[olug] OT: more Hans goodness

[Luke -Jr]

On Wednesday 09 July 2008, Will Langford wrote:
> Similarly... the kernel exposes a binary API.

Except that it doesn't have an API for drivers at all, not even at the source 
level. It has internal symbols.

> Could obviously state that header files are part of it, meaning
> anything that #include's the header files would need to be GPL.
>
> Similarly, one wonders how ... deep different system level #include's
> also happen to include linux kernel headers deep down.  Worst case
> scenario: stdio.h or iostream.h eventually include a kernel header.

Linux is GPLv2, but does have a specific exception allowing userland 
applications to be excluded from the terms.

> So.  The question becomes: I distribute a closed binary plus wrapper
> source that have an external dependency for header files from a GPL
> project.  Although 99.99999% of my project is completely independent,
> does the fact that my program needs some definitions for interpolating
> ... make it a derivative work ?  Could you argue that the data portion
> of header file definitions fall under copyright ?

Your independent part can be claimed as your own, sure. However, the wrapper, 
using internal Linux symbols, is most definately derived, and as such falls 
under the GPL. The GPL forbids linking not only from, but also *to* 
incompatibly licensed works. If your independent part is proprietary, your 
wrapper cannot link to it.

> If binary + wrapper is breaking the license, that's understandable... but do
> you really wanna force the issue and end up millions of users with bricked
> hardware ?

Those users have nobody to (fairly) blame but the company (for non-compliance) 
and themselves (for buying unsupported hardware).