Subject: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3
From: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
To: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
       Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@enter.net>,
       Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
       Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com>, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>,
       debian developer <debiandev@gmail.com>, david@lang.hm,
       Tarkan Erimer <tarkan@netone.net.tr>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070615202054.GA590@elte.hu>
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Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:28:32 +0100
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On Fri, 2007-06-15 at 22:20 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> That boundary is indeed fuzzy, because life is fuzzy too and the 
> possibilities are virtually unlimited. But one thing is pretty sure: as 
> long as some component is merely put alongside of a larger body of work, 
> even if that component has no life of its own without _some_ larger body 
> of work, that component is not necessarily part of a collective work and 
> does not necessarily fall under the GPL.

Not _necessarily_ a collective work. But not necessarily _not_ a
collective work either.

> For driver blobs that are shared between Windows and Linux it would be 
> hard to argue that they are derived from the Linux kernel. 

You're back to the 'derived work' thing again, which wasn't relevant.

> Merely linking to some larger body of work does not necessarily mean
> that the two become a collective work. No matter how much the FSF is
> trying to muddy the waters with the LGPL/GPL.

I think it's quite clear that the intent of the GPL _is_ to 'muddy the
waters', as you put it, and to indicate that bundling stuff together
_should_ put the non-derived parts under the GPL too; at least in some
circumstances. But still, nothing's true until it's ruled by a court.

-- 
dwmw2

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