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.”
Obviously guy never heard of the BSD licence, the LGPL or the MIT licence.
He is talking about linking modules to the kernel. That cannot be done under any of the licences you mention. Though fans of the BSD licence and others would like people to forget it, sometimes functionality is more important than licence wars, and Linux wins on functionality almost every time, even if that doesn’t mean the BSDs aren’t damn good.
Yes, at the bare minimum the MIT and BSD licences are useable, you can have something less restrictive than the GPL linked to the GPL code – hell, you could release a module under the ISC licence or even the public domain if one wished and they would be entirely valid for linking to the kernel.
Something with less restrictions than the GPL can be linked to the GPL code, there can be less, the effect is that a person can work with the code under the GPL or the free licence.
Perhaps if you read more you’d understand these concepts of licensing. This has nothing to do with your supposed war, this is simple fact, I can put my code under as few restrictions as I want and if the restrictions I impose are less than those of the GPL, the code I make can be linked or even relicenced as GPL by anyone.
Something with less restrictions than the GPL can be linked to the GPL code, there can be less, the effect is that a person can work with the code under the GPL or the free licence.
No, if you link to code under the GPL you are obligated to release code under the GPL, unless you do not distribute the binary. If you link to code under other licences your code cannot be distributed with GPL’ed code. There are exceptions for binaries linking to libraries.
Perhaps if you read more you’d understand these concepts of licensing.
If you wrote more clearly I’d understand you more correctly. If you didn’t insult people they wouldn’t respond in kind. If my grandmother had wheels she’d have been a wagon.
No, if you link to code under the GPL you are obligated to release code under the GPL, unless you do not distribute the binary. If you link to code under other licences your code cannot be distributed with GPL’ed code. There are exceptions for binaries linking to libraries.
If you wrote more clearly I’d understand you more correctly. If you didn’t insult people they wouldn’t respond in kind. If my grandmother had wheels she’d have been a wagon.
That’s an extraordinarily patronising tone for someone who clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
The GPL has a requirement that code linking to GPL software must be “at least as Free”. Such a licence is then regarded as being “GPL-compatible”. There are a whole gamut of GPL-compatible licences, which you can view here:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicens…
For the record, the (non-ad clause) BSD licence is included in this this list. There would be absolutely no problem in including a Linux kernel module released under the BSD licence — as the original poster said.
I stand corrected. For the record, though it is indeed on that list, I don’t regard the BSD licences as “at least as free” as the GPL. Thus the confusion.
Well, since there are less restrictions on it, it’s more free, just read the two and compare which is more complecated and restrictive.
Or reading it the other way, the BSD licence allows the developer to impose restrictions on other users and developers (i.e. “no you can’t see the source code”). So in that way it’s less free.
GPL is the same, “impose restrictions”, but at least with BSD you chose the restrictions, that’s the diference.
Edited 2006-10-03 23:31
at least with BSD you chosee the restrictions, that’s the diference.
With the GPL you can “choose the restrictions” by not using GPL’ed software. Other than that the restrictions are in plain sight for everyone to see. Some people argue that the GPL is legalese, but in comparison with e.g. the MS EULA it’s positively baby-talk. And I mean that in a good way.
> No, if you link to code under the GPL you are obligated to release code under the GPL, unless you
> do not distribute the binary. If you link to code under other licences your code cannot be distributed
> with GPL’ed code. There are exceptions for binaries linking to libraries.
So you are saying if I release code (full source and docs) that has a more free licence than GPL (ie for example if I put it into the public domain – free for all to use anyway they want) that GPL requires that the code be restricted more?
What little code I write is for two reasons, (a) to solve a problem I have, (b) to give out example code to help other solve simular problems. I want people to use my code freely, without guilt or restrictions.
If what you say about GPL is true, I can see why so many people don’t trust it.
No no…
The sources can have any less protective license you would like. But if your project contains GPL’ed sources your binary must be released as GPL. But the source files you write can have any free, less protective license.
Yes. But that binary will still have to be released as GPL.
Your sources can have a less protective license than the GPL and therefore be GPL-compatible. But the resulting binary contains GPL’ed code and therefore the license for the binary is GPL.
Only your sources have a different license.
Perhaps if you read more on the subject you would better grasp the concepts of licensing.
s/non-gpl/gpl-incompatible
Picky picky.
On the other hand, nobody has ever heard of the Kororaa project before, so perhaps it’s just fair.
I want GPL’d Nvidia drivers. I want GPL’d ATI drivers. We aren’t going to get these by just sitting around and waiting. Nor will we get them if we let RMS run around and have tizzy fits all the time, or if we become like him in spewing vitriol around.
Nvidia drivers are a clear violation IMO. But how do we as users go about showing nvidia and ati that we cannot be ignored and that we want open source drivers?
Rather than standing up every few months denouncing nvidia and ati, we as a community need to have an intelligent discussion and forum on the topic, about how we can respectfully address these companies, without condemning them to hell.
The FSF and RMS in particular is very eager to make a holy war over issues like this, and GNU/Linux can’t afford to do that. We can’t be seen as bats*** crazy religious nuts. We may believe that corporate software makers are drawing the noose tighter with DRM and the like, but many don’t see it that way…it’s just software after all; even if it’s what drives the modern world.
The free (MIT’d, not GPL’ed) ATI drivers tend to work rather well, although there are still bugs in the hardware that have to be worked around, and reverse engineering that needs to be done, so that the R300 drivers don’t fall back to software for many operations. As a matter of fact, in many operations, the free R300 drivers are faster than the closed fglrx drivers (unfortunately, they do tend to hit software paths for many other operations).
There is a free Nvidia driver in the works too, at nouveau.freedesktop.org, although it’s far from usable.
“Nvidia drivers are a clear violation IMO. But how do we as users go about showing nvidia and ati that we cannot be ignored and that we want open source drivers? “
They are only a violation to be linked to the kernel and distributed. They are not a violation if the user installs and links them. All this means is that distributions can not distribute them, but just like other OS I can install and use the drivers. Personally I don’t care if they are open source or not, just that it makes the hardware work. You may want Open Source drivers, I for one don’t care. Linux is an OS, NOT a religion.
Linux is an OS, NOT a religion.
Linux is the OS, free and open source software are the religion(s). And the same on the other side: Windows, MacOS are the OSes, shared and closed source the religion(s).
> Linux is an OS, NOT a religion.
One of the dangers of relying on closed source drivers and codecs is that you’re at the mercy of the company producing the drivers/codecs. So far, NVidia has been pretty good about releasing drivers, but they many not always be. Look at Flash. Linux is stuck with Flash 7 because Macromedia decided that Linux wasn’t important enough to keep updated. If you *critically* depend on a site that uses Flash 8+, you’re out of luck until Flash 9 gets released (assuming that it does). If an open source equivalent of Flash9 were valuable, you’d have no issues. If NVidia eventually follows Macromedia lead, you might not be able to use your card *at all*. The moral of the story is that it’s a good idea not to depend on proprietary drivers, at least ones that have no open source replacements. It’s not religion. It’s just common sense. (Note, I use the proprietary NVidia drivers, but my next upgrade will likely be to the safer Intel graphics cards which *are* open source.)
“One of the dangers of relying on closed source drivers and codecs is that you’re at the mercy of the company producing the drivers/codecs.”
The same danger exists for open source as well. Unless you happen to be a developer, you are at the mercy of the OSS developers that generally only include features that they want, not necessarily the features that are asked for and users want. As well there is no one to be held responsible when the features that exist in the hardware but the OSS developer deemed not necessary to put in since they do not use the functionality. At least with proprietary drivers I can contact the company and generally get things fixed, with OSS the answer I usually get is ‘That feature is not used anyway’, which is bogus since I obviously wanted it or would not ask. That happens more often then not in my experience. I am not a fanatic about it, and OSS does work, just not in every instance. Maybe I have just been soured by too many ‘Code it yourself if you want that’ or ‘Why would you want to do that?’ responses from OSS developers. For example the Yahoo libraries are open and have been, the ones that support voice and video. Since OSS developers see no sense in an IM client performing those functions, they don’t bother to use it.
Your experience is directly contradictory to mine. With closed source drivers/software the answer is usually “you paid for it, now p*ss off” or “that’s not a bug, it’s a feature”.
“”that’s not a bug, it’s a feature”.”
That is what I normally get from the OSS community. Either that or ‘We don;t feel that feature is necessary, so we are not going to do it’. With proprietary I call them up, they give me what I want.
So basically either this degenerates into a “YMMV” or, worse, penis-sizing contest, or we accept that (a) people have different priorities; (b) people get different results. I’d expect especially different results if I were thinking of it from the perspective of someone who makes purchasing decisions for a company, for example. You may be in that position. I’m not, so I’m probably not likely to be listened to as much if I want a feature as a company is. I also don’t trust companies whose mouths I perceive to be much more impressive than their capabilities.
“So basically either this degenerates into a “YMMV” or, worse, penis-sizing contest, or we accept that (a) people have different priorities; (b) people get different results.”
Agreed with both a and b.
I’ve never received that response. Neither from closed source or open source projects.
I’d recommend stop using such software, no matter it’s license.
That is what I normally get from the OSS community. Either that or ‘We don;t feel that feature is necessary, so we are not going to do it’. With proprietary I call them up, they give me what I want.
I don’t know you but lets just say that you really do have that much clout with proprietary software companies. Most people don’t, and not to sound condescending but I really doubt you carry that kind of clout either. Few people do. At least with open source software you can always pay someone to fix a bug or include a feature that you want. With propietary software you just have to hope that your requests are in line with the majority of other customers or else you don’t have a chance of getting what you want.
If that software company closes down you’re even more screwed. You can continue to use unsupported software but at some point it is no longer going to be compatible with your operating system or other necessary peripheral programs. This can happen with OSS if a developer stops updating a program, but again at least you have some recourse because the code is there for you to do whatever you want with it.
“I don’t know you but lets just say that you really do have that much clout with proprietary software companies. Most people don’t, and not to sound condescending but I really doubt you carry that kind of clout either. Few people do.”
Actually all paying customers do. That is part of what you are paying for, called support.
Yeah, your support is as good as the amount you pay for it. In most cases with average people, the support payments only cover polite return mails with piss off as the subject matter.
“Yeah, your support is as good as the amount you pay for it. In most cases with average people, the support payments only cover polite return mails with piss off as the subject matter.”
True enough. Same emails as are gotten for free from OSS.
True enough. Same emails as are gotten for free from OSS.
At least I don’t have to pay someone to tell me to piss off.
Actually all paying customers do. That is part of what you are paying for, called support.
That’s funny because I was at one time a Macromedia customer and they didn’t listen to me when I asked for a Flash Professional for Linux.
I think you’re delusional if you think that all paying customers have a say in how things should get done with proprietary software.
The same danger exists for open source as well. Unless you happen to be a developer, you are at the mercy of the OSS developers that generally only include features that they want, not necessarily the features that are asked for and users want. As well there is no one to be held responsible when the features that exist in the hardware but the OSS developer deemed not necessary to put in since they do not use the functionality.
Plus, let’s say you go with an open source driver. Just like with proprietary drivers, how do you know the open source version will be updated when the next kernel update (or whatever) breaks the driver? Sure, the source code is available and anybody can hack it, but you never know … people might get tired of working for free and figure its probably better to go out and spend $100 on a new card (if necessary), rather than spend the time require to update the old driver.
Same with document formats. People praise the virtues of ODF. But how the hell do you know that the format will still be supported 15-20 years from now when OpenOffice 8.0 comes out? Sure, you can assume that somebody will bother to update it to work with v8.0 if OO is using a different format by then, but you don’t know that for sure.
My only point to this post is that everything is a gamble in one way or another
Because it’s an open standard and it can be read without an application. Just print it out and you can read it on paper, incl. all tags.
This is especially true to ODF being an open standard. Nobody has to pay somebody for the right to write an application using the standard. This is not true for closed standards and closed source applications. They are a bigger gamble.
And with the open source driver… you always have the option to update it yourself – or buy a sixpack (or a giant cup of cappucino) to get a local OSS-geek to update it for you.
my next computer is going to be intel too. it’s totally because of their open source videocard drivers.
Do not buy ati/nvidia cards, without open source drivers. Buy Intel/XGI/Unichrome or even Silicon Motion. And I want lg3d/xgl to work with mesa. We need better open source software renderers like Transgaming’s.
Nvidia drivers are a clear violation IMO. But how do we as users go about showing nvidia and ati that we cannot be ignored and that we want open source drivers?
Nvidia drivers are NOT violating the GPL. Nvidia use a GPL wrapper that links to the kernel and then communicate to it’s proprietary code without linkage. That is legal.
Yet again I find myself asking:-
Why is it ok for Madriva/PCLinuxOS etc and not Kororaa to do this?
Mandriva et al decided that either they didn’t think it violated the license, or they were OK with doing so.
Well it either does, or doesn’t violate the licennce.
If these large companies such as NVidia and Mandriva have legal teams that say it is not a violation then I’d be inclined to accept what they say.
Which still leaves the issue of why some onanistic social inadequates decided to pick on Kororaa and not a big firm.
Where does mere aggregation stop and ‘linked with GPL code begin?
Since the GPL does not extend further than copyright, if putting the NVidia drivers on the same CD as the Linux kernel does not infringe copyright, then it does not violate the GPL.
So, does putting the NVidia drivers on the same CD as Linux breach copyright? And if so, could you show how?
One of the principals of the GPL is that any user is allowed to do whatever the hell they like with the software. As such, if you explicitly choose to install the Nvidia kernel module on your own system, that’s none of the FSF’s business. Some people seem to be of the opinion that such linking is illegal “full stop”. This is emphatically not the case.
The problem comes with regard to distribution. Putting proprietary code on the same CD as GPL code is again not a problem, provided the proprietary licence allows you redistribution rights.
The problem comes when you distribute a GPL programme (in this case the Linux kernel) that is *linked* with some GPL-incompatible software (in this case the Nvidia kernel module). That is, according to the letter of the GPL licence, not permitted.
Basically, when it comes down to it, the problem is that the Nvidia drivers are automatically installed. If the driver was included on the CD, but it was left up to the user themselves to install (as is the case with, for example, Ubuntu), there would be no problem.
EDIT: Actually, the situation is a bit more complicated than this, because Nvidia have released the actual kernel module code under the GPL. The problem is that this talks to a proprietary module that actually drives the hardware. Nvidia (and other “moderates” in the debate) are of the opinion that this does not constitute a “derived work” under the definition of th GPL, and so their is no problem whatsoever with either distribution or automatic installation. Others such as the FSF, however, consider that having the (GPL) kernel module talking to the (proprietary) driver software does itself violate the GPL. This one is going to run and run until the day that a truly, 100% “free” accelerated driver is released — which may never happen.
Edited 2006-10-03 22:55
I’m certainly aware of all that, and i guess the main point I would make, in addition to yours, is that the only way a work can be a ‘derived work’ under the GPL, is if it also a ‘derived work’ under copyright law.
Now, as much as the GPL zealots would like to bitch and moan about this, in order to infringe the copyright of a work your allegedly infringing work has to show substantial similarity to portions of those infringed works – if the Nvidia driver module does not exhibit any such similarity, then you can’t prove copyright infringement, and thus the GPL does not cover the work.
Mere aggregation allows the distribution of the Nvidia binary module along with the kernel, and the GPLed ‘shim’ is, well, GPLed, so theres no violation there.
I just dont get how so many people can blatantly ignore the facts and scream infringement when there isn’t any.
Come on, somebody honestly refute this by showing which parts of the Nvidia driver module infringe the copyrights of the Linux kernel.
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).
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.
The license is clear, you link GPL code to your software then it becomes GPL or something compatible but if you link propietary libraries to GPL code then there is not GPL violation because the propietary libraries are not linking GPL code, so, all the noise from the FSF is just to avoid the exploit of this “hole” but legally, there is no much to do, because is completely legal, the affected? the end user traped in the middle of this war.
Edited 2006-10-03 23:32
With the GPL you can “choose the restrictions” by not using GPL’ed software.
Honestly, that was pointless.
Novell did the same thing with SLED and openSUSE. I personally dont care and use ATI’s proprietary video driver. I just want my hardware to work properly and willing to compromise “freedom” for functionality.