From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263840AbTLJSW2 (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 13:22:28 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263891AbTLJSW1 (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 13:22:27 -0500 Received: from astound-64-85-224-253.ca.astound.net ([64.85.224.253]:33291 "EHLO master.linux-ide.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263840AbTLJSWU (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 13:22:20 -0500 Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 10:16:37 -0800 (PST) From: Andre Hedrick To: Linus Torvalds cc: Arjan van de Ven , Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu, Kendall Bennett , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Linus, Thanks for the clarification ! So as I suspected and validated via other means, the content of the headers are not an issue as it relates to GPL as many claim. Well I have gotten side requests that I was late in joining the thread party and I am distracting you from patch merging. This is a fair point, and we can restart after 2.6.0 is out. Cheers, Andre Hedrick LAD Storage Consulting Group On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Andre Hedrick wrote: > > > > So why not do the removal of the inlines to real .c files and quit playing > > games with bogus attempts to bleed taint into the inprotectable api? > > The inlines have nothing to do with _anything_. > > Trust me, a federal judge couldn't care less about some very esoteric > technical detail. I don't know who brought up inline functions, but they > aren't what would force the GPL. > > What has meaning for "derived work" is whether it stands on its own or > not, and how tightly integrated it is. If something works with just one > particular version of the kernel - or depends on things like whether the > kernel was compiled with certain options etc - then it pretty clearly is > very tightly integrated. > > Don't think that copyright would depend on any technicalities. > > Linus >