OT Ubuntu reaches out to embarrassed SuSE devs

[Arthur Pemberton]

On 11/26/06, jdow <jdow at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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.

Dam lot of wasted energy on artificial concepts you ask me.

-- 
Fedora Core 6 and proud