Re: freed_symbols [Re: People, not GPL [was: Re: Driver Model]]

David Woodhouse
2003-10-05T20:05:43Z

On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 12:21 -0700, Andre Hedrick wrote:
> David,
>
> It is about the fact that Linus on his own set a position that modules are
> permitted.

It is indeed. And about that fact that by the time he made that
declaration, he was not in a position to make it unilaterally.

> Now if you want to take the position that one can not modify
> and redistribute the modified kernel in source, you are imposing a
> restriction.

A restriction in this case which I assert was present in the original
licence; not an 'additional restriction'.

If I wanted to distribute my code without restrictions, I'd have
contributed to a BSD kernel, or released my code under the terms
"GPL but not if you really really don't fancy it".

I don't. I didn't.

> If I wanted to be rude, I could take the changes I made and copyright the
> combined work and make it so others could not use that version without
> permission.

Not without being in violation of the original licence. This isn't about
the resulting combined work, but about your permission to use the
_original_.

> Neither you or I can do anything, provide the vendor who is using Linux
> publishes their source fork. I also dare you to stop them, because you
> can't.

Believe me, there are ways this can be achieved.

--
dwmw2