get into why vj should play nice with the other children. > > Trent > - 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/
Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
No its not. It wasn't common knowledge 3 years ago when we chose Linux as an embedded platform. If it indeed is common knowledge that loadable modules in Linux have to be open-source then it is very probable that we wouldn't have chosen Linux as the platform of choice. If this indeed is the case and is common knowledge, then I predict that Linux will soon drop in popularity as the OS of choice in embedded systems. On 2/14/07, Lee Revell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Um... it's been common knowledge for years that the legal status of non-GPL kernel modules is an open issue. Specifically, whether a device driver written for the Linux kernel is a derived work of the kernel. Sounds like you didn't do your homework 3 years ago. Why did you assume that linking a non-GPL module into the GPL Linux kernel was legal? You have read the GPL right? Lee On 2/15/07, v j <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is in reference to the following thread: > > http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/14/63 > > I am not sure if this is ever addressed in LKML, but linux is _very_ > popular in the embedded space. We (an embedded vendor) chose Linux 3 > years back because of its lack of royalty model, robustness and > availability of infinite number of open-source tools. > > We recently decided to move to Linux 2.6 for our next product, mainly > because Linux has worked so well for us in the past, and we would like > to move up to keep up with the latest and greatest. > > However in moving to 2.6, we noticed a number of alarming things. > Porting drivers over from devfs to udev, though easy raised a number > of alarming issues. Driver's no longer could dynamically allocate > their MAJOR/MINOR numbers. Doing so would mean they would have to use > sysfs. However it seems that sysfs (and the class_ interface) is only > available to GPL modules. This is very concerning. The drivers which > we have written over the last three years are suddenly under threat. > We don't mind statically assigning MAJOR/MINOR numbers to our drivers. > We can do this and modify our user space applications too. > > However we have a worrying trend here. If at some point it becomes > illegal to load our modules into the linux kernel, then it is > unacceptable to us. We would have been better off choosing VxWorks or > OSE 3 years ago when we made an OS choice. The fact that Linux is > becoming more and more closed is very very alarming. > > vj. > - > 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/ > - 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/
GPL vs non-GPL device drivers
This is in reference to the following thread: http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/14/63 I am not sure if this is ever addressed in LKML, but linux is _very_ popular in the embedded space. We (an embedded vendor) chose Linux 3 years back because of its lack of royalty model, robustness and availability of infinite number of open-source tools. We recently decided to move to Linux 2.6 for our next product, mainly because Linux has worked so well for us in the past, and we would like to move up to keep up with the latest and greatest. However in moving to 2.6, we noticed a number of alarming things. Porting drivers over from devfs to udev, though easy raised a number of alarming issues. Driver's no longer could dynamically allocate their MAJOR/MINOR numbers. Doing so would mean they would have to use sysfs. However it seems that sysfs (and the class_ interface) is only available to GPL modules. This is very concerning. The drivers which we have written over the last three years are suddenly under threat. We don't mind statically assigning MAJOR/MINOR numbers to our drivers. We can do this and modify our user space applications too. However we have a worrying trend here. If at some point it becomes illegal to load our modules into the linux kernel, then it is unacceptable to us. We would have been better off choosing VxWorks or OSE 3 years ago when we made an OS choice. The fact that Linux is becoming more and more closed is very very alarming. vj. - 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/
