10 Jun
2006
10 Jun
'06
4:23 p.m.
On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 13:08 -0500, Jan Depner wrote:
On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 13:15 -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
Nvidia driver is a special case - it is not a derived work of the kernel
because they use the same binary blob the Windows driver uses.
I covered this earlier in the thread.
Lee
On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 08:01 -0500, Jan Depner
wrote:
What would you call the NVIDIA driver?
On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 22:33 -0400, Lee Revell
wrote:
I am talking about KERNEL DRIVERS. Please re-read the thread. Of
course you can develop a closed USERSPACE package.
The kernel is GPL. Drivers are part of the kernel. Therefore you
cannot develop a closed source kernel driver.
On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 22:12 -0400, M P Smoak
wrote:
> So a company that wanted to have a proprietary connection to linux
> could write an open source blob and a closed connection to the blob
> for their closed hardware/software? ie linux remains useable for
> companies.
>
Not if the closed part was specifically developed to run on Linux. The
key is whether it's a "derived work" as far as copyright law is
concerned or not.
You can develop a closed package to specifically run on Linux. It
is not in violation of the GPL. This is the old Micr$oft "GPL is a
cancer" FUD. What you can't do is use GPL code in a closed application.