Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause?

Andre Hedrick
2003-12-10T18:22:28Z

Linus,

Thanks for the clarification !

So as I suspected and validated via other means, the content of the
headers are not an issue as it relates to GPL as many claim.

Well I have gotten side requests that I was late in joining the thread
party and I am distracting you from patch merging. This is a fair point,
and we can restart after 2.6.0 is out.

Cheers,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Linus Torvalds wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Andre Hedrick wrote:
> >
> > So why not do the removal of the inlines to real .c files and quit playing
> > games with bogus attempts to bleed taint into the inprotectable api?
>
> The inlines have nothing to do with _anything_.
>
> Trust me, a federal judge couldn't care less about some very esoteric
> technical detail. I don't know who brought up inline functions, but they
> aren't what would force the GPL.
>
> What has meaning for "derived work" is whether it stands on its own or
> not, and how tightly integrated it is. If something works with just one
> particular version of the kernel - or depends on things like whether the
> kernel was compiled with certain options etc - then it pretty clearly is
> very tightly integrated.
>
> Don't think that copyright would depend on any technicalities.
>
> Linus
>