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[Leo Mauler]

--- Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> 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. 

Actually that isn't true.  nVidia's driver uses a
GPL'd "shim" or "wrapper", which means that the GPL'd
wrapper makes all the system calls, and the nVidia
driver makes calls only to the GPL'd wrapper.

Since Linus, and your favorite kernel developer Greg
Kroah-Hartman, have already signed off on giving
ndiswrapper back its GPL status, it would seem that
the "GPL wrapper for non-GPL code" option is alive and
well and ACKNOWLEDGED BY GREG KROAH-HARTMAN.  Which,
again, makes his comments about "closed source
binary-only Linux kernel modules are illegal" the FUD
they've always been.

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/ChangeLog-2.6.25-rc4

(or http://tinyurl.com/2rxltg)

>| commit 9b37ccfc637be27d9a652fcedc35e6e782c3aa78
>| Author: Pavel Roskin <proski at gnu.org>
>| Date:   Thu Feb 28 17:11:02 2008 -0500
>| 
>|     module: allow ndiswrapper to use GPL-only 
>| symbols
>|     
>|     A change after 2.6.24 broke ndiswrapper 
>| by accidentally removing its access to GPL-only 
>| symbols.  Revert that change and add comments 
>| about the reasons why ndiswrapper and 
>| driverloader are treated in a special way.
>|     
>|   Signed-off-by: Pavel Roskin <proski at gnu.org>
>|   Acked-by: Greg KH <gregkh at suse.de>
>|   Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo at elte.hu>
>|   Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty at rustcorp.com.au>
>|   Cc: Jon Masters <jonathan at jonmasters.org>
>|   Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds 
>|     <torvalds at linux-foundation.org>

Greg saw the change and acknowledged the change.  Greg
has thus given nVidia and any distribution which uses
nVidia drivers (which use ndiswrapper-like wrappers to
allow non-GPL'd code to work as legal Linux kernel
modules) all the "estoppel" they'll ever need in
court.

> This exception is not applicable to them.

This is also immaterial because the GPL merely refers
to "derived works", and Linus has already delivered an
opinion that nVidia's binary-only drivers aren't
"derived works":

http://kerneltrap.org/?q=node/1735

"I think the NVidia people can probably reasonably
honestly say that the code they ported had _no_ Linux
origin. But quite frankly, I’d be less inclined to
believe that for some other projects out there.."


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