Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice.

Raul Miller
2005-04-11T20:21:26Z

On Sun, Apr 10, 2005 at 01:18:11PM -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
> You could do that be means of a contract, but I don't think you
> could it do by means of a copyright license. The problem is that there
> is no right to control the distribution of derivative works for you
> to withhold from me.

While you are may be reporting your thoughts accurately, this problem
doesn't seem to be a legal issue.

The GPL explicitly discusses this issue (section 5), and a number of
people have already posted with similar commentary.

Anyways, one thing to keep in mind here is that if copyright law doesn't
allow the GPL's grant of permission to be conditional then copyright
law would not allow other copyright grants to be conditional.

Another way of looking at this is that the GPL is a copyright license --
it represents the terms and conditions under which copyrights are granted,
and it also represents those permissions.

--
Raul