Re: MODULE_LICENSE("GPL")??

From: Mark Hounschell
Date: Thu Aug 02 2012 - 08:19:38 EST


On 08/01/2012 05:43 PM, Alan Cox wrote:
On Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:24:33 -0400
Mark Hounschell <dmarkh@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

What would happen if NVIDIA used this define in their proprietary driver? I

Ask a lawyer but I believe Nvidia has more sense than that both
politically and legally. They walk a very fine line as it is (and IMHO
the wrong side of it but one day I guess a court will figure out where
the line actually is).

ask because I am currently in a situation where I believe I may be about to
use a product that may be doing this very thing. We had to sign a license
agreement to get the kernel driver source for this product. What we
received contained the kernel driver source and user land library stuff.
The source code for the kernel driver has MODULE_LICENSE("GPL") defined.
The only license info in the package received was NOT the GPL license.

You cannot combine GPL and non GPL code, and since you are aware of the
fact there is a problem then you are probably a knowing infringer, which
is not a good situation to be in (triple damages in the US). If the module
license tag says it is GPL then I would talk to your lawyer about
it - you might actually be able to argue that it is therefore GPL
but I'm not a lawyer and you *really* don't want to try that stunt without
advice!

On this particular vendors web site they offer unrestricted downloads of
binary packages for their product/s that are for specific DIST kernels. But
to get the source requires signing a license agreement that is NOT GPL.

Talk to the Free Software Conservancy and gpl-violations.org.

Beyond that have a detailed discussion with your lawyer on the licence,
on "knowing infringment" and in particular check your insurance as most
legal insurance won't cover you in such a situation. If you redistribute
such material you are likely to also be liable, which can be very
expensive.

All of this comes down to one thing - you need to ask a lawyer legal
questions. I think you can already answer the "what happens if you get
caught" political questions. Given that maybe you don't need to ask a
lawyer but just say no ?


OK, thanks. Just to verify they actually had a "need" to specify GPL, I changed it to proprietary to see if they in fact were using GPL-only symbols. It compiled without complaint. As I've seen in the past, and one reason why our drivers are GPL, they won't even build if a GPL exported symbol is referenced. IE

Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST 1 modules
FATAL: modpost: GPL-incompatible module somemod.ko uses GPL-only symbol 'somesymbol'

This particular driver does in fact build cleanly after changing the GPL to PROPRIETARY. I haven't actually purchased the product yet so am unable to load it, but can I assume that if I don't have a build issue when specifying PROPRIETARY, that they are in fact NOT using GPL symbols and maybe they just thought they needed to specify GPL for some reason or another?

Thanks
Mark


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