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    SubjectRe: Would I be violating the GPL?
    Date
    On Tuesday 01 November 2005 18:44, you wrote:
    > No, don't take the code without the suppliers permission.

    I interpreted his text as if he already has permission to use the code.

    > It contains
    > trade secrets and you can get into a ot of trouble if there's an
    > agreement between the two of you. Contact the supplier. Tell them to
    > abstract away thre kernel headers, or rewrite to remove them, or grant
    > you persmission to open source the driver.

    I did not say he should open source the driver. That will give trouble.
    I suggested to write a _device_ specification. Driver specific things do not
    care.

    > The UK is the land of
    > frivilous lawsuits (I should know a lot about this :-) ), so don;t
    > expose yourself and breach any agreements.

    Sure.

    > Jeff
    >
    >
    > Michael Buesch wrote:
    >
    > >On Tuesday 01 November 2005 18:49, Alexander Fisher wrote:
    > >
    > >
    > >>Hello.
    > >>
    > >>A supplier of a PCI mezzanine digital IO card has provided a linux 2.4
    > >>driver as source code. They have provided this code source with a
    > >>license stating I won't redistribute it in anyway.
    > >>My concern is that if I build this code into a module, I won't be able
    > >>to distribute it to customers without violating either the GPL (by not
    > >>distributing the source code), or the proprietary source code license
    > >>as currently imposed by the supplier.
    > >>From what I have read, this concern is only valid if the binary module
    > >>is considered to be a 'derived work' of the kernel. The module source
    > >>directly includes the following kernel headers :
    > >>
    > >>
    > >
    > >Take the code and write a specification for the device.
    > >Should be fairly easy.
    > >Someone else will pick up the spec and write a clean GPLed driver.
    > >
    > >Like these, without the reverse engineering part:
    > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
    > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall#Computer_science
    > >
    > >
    > >
    >
    >
    >

    --
    Greetings Michael.
    [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature]
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