Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:51:14 +1000 | Subject | Re: DRM drivers with closed source user-space: WAS [Patch 0/3] Resubmit VIA Chrome9 DRM via_chrome9 for upstream | From | Dave Airlie <> |
| |
2009/7/21 Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>: > On Mon, 2009-07-20 at 15:38 +0200, Thomas Hellström wrote: >> Politics: >> It's true that sometimes some people don't like the code or what it >> does. But when this is the underlying cause of NAK-ing a driver I think >> it's very important that this is clearly stated, instead of inventing >> various random reasons that can easily be argued against. How should the >> driver writer otherwise get it right? Man-years might be spent fixing up >> drivers that will never get upstream anyway. >> >> I think it would help a lot of there was a documented set of driver >> features that were required and sufficient for a DRM driver to go >> upstream. It could look something like >> >> * Kernel coding style obeyed. Passing checkpatch. > > * fully functional GPL user-space driver. > > How can you argue that something as tailor made as a DRM interface can > be used without it being a derived work?
For a start the userspace is MIT licensed generally, also with architectures such as gallium3D you can't easily say a driver is derived from the kernel interface. Actually generally the argument is the drm interface would be derived work of the userspace. Kernel hackers aren't lawyers so I cringe whenever one of them says derived work, without understanding that 80-90% of the code is probably in the userspace 3D driver, so proving its derived from a 1000 line kernel interface is where it gets messy, and hence why a number of lawyers for Intel have already come down on thinking it was acceptable and from what I can see are still shipping kernels with an open drm but a closed userspace.
So I'm not saying I agree with having these I'm just saying its not your 1000 line regulatory daemon case.
Dave. -- 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/
| |