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On Sun, 2010-09-26 at 16:13 -0400, Andrew Joakimsen wrote:
Oh of course you need to keep the license, that is part of the GPL v2 the Kernel is licensed under. But these shenanigans are not permitted by the GPL:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
So I don't see any reason for SUSE (or anyone else) to keep this bloat in the Kernel, especially when they are hidden in a "security patch"
I think you need to discuss this with a lawyer. The bottom line is that it is part of an upstream licensing decision, they originate the code so they are not bound by what the GPL says you can or cannot do. They decide how their code is licensed, and suse (or any other redistributor) can't just change that. A module vendor also can't change the header simply to make his module compile, and it is doubtful if he is allowed to define the GPL macro even though his code isn't GPL, simply to allow access to the license protected code A lawyer may agree with you, I don't know. I think Eben Moglen is available for such questions, so you could try asking him Anders PS. On a semantic issue, it isn't bloat. Bloat is when unnecessary functions or features go into a binary, resulting in larger and usually slower binaries. What happened here was entirely compile-time, and has no effect at all on the size or performance of a compiled binary -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org