Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751855AbWLQEKQ (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:10:16 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751853AbWLQEKP (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:10:15 -0500 Received: from thunk.org ([69.25.196.29]:51827 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751840AbWLQEKO (ORCPT ); Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:10:14 -0500 Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:10:17 -0500 From: Theodore Tso To: Ricardo Galli Cc: Linus Torvalds , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: GPL only modules [was Re: [GIT PATCH] more Driver core patches for 2.6.19] Message-ID: <20061217041017.GA29035@thunk.org> Mail-Followup-To: Theodore Tso , Ricardo Galli , Linus Torvalds , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <200612161927.13860.gallir@gmail.com> <200612170122.13246.gallir@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <200612170122.13246.gallir@gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.12-2006-07-14 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: 2446 Lines: 44 On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 01:22:12AM +0100, Ricardo Galli wrote: > OK, let assume your perspective of the history is the valid and real one, > then, ?where are all lawsits against other big GPL only projects? For example > libqt/kdelibs. You can hardly provide any example where the GPL wasn't hold > in court. There's no need for lawsuits against things like libqt. The question is whether someone who writes a commercial program that happens to dynamically link against libqt is in fact in violation of copyright claims. In such a case, the owners of libqt would have to sue the commercial application writer, not the other way around. There haven't been any such cases, mostly because (a) the FUD generated by the FSF about GPL vs. LGPL has generally been enough to cause application authors to avoid using GPL'ed code even if it would be legally defensible in court, and (b) I personally suspect that the FSF has deliberately not tried to make a test case out of a commercial application dynamically linking against a GPL'ed library. In point of fact, if you compile libss from e2fsprogs on a Solaris machine, and then let the Sun Enterprise Authentication Mechanism (a propietary version of Kerberos v5) link against that version of libss (as opposed to the one derived from the MIT Kerberos version of libss), you can have a propietary Sun binary linking against libss which will called will dynamically pull in the GPL'ed version of readline (or the BSD licensed editline library, whichever one it finds first in its search path). Quick! Is there a GPL violation involved, and if so, who should the FSF try to sue first? There are indeed plenty of cases where the GPL has been upheld in a court of law, but usually it's some straightforward case of an embedded version of Linux being used without releasing source. As far as I know, there has been no case on point about GPL and dynamic linking, and I personally suspect it's at least partially because the FSF is afraid it would lose such a case. (As I've said, at least one law professor of mine from the MIT Sloan School of Management has told me that in her opinion the FSF's theory would be "laughed out of court"). - 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/