Re: [BK PATCH] USB patches for 2.6.9-rc1

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 11:30:04AM -0700, Craig Milo Rogers wrote:
> On 04.08.26, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Aug 2004, Craig Milo Rogers wrote:
> > 
> > > On 04.08.26, Greg KH wrote:
> > > > Greg Kroah-Hartman:
> > > >   o USB: rip out the whole pwc driver as the author wishes to have done
> > > >   o USB: rip the pwc decompressor hooks out of the kernel, as they are a GPL violation
> > > 
> > > 	The decompressor hooks may be a Linux kernel policy violation,
> > > but I challenge your contention that they are a GPL violation.
> > 
> > Doesn't matter. Whether they are a GPL violation is a gray area. They were
> > removed because of a policy. The author then complained, and the _driver_ 
> > was removed for that reason.
> > 
> > At no point was it a legal argument. In fact, since none of the people 
> > involved were layers, you shouldn't even try to _make_ it a legal 
> > arguments.
> 
> 	Thank you, Linus, for making my point to Greg more clearly
> than I did.  Saying that the pwc decompressor hooks were removed "as
> they are a GPL violation" is a difficult statement to support, and
> brings up unresolved legal issues -- exactly what I tried to say.  I'm
> pleased you've clarified this issue for Greg and the rest of us.
> 
> 	In concordance with Linus' policy statement above, Greg, could
> you change your patch attribution to say something like "per kernel
> policy", please?  If for no other reason than to reduce dissention
> among future lkml archive delvers about why the pwc removal took
> place?  :-)

Hm, I can't do that anymore, as Linus has accepted it into his tree
already.  If he feels it's a big issue, he can edit it there.

thanks,

greg k-h