Messages in this thread | | | From | "Hua Zhong" <> | Subject | RE: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause? | Date | Wed, 10 Dec 2003 11:51:05 -0800 |
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> No it wouldn't. > > Microsoft very much _has_ a binary API to their drivers, in a way that > Linux doesn't. > > MS has to have that binary API exactly because they live in a > binary-only world. They've basically put that requirement on themselves > by having binary-only distributions. > > So your argument doesn't fly. To Microsoft, a "driver" is just another > external entity, with documented API's, and they indeed ship > their _own_ drivers that way too. And all third-party drivers do the same > thing. > > So there is no analogy to the Linux case. In Linux, no fixed > binary API exists, and the way normal drivers are distributed are as > GPL'd source code.
With all due respect, I find the above hardly convincing.
With your own argument, how would you convince a judge to believe it without understanding all the subtle technical differences? (and we're just taking what you said about "one offers stable ABI the other not" for granted for now)
Both Windows and Linux are operating systems, that's the first thing. Whether they are open source or not is just a secondary difference. How could this fundamentally change the question "if a driver is a derived work of the OS or not"?
In either case the driver would not work "without the host OS". In either case, the same driver binary would probably not work across versions. Both are pretty strong points in your argument. Moreover, in the Windows world, a non-trivial user space application very possibly havs different binaries for different versions - hey, Windows may have a less stable user space ABI than Linux, so they could very well claim more rights over user space applications, can't they?
I'm not arguing because I am afraid of being sued, just to clarify. To be frank the chance that I'm sued by kernel copyright holders for writing a binary only module is slimer than being sued by SCO for using Linux freely. The chance that I would lose is also slimer than IBM would lose to SCO.
Hua
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