[olug] OT: more Hans goodness

[Luke -Jr]

On Wednesday 09 July 2008, Barry Von Ahsen wrote:
> Luke -Jr wrote:
> > On Wednesday 09 July 2008, Will Langford wrote:
> >>> Reiser4 isn't because Hans is a raging egomaniac who refused to make
> >>> the changes necessary to get it included in the kernel.  Reiser3 has
> >>> been in for years, but hasn't been touched by Hans or anyone else at
> >>> Namesys since work started on 4.
> >>
> >> Out of curiosity, by similar logic (ego, not releasing spec/sources...
> >> slightly unrelated) -- what about ppl who use drivers who only supply
> >> a binary object and wrapper source ? evil!
> >
> > I'd say completely unrelated... but such drivers (for Linux, anyhow) are
> > illegal (in the same way 'warez' are). Of course, like 'warez' also, it's
> > the uploader who is infringing, not the user or downloader.
>
> they're not illegal, they're just non-free, and not supported by the
> lkml folk.  the company isn't under any legal obligation to provide a
> driver at all, let alone in the floss license d'jour.

They are illegal. The company isn't under an obligation to provide a driver, 
but if they derive from Linux in order to do so, they are indeed obliged to 
adhere to the copyright terms like everyone else. In the case of Linux, there 
is an exception for userland linking (eg, via syscalls), but there is no 
driver API (this is why external modules break often) let alone one with a 
GPL exception.