Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751316AbVKAVwP (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:52:15 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751321AbVKAVwO (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:52:14 -0500 Received: from [67.137.28.189] ([67.137.28.189]:55426 "EHLO vger.utah-nac.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751316AbVKAVwN (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:52:13 -0500 Message-ID: <4367D04B.80906@utah-nac.org> Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 13:30:03 -0700 From: "Jeff V. Merkey" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040510 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lee Revell Cc: Michael Buesch , alex@alexfisher.me.uk, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Would I be violating the GPL? References: <5449aac20511010949x5d96c7e0meee4d76a67a06c01@mail.gmail.com> <200511012000.21176.mbuesch@freenet.de> <1130875080.22089.14.camel@mindpipe> In-Reply-To: <1130875080.22089.14.camel@mindpipe> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1690 Lines: 53 Lee Revell wrote: >On Tue, 2005-11-01 at 20:00 +0100, Michael Buesch wrote: > > >>On Tuesday 01 November 2005 18:49, Alexander Fisher wrote: >> >> >>>Hello. >>> >>>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. >> >> > >Seems excessive, why not just use a kernel debugger to capture all PIO >traffic to the device and write a driver based on that? > >Lee > > > That's legal, and good advice. Jeff >- >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/ > > > - 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/