Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261754AbVBDJkq (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Feb 2005 04:40:46 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261158AbVBDJkq (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Feb 2005 04:40:46 -0500 Received: from canuck.infradead.org ([205.233.218.70]:34829 "EHLO canuck.infradead.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263074AbVBDJkZ (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Feb 2005 04:40:25 -0500 Subject: Re: Please open sysfs symbols to proprietary modules From: Arjan van de Ven To: Andrew Morton Cc: Pavel Roskin , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, greg@kroah.com, mochel@digitalimplant.org In-Reply-To: <20050204012042.6aedcf39.akpm@osdl.org> References: <20050204012042.6aedcf39.akpm@osdl.org> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 10:40:11 +0100 Message-Id: <1107510011.4263.62.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.0.2 (2.0.2-3) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.3 (/) X-Spam-Report: SpamAssassin version 2.63 on canuck.infradead.org summary: Content analysis details: (0.3 points, 5.0 required) pts rule name description ---- ---------------------- -------------------------------------------------- 0.3 RCVD_NUMERIC_HELO Received: contains a numeric HELO X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by canuck.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1220 Lines: 26 On Fri, 2005-02-04 at 01:20 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > Pavel Roskin wrote: > > > > I'm writing a module under a proprietary license. > > You shouldn't, although many people do. It's a derived work and hence the > GPL is applicable. The only exception we make is for code which was > written for other operating systems and was then ported to Linux. Because > it is inappropriate to consider such code a derived work. Note that I would like to qualify the "we" word here for people who read this later. It is apparently your (and based on earlier mails, Linus' as well) opinion that you make an exception. Not all other kernel authors have to, or do, feel the same way, especially in the light of a huge gray area what "ported" means, eg there is a gray area about how much new linux specific code is added. Say you port a driver from windows to linux, and after the port 990 lines are linux specific and only 10 lines are left from the old code... - 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/