Thomas Hertweck schrieb:
[some good points]
In order to learn more about it, I have recently asked to provide the references for some judgements that were made at German courts and that were mentioned in an email here. But, as expected, when you ask for details and when you try to figure out whether these judgements really concern the questions that have been discussed on this list, then usually you get no answer. Don't take everything for granted, we should sometimes also dare to ask the detailed and unpopular questions - although some people don't like it.
thats not true. as I was the one that wrote about that I've also ansered. as I wrote already, there was an article in one of the papers "c't" from heise. I read about it in the year 2004 and as I don't have an archive about the old ones, I can't tell you exactly the number of the paper. but I have also written about an act between some kernel maintainer against a hardware vendor ( or to be more clear: a router vendor ) that has used code from iptable in his software. in that case the german court agreed with the maintainers, and give a clear statemend about the GPL and the german law. if you didn't read that, let me know, I can post the links again. I know that this ( using GPL-licenced code in closed source progarms) isn't the same then linking a ( closed sourced ) driver against a (GLP-licenced) kernel module it shows 2 importend views: - the GPL is accepted at german courts so it is conform to german law - there are ways for the maintainers to get there rights at a (german) court I agree total with you that this all is a "gray zone" as you wrote. and I also agree with a lot of people on this list that there must be a solution for a) the users to don't get in conflict with the licence and make it easy for them to use a driver b) for the maintainer of distros to don't get also in conflict with a licence and to include as mutch drivers at needfull and c) also the kernel maintainer that there get the rights they have.
I think we all agree that open-source drivers are to be preferred and might be the best solution. However, from my point of view the cheap propaganda that some people make against closed-source drivers does not help to solve the problem at all!
thats your point of view. I have another one. and others maybe have there owen. to name that views "cheap propaganda" is not realy nice, and with that your owen posts ends to the same: not nice "cheap propaganda" against people that believe more in open sourced drivers and it doesn't solve the problem at all too.
Cheers, Th.
best regards, JBScout aka Thomy --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org