On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 09:24:54PM -0700, Adam J. Richter wrote: > I do not believe the keyspan_usa*_fw.h files are illegal by > themselves. However, compiling them, keyspan.c and 402 other include > files generates a keyspan.o file that has content covered by many > different copyrights.
Ah, now I see why you are saying that. > In order to copy that keyspan.o file, generally, you need > permission from each of the copyright owners. Many of them have given > you permission, as stated by in the contents of those files or in text > that accompanies them, such as the BSD copying conditions. It can be > argued that Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox and perhaps others have aso given > you permission by some of their statements on this issue. However, > the other copyright owners who put their code under the version 2 of > the GNU General Public License have not granted you this permission. > That is, the GPL does not give you permission to copy a file whose > contains further restrictions beyond the GPL, and, to the best of my > knowledge, these authors have not given you or the public at large > permission to copy the files without meeting the requirements of the > GPL. Therefore, copying the resulting keyspan.o files infringes the > copyrights owned by the authors of any other GPL'ed any content that > keyspan.o comprises, and there are many such copyright owners. Thanks for a description of why you feel this way. I understand your comments better now. > You might wonder why am I also concerned about distribution > of the kernel _sources_. First of all, I believe that there may be a > contributory infringement problem with machinations (my word) where > the end result is the delivery of a work whose distribution is > forbidden by copyright. In the case of the stock kernel, the build > process does this for the keyspan.o file. Secondly, I think there may > be an indirect or contributory infringement issue from distributing > such kernel sources with the reasonable expectation that many > recipients will compile and unknowingly illegally copy keyspan.o > as a result. Thanks, I understand your concerns, and am glad you brought all of this up. Hopefully by working with people from Keyspan, this can be resolved soon. greg k-h
