Oded Arbel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I do not think that the argument you describe will stand in a court > of law. on two cases that I know, that were on the way to the court > house, the parties eventually settled out side the court by the > violating party agreeing to distribute the non GLPed code > seperatly. in both cases the copyright owner of the code backed off > after is was explictly stated by the violator that the product in > question is no longer in violation because it does do something > (even if it's a token effort) interesting and useful w/o the GPLed > code in question.
1) Oded, can you give pointers to the two cases you mention? 2) Yet another follow-up question (to everybody). Assume that a program does something non-trivial, interesting, and important, and can actually be used for a lot of different purposes. Assume that the only reason the creator wants to make a kernel module out of it is because one particular interesting application is related to the functionality that belongs to the OS domain rather than application domain, and the creator wants to make such a module available as a product. Other products, unrelated to Linux, are being developed as well. Assume it is provable that the code has a right to exist without the Linux kernel. If the author creates a thin "kernel hook" layer that only uses the kernel API and his s/w API, slaps GPL on it, and then creates a 2 modules - one closed with his functionality, and another serving as enabler, GPLed, will that be acceptable? Thus, there will be a closed module whose functionality is not dependent on the kernel, and a GPLed module whose sole purpose is to enable usage of that functionality inside the kernel. How does this sound? Thanks again to everybody who participates. The thread may seem to be "yet another boring commies-vs-capitalists discussion," but to me at least it is very interesting (on a personal level no less than on a business one), and - I believe - very much on topic. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] "If it ain't broken, it has not got enough features yet." ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
