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Ar Mer, 2006-09-27 am 10:58 +0200, ysgrifennodd Jan Engelhardt: > I think Linus once said that he does not consider the kernel to > become part of a combined work when an application uses the kernel. COPYING top of the kernel source tree. > I tend to agree, it's gray (unless Linus explicitly colorizes it) -- > IIRC the GPL allows a GPL and closed program to interact if they do so > using 'standard' interfaces, i.e. passing a file as argument, or > shell redirection, communicating over a pipe or a socket, etc. > But OTOH, linking code makes it a combined work. No. The definition of a derivative work is a legal one and not a technical one. Take a look at the history of the objective C compiler front end for gcc. It is possible that linked code is not derivative or pipe using code is derivative - consider for example RPC. Simply making a linux device driver make the same function calls to the kernel by RPC messages over a pipe type device would not change its status. Alan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ | ||||||||||
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