Les Mikesell wrote:
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On the other hand, Linus was once widely quoted as saying that
loadable binary driver modules were not derivative works of the
kernel - and I believe that the initial popularity of depended on
that interpretation just as much as the wide use of glibc depends on
it not claiming programs that use it as derivatives. He has waffled
on that position more recently but there is no clear statement or
legal precedent.
You have made similar statements in the past while providing no
references every single time in the discussion even when asked. If you
truly believe in what you are saying, I would ask you (again) to
provide a direct quote. If he was so widely quoted on this as you
claim, this should be no problem at all. I very much doubt you will.
Does this direct quote from 1995 help your memory problem?
Claiming that I have memory problems after you have been misstating the
case for a long time without any references is quite rich. The below
quote or mail nowhere has a blanket statement saying binary modules are
not derivative works as you claim. He has expressed his opinions quite
clearly in many many discussions. Here is a collection
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/lk/COPYING-modules.txt
http://web.archive.org/web/20060202062935/people.redhat.com/arjanv/COPYING.modules
In short: It depends on the specific details. Note that Linus is only
one of the many copyright holders and other kernel developers intention
matters too and they clearly don't agree with binary modules at all.
http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html
"Another way to look at this - using the legal rather than the
moral viewpoint - is to just see module loading as "use" of the
kernel, rather than as linking against it. I prefer to explain
the rationale behind it using the _moral_ reason to do it, though."
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/msg/d5af1cc0012c3bec
Hence his exception to the GPL permitting use of the kernel interfaces.
I have told you before that there is no such exception and I quote from
the first link:
"Well, there really is no exception. However, copyright law obviously
hinges on the definition of "derived work", and as such anything can
always be argued on that point"
And if you read his statement there on why it is OK to have a non-GPL
AFS module, you might perhaps understand why I am perplexed that it is
not OK to have a non-GPL zfs module (ignoring the practical issues of
connecting the code for the moment).
You were told about the problems earlier on too and you choose to ignore
it. CDDL was deliberately designed to be incompatible with GPL
http://lwn.net/Articles/198171/
ZFS has patents and nobody wants to take the risk
http://kerneltrap.org/node/8066
ZFS (if and when someone ports it to Linux) might still be able to live
a life like AFS does as a third party kernel module which would not get
merged in the upstream kernel. Meanwhile, I would be betting on btrfs (
http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page) to get mature and
merged in as a alternative with similar features.
Rahul
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