video cards

[Luke -Jr]

On Thursday 03 April 2008, Leo Mauler wrote:
> --- Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> > On Thursday 03 April 2008, Jeffrey Watts wrote:
> > > All significant parties - the guy that wrote the GPL, the guy that wrote
> > > Linux - say what nVidia is doing is okay, and that the issue isn't what
> > > they are doing, but is instead a limitation of the license itself.
> >
> > Greg, the guy I quoted earlier, is a Linux developer and copyright holder. 
> > Furthermore, none of the developers nor RMS are IP lawyers. The only
> > citation of IP lawyers thus far in this discussion has been that binary
> > modules are illegal.
>
> There's a legal term which you should become aware of: "estoppel".  In
> general it protects a party who would suffer detriment if:
>
> * The defendant has done or said something to induce an expectation
> * The plaintiff relied (reasonably) on the expectation...
> * ...and would suffer detriment if that expectation were false.
>
> In linux/COPYING we read that Linus has created an expectation that his
> copyright doesn't make binary drivers illegal simply through making system
> calls: 
>
> linux/COPYING says: "This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use
> kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal
> use of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work"."

Again, nVidia's blobs are neither user programs nor merely use system calls. 
This exception is not applicable to them.