GPL vs BSD Licence
TM4525 at aol.com
TM4525 at aol.com
Fri Oct 29 05:58:39 PDT 2004
In a message dated 10/29/04 2:10:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
tedm at toybox.placo.com writes:
> the GPL. I seem to recall the discussion was about nVidia's closed
> source, binary only drivers but, according to Linus, affects all similar
> products. I'm unsure if and how this issue is being dealt with.
>It is. It is the stated policy of the FSF that loadable kernel modules
>are considered part of the GPL work and therefore must be GPL'ed
>themselves. That is where all this is coming from. It is kind of
>a personal vendetta/issue with RMS I understand. This position has
>also created lots of controversy as you might imagine.
The FSF doesnt have standing with Linux so they can blow as hard as
they like and no one will really care. The FSF is a bunch of weenies
whos only mission in life is to abolish anything thats not open source.
Linus has stated that, if software was written for a different O/S and was
ported to linux, its not a "derivative work" and binary modules are
acceptable and don't have to be GPLed
Again, the reality is that none of this (the existence of some products that
exist as binary modules) harm the community. They offer choices for users,
and the more choices the better. What a horrible place the world would be
without TiVo (who never would have done the work if they couldn't protect it)
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