andrzej zaborowski wrote: > Anything released to the public by anyone is legal as long as it > doesn't include (in it's content) parts of other people's > copyrighted work. In this sense, kqemu can import whatever symbols > it wants and have whatever license tag because when you download > kqemu you're not downloading any piece of kernel's code as a part of > kqemu.
That point is not correct. Look up the legal terms "indirect infringement" and "contributory infringement". If an author distributes something whose principal use will be to facilitate copyright infringement (i.e. by the users), then the author may be found guilty of indirect infringement. Both indirect infringement of GPL'd code, by distributing module source code which depends on overly-intimate details of the kernel to be useful, and direct infringement, by virtue of distributing compiled binaries which use long inline definitions from kernel header files, are among the theories about what may or may not be infringing. The specially-marked symbols in Linux kernel source are guidelines and indications of intention, which may prove relevant in a court of law if judgement is required on a borderline case. Note that I'm not saying anything about kqemu. Only pointing out that it's false to say that distributing code you wrote yourself is never copyright infringement. > Now, whether using kqemu together with a linux kernel will still be > legal is a different issue, but here the question is whether the user > is breaking the law, not the author. The GPL doesn't restrict linking and using whatever combination you like. It only restricts distribution, which the user in your example isn't doing. So end users are unlikely to be deemed guilty of anything. -- Jamie _______________________________________________ Qemu-devel mailing list Qemu-devel@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
