2003-01-01 17:57:20

by Hell.Surfers

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Subject: Re: GPL and Nvidia

and how would it work otherwise? without GPL include/files? magic? divine act of god?

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 14:35:10 -0200 (BRST) Rik van Riel <[email protected]> wrote:


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2003-01-01 18:32:55

by Hell.Surfers

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Subject: RE:Re: GPL and Nvidia

Everyone has a right to their opinion, even if it trys to break the GPL apart.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 23:17:17 -0800 (PST) Andre Hedrick <[email protected]> wrote:


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2003-01-02 21:40:01

by Bill Davidsen

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Subject: Re: GPL and Nvidia

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 [email protected] wrote:

> and how would it work otherwise? without GPL include/files? magic? divine act of god?

It seems to me that the same principle which applied to libraries and
finally resulted in LGPL also applies to header files, and that if
anything we (FSF or Linus) might want to consider HGPL or a clarification
of the use of headers.

I think it is counter to the long term good of open source software to try
to prevent a valuable use which promotes use of Linux in general.

That said, I'm not sure if there is benefit to nVidia in keeping the
driver source closed, but that's their choice. I would think that the
methods could easily be determined by reverse engineering and disassembly,
and that GPL would actually protect the method, since any driver based on
the source would be a derived work. I'm not a lawyer, so don't try to
argue with me on the legalities, my conclusion is based purely on what a
reasonable person might conclude.

--
bill davidsen <[email protected]>
CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.