Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932092Ab2KHQ5P (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:57:15 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:17062 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756432Ab2KHQ5J (ORCPT ); Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:57:09 -0500 Message-ID: <509BE460.6010404@redhat.com> Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2012 08:57:04 -0800 From: Andy Grover Organization: Red Hat User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.7) Gecko/20120825 Thunderbird/10.0.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chris Friesen CC: Jon Mason , "Nicholas A. Bellinger" , target-devel , linux-scsi , linux-kernel , Marc Fleischmann , Nicholas Bellinger Subject: Re: scsi target, likely GPL violation References: <509A915B.30105@redhat.com> <509B117A.6070708@genband.com> In-Reply-To: <509B117A.6070708@genband.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1545 Lines: 40 On 11/07/2012 05:57 PM, Chris Friesen wrote: > On 11/07/2012 07:02 PM, Jon Mason wrote: >> I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but if >> I understand the GPL correctly, RTS only needs to provide the relevant >> source to their customers upon request. > > Not quite. > > Assuming the GPL applies, and that they have modified the code, then > they must either: > > 1) include the source with the distributed binary > > or > > 2) include with the binary an offer to provide the source to *any* third > party So you'd have me find one of their customers, and then get the source via your #2 method... ...and then turn around and submit it to Nick since he's the target subsystem maintainer? Nick is probably the one who wrote it! I'm happy to do that, but we should recognize something is seriously skewed when the person nominally in charge of the in-kernel code also has a vested interest in *not* seeing new features added, since it then competes better with his company's offering. RTS is trying to use an "open core" business model. This works fine for BSD-licensed code or code originally authored entirely by you, but their code (all of it even the new stuff) is a derivative work of the Linux kernel source code, and the GPL says they need to contribute it back. Regards -- Andy -- 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/