From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>
To: "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@utah-nac.org>
Cc: <alex@alexfisher.me.uk>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: RE: Would I be violating the GPL?
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 07:26:55 -0800
Message-ID: <MDEHLPKNGKAHNMBLJOLKIEDBIBAB.davids@webmaster.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
In-Reply-To: <200511011915.49480.s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk>
Importance: Normal
Reply-To: davids@webmaster.com
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 1252
Lines: 31


> If you even take 2 minutes to actually inspect the NVIDIA video
> driver sources
> (extract the .run file with --extract-only, and cd to usr/src/nv)
> you'll find
> the "glue" which is provided as source, but not under the GPL,
> does indeed
> #include kernel headers at compile time.
>
> It does not distribute them, however, but it is completely nonsensical to
> class this as having "no dependency". It has a compile time and runtime
> dependency on the current kernel. What driver wouldn't?

	If I write source code that includes "stdio.h", I can do whatever I want
with that source code, and I'm not bound by the license of any particular
file that happens to be called "stdio.h". On the other hand, if I compile
that source code including *your* "stdio.h" file, the resulting compiled
output is likely a derived work of your file.

	So the source code is not a derivative work of any GPL'd files. The
compiled driver may be, precisely because it contains bits and pieces of the
header files.

	DS


-
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/