> Yes - it's a 1:1 forward port of the patch Hauppauge released for 3.19 > (apparently with the goal to support as many of their devices as > possible). Agreed. > >> the patch also contains materials that I >> suspect Silicon Labs would consider proprietary and confidential, its >> definitely derived works from proprietary SILABS drivers. > > Does anyone know for sure what the legal situation is when a HW > manufacturer releases a patch (as Hauppauge did) that is clearly > derived from GPL code yet at the same time derived from non-free code? > My interpretation is that by putting it out, they've released a GPL > derived work, which they can legally do only if they agree to comply > with the GPL, therefore any other license notice would be void. > But as I pointed out before I'm not a lawyer... You've raised a valid question, I don't know the answer. Others might. I'm not a lawyer either, but if Hauppauge are not careful then they may be violating an NDA, especially as the patch doesn't appear to come with a sign-off, and leans very heavily on intellectual property of Silicon Labs. I think in its current format the patch probably wouldn't be acceptable for merge unless Hauppauge themselves provide a sign-off. Side note: obviously the fact it's such a large patch would require it to be split into patches to each sub-system/card, but that's largely beside the point of my larger concern. Perhaps Hauppauge have legal approval to derive GPL drivers from proprietary ,aterials, in which case I'm just making noise and a sign-off will be soon to follow. I'll reach out to them and ask. -- Steven Toth - Kernel Labs http://www.kernellabs.com
