[3312] in linux-net channel archive
Re: Binary Driver Issues
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Pedro Roque Marques)
Tue Jun 18 21:14:58 1996
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 21:59:23 +0100
From: Pedro Roque Marques <roque@di.fc.ul.pt>
To: dennis@etinc.com (Dennis)
Cc: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <199606181830.OAA03725@etinc.com>
>>>>> "Dennis" == Dennis <dennis@etinc.com> writes:
Dennis> The difference is you have to prove DAMAGES to sue at
Dennis> all. Since there is no financial stake with LINUX, you can
Dennis> never prove anything. If there is no loss by violating a
Dennis> license, then there can be no enforcement even if it is
Dennis> clearly violated. In the above case, microsoft tried to
Dennis> prove copyright violation, because Stacker made millions
Dennis> on the resulting product, which microsoft believed that
Dennis> their code was a part of. However, if stacker was free, or
Dennis> MS-DOS was free, they could not have sued at all.
That might be the case with US legal system which is IMHO very
money-oriented but i believe that most european legal systems consider
the right of authorship by itself meaning that you can sue anybody
that uses your work without permission. The Linux kernel is a
published work and enjoies the same status of a book meaning that you
can for instance quote parts of it for the purposes of a comercial
book but you can't reproduce or use it without authorization. And the
only authorization you got is the GPL.
Dennis> No binary add-on can reduce the availability or value that
Dennis> you get from the O/S.
True. But it's author must respect the GPL. Meaning that the binary
*cannot* be made of GPL code (i'm NOT saying this is the case with
your product), and some of the kernel headers which define inline
functions *are* GPLed.
Dennis> No one is forcing you to use
Dennis> it. There is no legal or ethical issue here, except for
^^^^^^^
I don't agree with that statement. Ethics are by definition a
convention of behaviour rules accepted by a community. A binary module
can break the standard ethics of the Linux community (again i'm NOT
stating this is the case with your product).
btw: this all sueing talk is amusing if you start to think of what
court could possibly judge the case ;-)
regards,
Pedro.
