OT Ubuntu reaches out to embarrassed SuSE devs

[jdow]

From: "Les Mikesell" <lesmikesell at gmail.com>
> On Sat, 2006-11-25 at 20:04, Peter Gordon wrote:
>> On Sat, 2006-11-25 at 17:05 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> > What does 'likely' mean?  First you'd have to show that a device
>> > driver is a derived work from the kernel in copyright terms, since
>> > that is all that the GPL can cover - which is a pretty odd concept
>> > to begin with.
>> 
>> Every device driver includes common kernel headers without which they
>> would be useless. This makes them derived works, as I understand it.
> 
> Back when AT&T sued BSDI in '93 or so they weren't able to make
> the point that copying the header files (which Linux necessarily
> also duplicates on the user interface side) was copyright
> infringement.  It doesn't make much sense to provide an interface
> and assert that the only possible way to use it is illegal. And
> I doubt that the GNU folks really want to encourage the idea
> of interface copyrights - or that they can get away with
> pretending that this is something else.

Header files are likened to a laundry list. You can't copyright a
laundry list and make it stick. Ditto for a telephone book's contents.

{^_^}