From: Michael Buesch <mbuesch@freenet.de>
To: alex@alexfisher.me.uk
Subject: Re: Would I be violating the GPL?
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 20:00:20 +0100
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On Tuesday 01 November 2005 18:49, Alexander Fisher wrote:
> Hello.
>=20
> A supplier of a PCI mezzanine digital IO card has provided a linux 2.4
> driver as source code.  They have provided this code source with a
> license stating I won't redistribute it in anyway.
> My concern is that if I build this code into a module, I won't be able
> to distribute it to customers without violating either the GPL (by not
> distributing the source code), or the proprietary source code license
> as currently imposed by the supplier.
> From what I have read, this concern is only valid if the binary module
> is considered to be a 'derived work' of the kernel.  The module source
> directly includes the following kernel headers :

Take the code and write a specification for the device.
Should be fairly easy.
Someone else will pick up the spec and write a clean GPLed driver.

Like these, without the reverse engineering part:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Computer_science

=2D-=20
Greetings Michael.

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