Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 09 Mar 2006 11:29:08 -0500 | From | Phillip Susi <> | Subject | Re: [future of drivers?] a proposal for binary drivers. |
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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.
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