[linux-audio-user] Interesting Tidbit: The Midas XL8 uses Linux

[Lee Revell]

On Mon, 2006-06-12 at 17:51 -0500, Jan Depner wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 13:34 -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 01:29 -0500, Jan Depner wrote:
> > > That's the consensus among kernel people.  Not lawyers.  Take it to
> > > court first.  It has zero chance in that venue. 
> > 
> > Can you cite any precedents?
> > 
> > The kernel people I am referring to have talked to their lawyers about
> > it and the consensus is that a driver is a derived work of the OS that
> > it is developed for.
> > 
> 
>     If the driver is part of the kernel then that is true.  If it is a
> module then it isn't.  The whole thing is moot though until someone
> takes it to court.  I seriously doubt that anyone will be willing to try
> to win that battle when they face the possibility of losing and being
> counter sued for court and legal costs.
> 

Built-in vs. module is irrelevant - modules are linked into the kernel
at runtime.

See:

http://kerneltrap.org/node/4674
http://lwn.net/2001/1025/a/module-license.php3
http://lwn.net/Articles/154602/

> 
> > Look at some driver source some day - it's basically impossible to write
> > a driver without using any kernel APIs - driver model, spinlocks, etc.
> > 
> 
>     My understanding of the NVIDIA driver is that it uses an open module
> to work with a closed module (BLOB).  What you have been saying is that
> the intent of the vendor to only develop the closed module for Linux
> makes it a violation of the GPL and this is obviously not true.  There
> is no infringement in the closed module.  They're not using any GPL'ed
> code.  This is why we have binary modules now.  At any rate, as I said
> above, until someone wants to take it to court it doesn't matter.
> NVIDIA will continue to make closed drivers and so will other vendors.
> 

As I've stated many times I am not talking about the nvidia driver.
That is legal because the binary part cannot be a derived work as it was
developed for another OS.

Lee