Re: patent on O_ATOMICLOOKUP [Re: [PATCH] loopable tmpfs (2.4.17)]

Andre Hedrick
2002-05-25T20:31:38Z

On Sat, 25 May 2002, Daniel Phillips wrote:

> On Saturday 25 May 2002 19:49, Karim Yaghmour wrote:
> > > The thing that disgusts me is that this "patent" thing is used as a
> > > complete red herring, and the real issue is that some people don't like
> > > the fact that the kernel is under the GPL. Tough cookies.
> >
> > I have no disagreement with the kernel being GPL.
>
> I'd like to take this opportunity to take a turn back towards the original
> issue: supposing that Ingo's/Red Hat's patented extension to the dcache is
> accepted into the kernel. Would not the GPL's patent trap provision
> prevent Red Hat from distributing the result, unless Red Hat also provides
> a license for the patent permitting unrestricted use *regardless of
> commercial or noncommercial use* of the patent in the context of the GPL'd
> code? So it's either provide the license, or don't incorporate the code
> into Linux. (The issue of whether it's a good thing that the latter course
> would also foreclose anybody else from using the same technique is
> separate.)
>
> Supposing that Red Hat distributes a version of Linux accompanied with the
> appropriate license, so that the result can be distributed in compliance
> with the GPL: could Red Hat then prevent other distributors from
> distributing their own version of Linux that has the same extension? I
> hope not, otherwise we have a real problem.

They can, because they provide the source to do so.
Now does it have to be modular loaded, I suspect.
The have every right to prevent people from using their stuff.
There is no ruling standard body to force compliance.
GPL is enforced by the author, owner, copyright holder.
It may have started out under on dominion, but after MOSIX and the
unilatteral (sp) force binary module inclusion, that set the stage to tear
down the theory of GPL enforcement.

But now we venture to embedded space of changes, and there they do not
provide source code even if you are a customer.
So GPL is becoming a LARK.

But then again it has no real business model and I expect to be deleted
form the thread so I will do so before others.

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group