Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751044AbWBBTL5 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 14:11:57 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751173AbWBBTL5 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 14:11:57 -0500 Received: from zcars04f.nortel.com ([47.129.242.57]:56545 "EHLO zcars04f.nortel.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751044AbWBBTL4 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 14:11:56 -0500 Message-ID: <43E25976.6090109@nortel.com> Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:11:50 -0600 From: "Christopher Friesen" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040115 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lee Revell CC: Ian Kester-Haney , linux-kernel Subject: Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders References: <200601302301.04582.brcha@users.sourceforge.net> <43E0E282.1000908@opersys.com> <43E1C55A.7090801@drzeus.cx> <1138891081.9861.4.camel@localhost.localdomain> <43E23C79.8050606@drzeus.cx> <441e43c90602021013j6edb2fa6m1142ef255040106d@mail.gmail.com> <1138906199.15691.54.camel@mindpipe> In-Reply-To: <1138906199.15691.54.camel@mindpipe> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 02 Feb 2006 19:11:53.0127 (UTC) FILETIME=[86C38370:01C6282C] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 847 Lines: 22 Lee Revell wrote: > What nvidia is doing is already illegal under the GPLv2. I don't think that's been legally proven. The question is whether it is a derivative work. If their driver core (aka the binary blob) is common to all their drivers (across multiple OS's), it could be argued that the binary blob itself is not a derivative work. One could almost view it as firmware. If they ship the binary blob as well as code that interfaces the binary blob with the kernel, and the end-user compiles the code together and loads it into the kernel, does that necessarily violate the GPL? Chris - 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/