Ubuntu reaches out to embarrassed SuSE devs

[Todd Zullinger]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-11-26 at 14:21, Ian Malone wrote:
[...]
>> ? The code is covered by GPL 2.
> 
> Beg your pardon, but the COPYING file included with the
> last kernel source I saw (admittedly a 2.4.x...) was
> not the same as a stock GPL 2 and points out that programs
> that interface with kernel system calls are not
> derived works.

Here's the way to diff this easily:

diff -ubBw <(wget -q -O - http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt) \
           <(wget -q -O - http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/COPYING)

Pipe that to your favorite editor and you'll see only minor cosmetic
differences, and this note at the start of the kernel COPYING file:

   NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
 services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
 of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
 Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software
 Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the linux
 kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.

            Linus Torvalds

This is not an exception for modules, but a clarification for
user-space programs - or so says Linus in the many emails cited in
COPYING.modules in the Fedora kernel documentation:

http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/*checkout*/rpms/kernel/devel/COPYING.modules?rev=1.5

IANAL and can't say I'm up on all the points of this debate, but
hopefully the sources above will help provide some hard facts for
the fire.

I think that Alan's pot->kettle->black statement was accurate in
context.  It's clear there is more than a little contention that
binary modules violate the GPL and the Ubuntu folks can't claim the
high and mighty ground here when they're planning to enable them by
default in at least some cases (or so I've read -- corrections
welcome).

-- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
======================================================================
Damn you vile woman, you've impeded my work since the day I escaped
your vile womb!
    -- Stewie Griffin

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