Re: [opensuse] Fw: Driver Repository for openSUSE / SuSE Linux Enterprise (nVidia)
Siegbert Baude schrieb:
T. Lodewick schrieb:
again thats _your_ according. not that of Novell / Suse as also other members of the list. and - and thats importend - in point of view of some courts in some countries ( in USA and germany, for example: in both countries the courts agreed against some hardware vendors that there closed-source-drivers violaited the GPL.
Please, stop spreading FUD. The judgments were about urging the manufacturer (network routers using iptables, IIRC)to give their modified GPL code to the public, which they held closed before. Nowhere are there 3rd party binaries involved.
as I have written already here in the thread, I don't have the (printed) papers anymore: it was an article in the paper "c't" from "heise" in the year 2004. I don't have an archiv of the old ones, so I can't tell you the exact number.
so if they do, there should no legal way to offer them [kernel + driver] together. and it mid not your view that offering a distro [with kernel] in one folder of a server and closed-source-drivers in another folder is the same - but for the courts it is.)
So the kernel folks can tell what to host on your servers? Brave new GPL world. Can you please cite the court, which gave this judgment?
as this is the base for holding copyrights and acting against offence against it you don't realy say that I need to post a link to somewhere, don't you ?
not every developer that is involved in the kernel, the modules etc. think about that way. there are a lot of discussions on the mailinglist about that topic. while some developers accept that there are closed-source-drivers, there are others that don't.
So you say yourself that the situation is not clear.
the situation is mutch clear then some people like. but in fact not all holder of copyrights act gainst offence.
"same server = distro": the view of the courts ( in a realy short way ! ): if you offer access to a product A with licennce LIC_A and you offer also access to a product B that can only run on top of product A but hits the licence LIC_A you are violaiting the LIC_A. so it is the right of the holder of licence LIC_A that you don't offer access to both products A and B.
Please again, give some links or infos about which court said this.
again, this is the base for holding copyright. if you offer access to a program I've written ( so I have the copytights and I choose the licence of the program ) and you also offer access to another program that used something from my program but hits my licence I have two choises: 1. asking you to stop the access to that other program 2. don't give you permisson to distribute my owen software anymore. thats real basic, and you can read about that evey time on any IT-relaited news-site.
And just for your info, the binaries are not only to run on top of Linux kernel's GPL license, but also e.g. on top of BSD licensed FreeBSD kernel. So the first assumption is already wrong.
ok. you think also that even if you can do that you also have permission to do that ? or do I missunderstand you here ? I have to say I don't know BSD-licence axactly - but in a lot of discussions in forums ( mainly at the ones at www.heise.de ) about GPL versus BSD I've read that a source code released under GPL can't be also compatible to BSD as BSD gives permissions that GPL doesn't. but correct me if I'm wrong here.
Ciao Siegbert
best regards, JBScout aka Thomy --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
T. Lodewick schrieb:
Siegbert Baude schrieb:
Please, stop spreading FUD. The judgments were about urging the manufacturer (network routers using iptables, IIRC)to give their modified GPL code to the public, which they held closed before. Nowhere are there 3rd party binaries involved.
as I have written already here in the thread, I don't have the (printed) papers anymore: it was an article in the paper "c't" from "heise" in the year 2004. I don't have an archiv of the old ones, so I can't tell you the exact number.
I will check at home, I have the c't archives on CD (nice service, just spend the few extra Euros for your abonnement). But I'm quite sure, what the content of the German judgments were, i.e. the need to publish modified code, which is just not our problem here.
so if they do, there should no legal way to offer them [kernel + driver] together. and it mid not your view that offering a distro [with kernel] in one folder of a server and closed-source-drivers in another folder is the same - but for the courts it is.)
So the kernel folks can tell what to host on your servers? Brave new GPL world. Can you please cite the court, which gave this judgment?
as this is the base for holding copyrights and acting against offence against it you don't realy say that I need to post a link to somewhere, don't you ?
The base for getting rid of unwanted software on somebody else's server is a copyright violation. This violation has to be judged by a court. So as long as there is no judgment, there is no violation, there is no urged removing of software. You however claimed that it is a _court's_ view that distributing proprietary modules is illegal. Without citing a court's judgment this ist just untrue. Please stop this in the future.
not every developer that is involved in the kernel, the modules etc. think about that way. there are a lot of discussions on the mailinglist about that topic. while some developers accept that there are closed-source-drivers, there are others that don't.
So you say yourself that the situation is not clear.
the situation is mutch clear then some people like. but in fact not all holder of copyrights act gainst offence.
So please make the situation clear for me, too, and dispute my arguments from Message-ID: <45091DCD.7040501@gmx.de>. Until then, may we agree to disagree?
"same server = distro": the view of the courts ( in a realy short way ! ): if you offer access to a product A with licennce LIC_A and you offer also access to a product B that can only run on top of product A but hits the licence LIC_A you are violaiting the LIC_A. so it is the right of the holder of licence LIC_A that you don't offer access to both products A and B.
Please again, give some links or infos about which court said this.
again, this is the base for holding copyright. if you offer access to a program I've written ( so I have the copytights and I choose the licence of the program ) and you also offer access to another program that used something from my program but hits my licence I have two choises:
1. asking you to stop the access to that other program 2. don't give you permisson to distribute my owen software anymore.
thats real basic, and you can read about that evey time on any IT-relaited news-site.
The first point is "product B that can only run on top of product A", which is not the case for Nvidia drivers (see http://fbsd-nvdriver.sourceforge.net/), the second is "violating the license", which is just a claim by some kernel folks, but not based on court facts. Until now there is nothing which makes this "basic copyright facts" apply to removing drivers from servers. Maybe you should broaden your sources of information to some non-geek-IT-related news sites, to get rid of hardliners dominating the discussion.
And just for your info, the binaries are not only to run on top of Linux kernel's GPL license, but also e.g. on top of BSD licensed FreeBSD kernel. So the first assumption is already wrong.
ok. you think also that even if you can do that you also have permission to do that ? or do I missunderstand you here ?
Exactly, because then this is a clear indication that the driver is no "derived work".
I have to say I don't know BSD-licence axactly - but in a lot of discussions in forums ( mainly at the ones at www.heise.de ) about GPL versus BSD I've read that a source code released under GPL can't be also compatible to BSD as BSD gives permissions that GPL doesn't. but correct me if I'm wrong here.
Search for just my name in this forum and you can find my opinion to GPL vs. BSD. For our case it is just important, if drivers are "derived work" and therefore violate GPL. I doubt this, to be honest. Ciao Siegbert --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (2)
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Siegbert Baude -
T. Lodewick