Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161406AbWI2V0X (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:26:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1161419AbWI2V0X (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:26:23 -0400 Received: from thunk.org ([69.25.196.29]:17126 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1161406AbWI2V0V (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:26:21 -0400 Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:25:53 -0400 From: Theodore Tso To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Alan Cox , Helge Hafting , tglx@linutronix.de, Neil Brown , Michiel de Boer , James Bottomley , linux-kernel Subject: Re: GPLv3 Position Statement Message-ID: <20060929212553.GB11017@thunk.org> Mail-Followup-To: Theodore Tso , Linus Torvalds , Alan Cox , Helge Hafting , tglx@linutronix.de, Neil Brown , Michiel de Boer , James Bottomley , linux-kernel References: <17687.46268.156413.352299@cse.unsw.edu.au> <1159183895.11049.56.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1159200620.9326.447.camel@localhost.localdomain> <451CF22D.4030405@aitel.hist.no> <1159552021.13029.58.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1159554375.13029.67.camel@localhost.localdomain> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11 X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: tytso@thunk.org X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on thunker.thunk.org); SAEximRunCond expanded to false Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2050 Lines: 37 One of the things which I'm fond of pointing out is that all of the freedoms people would have to hack MacOS, especially MacOS 9, where all of the various "Mac Extensions" which changed and extended the UI of the Macintosh, would have completely disappeared if the FSF's idea of "derived works" was in fact the law of the land. That's because (a) Apple hated the fact that people dared to think that the UI has handed down on the stone tablets inscribed by Steve Jobs could be improved upon, and (b) the way those changes were made by patching jump tables so that code to extend the UI could be patched into the OS --- in effect, a dynamic link. Now, because Apple hated the fact that people dared to think they could improve on Apple's UI design, they frequently changed the jump table interfaces, forcing the people who wrote the "Mac Hacks" to follow a rapidly changing code stream --- much like what the Linux kernel does with its device driver interfaces. But Apple has *never* said that just because you dynamically link with MacOS, that instantly makes your MacOS a derived work, and so therefore as the copyright holder of MacOS, Apple could therefore have the right to control how, or even whether or not the Macintosh Extensions could ever exist. Thanks goodness, no sane court has ever ruled that the various Macintosh Extensions were a derived work, just because they lived in the same address space as MacOS and dynamically linked with MacOS, and in fact were **designed** only to work with MacOS, and very often used header files shipped by the Macintosh Programmer's Workbench. So don't be too quick to wish that the courts will use the FSF's pet definition of what derived works mean ---- you may find that in the end, you end up losing far more freedoms than you expect. - Ted - 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/