On Tuesday 01 November 2005 18:49, Alexander Fisher wrote:
Hello.
A supplier of a PCI mezzanine digital IO card has provided a linux 2.4
driver as source code. They have provided this code source with a
license stating I won't redistribute it in anyway.
My concern is that if I build this code into a module, I won't be able
to distribute it to customers without violating either the GPL (by not
distributing the source code), or the proprietary source code license
as currently imposed by the supplier.
From what I have read, this concern is only valid if the binary module
is considered to be a 'derived work' of the kernel. The module source
directly includes the following kernel headers :
Take the code and write a specification for the device.
Should be fairly easy.
Someone else will pick up the spec and write a clean GPLed driver.
Like these, without the reverse engineering part:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Computer_science