Re: [future of drivers?] a proposal for binary drivers.

[Phillip Susi]

Luke-Jr wrote:
> Or Linux can remain GPL'd, which prohibits binary drivers *legally*, and back 
> this by keeping a non-stable API which prohibits binary drivers 
> *technically*.

If binary drivers are illegal, then why have ATI and nvidia not been 
sued yet?

Interacting with the kernel does not make your software a derived work. 
 A derived work is if you make your own kernel that is very close to a 
straight copy of the Linux kernel.  The right to create new works that 
interact with others ( and therefore, require some understanding of how 
the other work operates ) is specifically protected by the US copyright 
act.

This is why it is legal to reverse engineer a binary driver to gain an 
understanding of how the hardware operates, publish that information, 
and then use that information to create new software to operate that 
hardware.


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/