Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 4 Feb 2008 07:04:50 -0800 | From | Greg KH <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] USB: mark USB drivers as being GPL only |
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On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 12:43:11PM +0100, Matthew wrote: > Hi everybody, > > >Over two years ago, the Linux USB developers stated that they believed > >there was no way to create a USB kernel driver that was not under the > >GPL. This patch moves the USB apis to enforce that decision. > > >There are no known closed source USB drivers in the wild, so this patch > >should cause no problems. > > hm, I'm not sure, but will your patch make Samsung's Unified Linux > Driver for printing & scanning stop working? > http://org.downloadcenter.samsung.com/downloadfile/ContentsFile.aspx?CDSite=DE&CttFileID=801111&CDCttType=DR&ModelType=N&ModelName=SCX-4521F&VPath=DR/200707/20070720165133984_UnifiedLinuxDriver.tar.gz
No, in looking at that package, I do not see any kernel modules, just userspace programs. They must be using the usbfs interface to the kernel from userspace, a perfict example of how a vendor can control USB device from userspace, without needing a kernel driver :)
So it should continue to work just fine.
> another Manufacturer / Candidate I'm worrying about is Brother: > http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html > Brother is providing opensource cups drivers (kudos to the developers > @ Brother for that!), the sane-drivers however seem to be closed > source, will those work ?
Both sane and cups are userspace programs, using usbfs and the kernel usblp driver respectively, and should not see anything change at all.
> I'm no developer, just a heavy user ;) so unfortunately I can't tell > whether those drivers are dependent on being NOT GPL,
You would be seeing some warnings in the kernel log for the past 2 years when using these products, about how the symbols were going to be changed in the future. If not, you are fine.
thanks,
greg k-h
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