I do not know what was the original status of MOSIX or what the allegations
were, but the setting you described here will violate the GPL as it is
usually interpeted (again : IANAL and I don't think this was ever conteseted
in court) IF :
the binary code will link in run time (or in any way run in cooperation
with) a GPLed code, while at the same time not doing anything useful w/o
having the GPLed code around.
of course - Linus' attitude as described in this forum a number of times
would probably mean you won't get sued..
Oded
--
Subject: Re: The ethics of detecting errors (was Re: Why isn't hardware ...)
[..]
But cheer up -- we could be selling tobacco. It's not like software kills
people if used as intended.
-- David Chase, speaking for myself
----- Original Message -----
From: "Amnon Shiloh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 3:32 AM
Subject: Re: making a non-GPLed module
> Oleg Goldshmidt <ogoldshmidt(at-nospam)computer.org Wrote:
>
> > One recent controversy involved MOSIX, who allegedly violated GPL by
> > hacking the kernel itself rather than sticking to writing modules.
>
> We in the MOSIX team did not violate any copyright or do anything illegal:
> It is true that parts of our software did not comply with the GPL,
> but there was no reason they should have.
>
> The software we released in the first versions of MOSIX for Linux-2.2.x
> could be divided to 5 different categories:
>
> 1) Some user sources - GPL (although they didn't have to be so);
> 2) Modifications to existing Linux kernel files - GPL;
> 3) New kernel files that #include or even borrow a few lines
> from the Linux kernel - GPL;
> 4) New kernel files, mainly header-files (#include) that do not #include
> or otherwise use a single character from the Linux kernel -
> These had a dual-license:
> a) GPL for the world
> b) private for our own use as authors
> 5) Binary code (eg. module) derived from our sources and contained no
single
> character from GPL-code and did not even #include any GPL'd file, only
> headers from category #4 used in our private/owner capacity.
>
> Since our binary module did not contain anything from Linux, we could
issue
> it in any way we pleased: we did not even need to consider the GPL or
> obtain any license or permission from anybody whatsoever.
>
> Amnon Shiloh -- the HUJI MOSIX group.
>
>
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