Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751124AbXBPKfc (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 Feb 2007 05:35:32 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751125AbXBPKfc (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 Feb 2007 05:35:32 -0500 Received: from gepetto.dc.ltu.se ([130.240.42.40]:41621 "EHLO gepetto.dc.ltu.se" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751124AbXBPKfc (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 Feb 2007 05:35:32 -0500 Message-ID: <45D588F6.6080908@student.ltu.se> Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:35:34 +0100 From: Richard Knutsson User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (X11/20070212) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: davids@webmaster.com CC: "Linux-Kernel@Vger. Kernel. Org" Subject: Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1025 Lines: 22 David Schwartz wrote: > Most certainly the spirit of the GPL is that it's fair use to tinker with a > work to get it to work on your hardware. Is it not fair use to share that > with other licensees of the original work? Should Microsoft be able to > prevent me from distributing patches to Windows that fix bugs or add > features? > Yes they can, since you have (most likely) breached the contract! To fix a bug in Windows you will have to de-assemble their code (if you are not on their pay-role, of course) and that is explicitly forbidden. You are in no way allowed to read how Windows does things. Or you may just have made random changes and it happens to work, I still don't think they would like it (what other thing may happened by that patch?) Richard Knutsson - 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/