On Wed, 2006-06-07 at 04:50 -0500, Jan Depner wrote: Closed source applications are perfectly OK. A closed source ALSA driver violates the GPL. Lee

On Wed, 2006-06-07 at 19:47 -0500, Jan Depner wrote: That's certainly possible. I guess we have no way to know until someone buys one and gets the sources ;-) You think there's a chance they used OSS? Do you know of any pro audio vendors who have done this? Lee

On Wed, 2006-06-07 at 22:43 -0500, Jan Depner wrote: Sure, I am not an ideologue - closed packages are acceptable in userspace. Drivers are part of the kernel however so closed drivers are a violation of the GPL. (Nvidia is probably legal because they use the same binary blob as the windows drivers so it is not a derived work of the kernel). But if they developed the drivers for this system, the GPL requires them to release the source. In case it was not clear, my original reply only referred to the driver source, they are under no obligation to open source anything else. Lee

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 20:55 +0200, Alberto Botti wrote: "Works with ALSA" is not exactly the same as a binary ALSA driver. "Binary-only drivers cannot be based on any ALSA source code. They must be written from scratch. Binary-only drivers that contain ALSA code are infringing on copyright laws." IOW, a binary only ALSA driver can implement the ALSA API, but it cannot use the ALSA kernel middle layer at all. AFAICT this means that you could implement a ALSA compatibility wrapper around a binary blob as long as that blob was not developed for use on Linux. But developing a binary driver for use on Linux is clearly a derived work of the kernel and thus illegal. Lee

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 22:12 -0400, M P Smoak wrote: 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. If there's IP in your hardware than you absolutely cannot risk disclosing (maybe because you went for trade secret protection rather than patenting it) you can put the secret part of the driver in userspace and keep it closed. Read LKML sometime, there are tons of large companies releasing open source drivers for their hardware - Intel, AMD, IBM, Cisco, Via, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Veritas, Novell, SGI, plus zillions of smaller companies like Pathscale, Emulex, Mellanox. For audio there's M-Audio, RME, AudioScience, EchoAudio, Digigram, etc. I could go on and on - these are just the ones I know off the top of my head. Keep in mind that if you patent your hardware innovations, you're free to release an open source driver and no one can rip you off - for example Creative did this with the emu10k1. The ones shooting themselves in the foot are the small minority that refuse to release open source drivers. Lee

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 20:55 -0700, Thomas Vecchione wrote: I am referring to hardware patents. Well, it's not really a matter of opinion, I'm just stating what the GPL requires. In order for this to change you'd have to relicense the kernel. Lee

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 21:15 -0700, Thomas Vecchione wrote: Neither do I, really - which is why I did not try to define exactly what a "derived work" is. There are at least three solutions I know of that don't violate the GPL - put the sensitive IP in the firmware, do it in userspace, or make your Linux driver a GPL wrapper around the same binary blob your Windows driver uses. Unfortunately it's quite common these days for companies to blatantly violate the GPL and just develop closed Linux drivers. Yeah it's unfortunate. Maybe the rise of these cheap knockoffs is what drove a company like Creative, who were one of the first to open their drivers in the mid 1990s, to their current position of not releasing any hardware specs or Linux drivers at all. IIRC Behringer is careful not to infringe patents - they just copy things that can't be copyrighted or patented like a circuit board layout. But I'm not really an expert. Lee

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 22:51 -0700, Thomas Vecchione wrote: Oh, it sure has changed - it's gone down the shitter. Creative's new stuff is garbage compared to the SBLive! which IMHO was a brilliant piece of hardware. I wouldn't know about the EMU line because it can't be used with Linux. The trend since then has been to make cheap junk cheaper every year and move as much logic as possible into the driver which makes supporting Linux more work with each generation of devices. It's not just PC hardware, it's the whole damn economy. For example new houses are bigger and more expensive than ever but they're basically made of cardboard. Where they used to use 2x4s for interior walls they use 2x2s now. In 10 years they'll be twice as big, 5x more expensive, and made out of paper. Economists call it "improving efficiency", engineers call it "cutting corners". The economists seem to have won. Yes, I'm a little bitter about the whole thing ;-) Lee

On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 01:05 -0400, Lee Revell wrote: Living at ground zero for Katrina (7 blocks off the beach in Long Beach, MS) I can testify to this. I also ran the local harbor surveys for the Navy. The only structures that survived were the old buildings. Bay St. Louis had about 5 buildings near the beach that are still standing - they were all built pre-1940. There was a lot of "corner cutting" going on prior to Katrina. Many of my neighbors 3 tab shingles were put on using only three nails. Needless to say, their roofs were stripped and their ceilings came down early on in the storm. -- Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner The Fuzzy Dice http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744

On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 12:51 -0400, M P Smoak wrote: It's a good card, it's what I have in the machine I am typing this on. Lee

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 22:33 -0400, Lee Revell wrote: 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. M-Audio, RME, AudioScience, EchoAudio, Digigram do not release open source drivers for their hardware. Neither, AFAIK, do any of the companies listed above those (with the possible exception of Novell). What these companies do is make their specs available to the OS community so that the community can write the drivers. -- Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner The Fuzzy Dice http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744

On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 13:15 -0400, Lee Revell wrote: What would you call the NVIDIA driver? -- Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner The Fuzzy Dice http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744

On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 14:23 -0400, Lee Revell wrote: That's merely semantics, you can use any binary blob you want as long as you don't derive from GPL'ed software. It makes absolutely no difference what it was "specifically designed" to run on. This is a matter of copyright law, not coding. -- Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner The Fuzzy Dice http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744

On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 18:04 -0400, Lee Revell wrote: That's the consensus among kernel people. Not lawyers. Take it to court first. It has zero chance in that venue. -- Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner The Fuzzy Dice http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744

On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 13:34 -0400, Lee Revell wrote: 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. 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. -- Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner The Fuzzy Dice http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744

On Mon, 2006-06-12 at 19:12 -0400, Lee Revell wrote: although i agree with almost everything lee has said here, i have to admit that the GPL leaves a gray (or grey) zone here. i think it likely that because drivers inevitably end up utilizing significant chunks of kernel infrastructure, they will be considered "derivative works" by a court, and this is the legal consensus so far across the GPL community. but the GPL does appear to leave room for run-time linkage against shared objects whose functionality is not "central" to the operation of the program. i've talked to RMS several times about this, and regrettably, GPL 3.0 so far does not appear to be clarifying the intent in this area. it is important that this be clarified, because it matters a great deal to any apps using media plugins in closed-sourced formats. for things like VST etc, Lee's point that the binary blob was written for a different platform is relevant, but consider the example of someone who wanted to write a non-GPL'ed backend for JACK, or if a VJ app provided a plugin API and someone want to write a non-GPL'ed plugin using it. in the case of the kernel, the number of copyright holders pretty much requires that any legal decision on the issue falls on the conservative side - much easier to say "drivers are derivative works" than say "drivers are not" and run into further legislation from specific copyright holders who object to the decision. --p