Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

David Woodhouse
2007-06-15T20:28:33Z

On Fri, 2007-06-15 at 22:20 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> That boundary is indeed fuzzy, because life is fuzzy too and the
> possibilities are virtually unlimited. But one thing is pretty sure: as
> long as some component is merely put alongside of a larger body of work,
> even if that component has no life of its own without _some_ larger body
> of work, that component is not necessarily part of a collective work and
> does not necessarily fall under the GPL.

Not _necessarily_ a collective work. But not necessarily _not_ a
collective work either.

> For driver blobs that are shared between Windows and Linux it would be
> hard to argue that they are derived from the Linux kernel.

You're back to the 'derived work' thing again, which wasn't relevant.

> Merely linking to some larger body of work does not necessarily mean
> that the two become a collective work. No matter how much the FSF is
> trying to muddy the waters with the LGPL/GPL.

I think it's quite clear that the intent of the GPL _is_ to 'muddy the
waters', as you put it, and to indicate that bundling stuff together
_should_ put the non-derived parts under the GPL too; at least in some
circumstances. But still, nothing's true until it's ruled by a court.

--
dwmw2