Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause?

Andre Hedrick
2003-12-10T22:31:42Z

Larry,

You have a strong grap of the obvious :-)
I wish more of the meatball could have such a strong grip.
2.6 is setting itself up to fall hard on the back edge of the sword.

"Made you Look" is not much use if it is published, because it is now a
public record.

Cheers,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 11:48:45AM -0800, Kendall Bennett wrote:
> > Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> wrote:
> >
> > > In fact, a user program written in 1991 is actually still likely
> > > to run, if it doesn't do a lot of special things. So user programs
> > > really are a hell of a lot more insulated than kernel modules,
> > > which have been known to break weekly.
> >
> > IMHO (and IANAL of course), it seems a bit tenuous to me the argument
> > that just because you deliberating break compatibility at the module
> > level on a regular basis, that they are automatically derived works.
>
> Not only that, I think the judge would have something to say about the
> fact that the modules interface is delibrately changed all the time
> with stated intent of breaking binary drivers. In fact, Linus pointed
> out his thoughts on what the judge would say:
>
> In fact, I will bet you that if the judge thinks that you tried to
> use technicalities ("your honour, I didn't actually run the 'ln'
> program, instead of wrote a shell script for the _user_ to run the
> 'ln' program for me"), that judge will just see that as admission
> of the fact that you _knew_ you were doing something bad.
>
> Why is it that the judge wouldn't see the delibrate changing of the
> interfaces, the EXPORT_GPL stuff, all of that as a way to delibrately
> force something that wouldn't otherwise be a derived work into a
> derived work category?
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
>