[3321] in linux-net channel archive
Re: Binary Driver Issues
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin M Bealer)
Wed Jun 19 00:07:24 1996
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 18:13:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kevin M Bealer <kmb203@psu.edu>
To: Dennis <dennis@etinc.com>
cc: Jim Nance <Jim_Nance@avanticorp.com>, linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <199606181830.OAA03725@etinc.com>
This has been covered -- extensively.
The whole "violating the GPL" thing should not, in theory, make any company
pay for damages or any such things.
The danger in violating the GPL is that the company using GPL'ed code in
their product has made a "derived work" and others are then free to
distribute and modify that work. If ET took the core networking from Linux
and turned it into something to sell -- then they could not prevent people
from distributing that product. ET has not done this.
However, Linus holds the Linux copyright (go figure); You cannot use the
code for commercial ends w/o his permission --- and Linus has already made
clear that binary drivers have his permission, and that he feels linking
object modules w/ the kernel is _not_ creating a derived work of the
kernel.
Let's not try to make a civil war between commercial and free. Free
software helps to establish the minimum for commercial software. You can't
write a poor quality text editor and sell it for Linux. It has to be good
even to succeed if it is free. Likewise commercial software points the
direction for free software to take and stays ahead of it.
Faster wolves breed faster deer;
Faster deer breed faster wolves.
__kmb203@psu.edu_________________________Debian__1.1___Linux__2.0.0___
You have new mail in /dev/null
