Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750705AbWLOF3J (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Dec 2006 00:29:09 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750706AbWLOF3J (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Dec 2006 00:29:09 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:45424 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750705AbWLOF3G (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Dec 2006 00:29:06 -0500 To: "Jeff V. Merkey" Cc: Scott Preece , Chris Wedgwood , Eric Sandeen , Christoph Hellwig , Linus Torvalds , Jeff Garzik , Greg KH , Jonathan Corbet , Andrew Morton , Martin Bligh , "Michael K. Edwards" , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: GPL only modules References: <20061214003246.GA12162@suse.de> <20061214005532.GA12790@suse.de> <458171C1.3070400@garzik.org> <20061214170841.GA11196@tuatara.stupidest.org> <20061214173827.GC3452@infradead.org> <20061214175253.GB12498@tuatara.stupidest.org> <458194B8.1090309@sandeen.net> <20061214183956.GA13692@tuatara.stupidest.org> <7b69d1470612141142k63cc7d11l89c0a7f26acc631a@mail.gmail.com> <4581A75C.9020509@wolfmountaingroup.com> From: Alexandre Oliva Organization: Red Hat OS Tools Group Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 03:28:00 -0200 In-Reply-To: <4581A75C.9020509@wolfmountaingroup.com> (Jeff V. Merkey's message of "Thu\, 14 Dec 2006 12\:34\:52 -0700") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.90 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1366 Lines: 29 On Dec 14, 2006, "Jeff V. Merkey" wrote: > FREE implies a transfer of ownsership It's about freedom, not price. And even then, it's the license that has not cost, not the copyright. > and you also have to contend with the Doctrine of Estoppel. i.e. if > someone has been using the code for over two years, and you have not > brought a cause of action, you are BARRED from doing so under the > Doctrine of Estoppel and statute of limitations. Sure, but we're not necessarily talking about code that is two years old. We're talking about future releases. Then, if someone interfaces with code that was already there before, they might claim they're still entitled to do so. But if it's new code they interface with, or new code they wrote after this clarification is published, would they still be entitled to estoppel? FWIW, IANAL. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} - 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/