Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 6 Oct 2003 17:56:57 -0700 | From | Larry McVoy <> | Subject | Re: freed_symbols [Re: People, not GPL [was: Re: Driver Model]] |
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On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 11:29:42PM +0200, Olivier Galibert wrote: > On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 11:38:57AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: > > That has no bearing on the legalities. A version of the kernel can't > > force the GPL on a driver that works with that version of the kernel > > because you can pull that driver out and drop in another. A great example > > is the eepro driver, there is Becker's version and the Intel version. > > Any judge who wasn't fooled by Microsoft priced lawyers would clearly > > see the boundary and make a ruling that the GPL can't cross over it. > > So you're saying the LGPL and the GPL mean the same thing for > libraries? That, for instance, you can handle Qt as if it was LGPL?
I think so, I'm afraid. I know that this view of the law isn't what people think is true and the end result may well be a court case which tests it.
You can sort of see how the logic works. There has to be some sort of boundary, right? Does anyone really think that if Linus hadn't said that the GPL doesn't cross over to the user apps that the GPL really would have crossed over? So if there is a boundary concept, how do you define what a boundary is? Is that left to each license or is that part of the law? As far as I can tell, that's part of the law, it has a concept of a boundary already. The lawyers got a little squirmy around this part and I got the sense that what is a boundary is not universally established. But everyone seemed to think that allowing licenses which bleed over into "unrelated" stuff is about as legal as contracts imposing human slavery, i.e., both are not legal.
It's certainly not a done a deal, I think that sooner or later there will be some court case that establishes the case law on which all future cases will be based. The people I know who care about the GPL dread this case because the GPL has sort of had it both ways for a long time and that can't continue. If you want the law to be that SCO can't claim all the IP that was built on top of the original Unix then that same law also says that the GPL can't claim dominion over separable works either.
I can also image that the Qt people are less than thrilled with what I'm saying because it basically invalidates the GPL-ed library or pay for a non-GPLed version business model.
All of what I say should be taken with a grain of salt. Yeah, I've spent money trying to understand this and I perhaps understand more than some people here (maybe a lot of people in this instance). That doesn't mean what I say is right. If you really care, if your business depends on it, you need to get a lawyer to work through the issues. Right now, I think the side with the deeper pockets would win, so even though I'm pointing at what I think will be the long term outcome, I'm not sure I'd bet the farm on that. How's that for weasel words? -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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