The Kororaa project just issued a final statement about the GPL issue which arose earlier this year. "At this stage I have decided to take the opinion that non-GPL modules are violations of the Linux kernel and are also unethical. This means we will not build non-GPL drivers against the kernel and as such Kororaa will not be shipping non-GPL modules in any future products. Of course if the end user believes non-GPL drivers are acceptable, then he/she is free to install them on their own system. For myself however, I am using the Linux kernel to create a product. If it was not for Linux then it would not exist and I therefore have a responsibility to respect the license of the kernel."
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Member since:2006-01-24
So, since the Nvidia binary module does not require kernel headers to compile, wheres the beef?
I dont see anything tricky here at all - Nvidia have simply created a video driver API, stuck it in the kernel under GPL and compiled an application (the driver) that makes calls to it.
Every program run on a linux system makes system calls - and the argument that the POSIX API is well defined and programs that use it are somehow exempt from the GPL's taint - without a rational explanation why some other API, like NVidia's shim, doesn't provide exactly the same 'exemption' holds no water in my view.
The truth is that purely descriptive APIs are unprotectable, and may be freely used without the resulting work being encumbered by the originals license.
This is a double-edged sword - if it were not true, then Linux would probably be unable to legally implement much of the UNIX-like functionality it does, and software like WINE, Samba etc. would similarly be illegal.
There are ways to write APIs such that they would theoretically taint a program compiled against them by copying protectable elements into the resulting binary, but i've never seen any analysis of just what the scope of this issue is. It would seem, based on WINE, that the entire Win32 API is not copyrightable.
If you don't use GPL code in your program, and your programs compiled binary does not contain protectable elements from a GPLed program, then your program is not affected by the GPL, and can be bundled as 'mere aggregation' It's as simple as that.
Member since:
2005-10-02
It depends whether or not the compiled driver links against the GPL'ed kernel. And if depends on the nature of the translation layer between the kernel, the wrapper and the driver.
Very very tricky.
But aggregation stops when you start linking to an application (e.g. requiring GPL'ed headers to compile).