Return-path: Received: from ksp.mff.cuni.cz ([195.113.26.206]:56360 "EHLO atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755006Ab0LCONf (ORCPT ); Fri, 3 Dec 2010 09:13:35 -0500 Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 15:13:25 +0100 From: Pavel Machek To: Ted Ts'o , Alan Cox , "Luis R. Rodriguez" , Greg KH , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless , David Miller , "John W. Linville" , Stephen Hemminger , "Perez-Gonzalez, Inaky" , Charles Marker , Jouni Malinen , Kevin Hayes , Zhifeng Cai , Don Breslin , Doug Dahlby , Julia Lawall Subject: Re: Challenges with doing hardware bring up with Linux first Message-ID: <20101203141324.GA2371@ucw.cz> References: <20101121130236.GE23423@thunk.org> <20101121172906.GD3703@kroah.com> <20101121203124.1ba8212e@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20101121214407.GH23423@thunk.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii In-Reply-To: <20101121214407.GH23423@thunk.org> Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Hi! > > Which we know in practice they won't. They'll sit on fixes (often > > security fixes) and tweak and add private copies of features. In turn the > > Linux one could then only keep up by adding features itself - which would > > have to be GPL to stop the same abuse continuing. > > > > It's a nice idea but the corporations exist to make money and adding > > proprietary custom stack add-ons is clearly a good move on their part to > > do that. > > Hence my recommendation that if someone is going to do the work to > create a 802.11 layer that has shims that work on multiple operating > systems, it be GPL with explicit exceptions to allow said layer to > work on legacy operating systems like QNX, et. al. That way it forces Is the exception even neccessary? GPL has explicit permission to link against non-GPL 'system' and 'compiler' libraries --which seems to be exactly this. -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html