video cards

[Matthew Copple]

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 10:50 PM, Jeffrey Watts
<jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 9:07 PM, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
>  >
>  >  And if you were paying attention, LINUS DOES NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE AN
>  >  EXCEPTION LIKE THIS BECAUSE HE DOES NOT HOLD COPYRIGHT OVER ALL THE CODE
>  >  INVOLVED.
>
>  Sure he does.  You seem to believe that underpants gnomes hand out
>  "authority" over things.  You acknowledge that the copyright situation
>  is a bit murky.  I'm pointing out that the person with the original
>  copyright (and who is the namesake, leader, and spiritual guide) is
>  the "authority".  Are you saying he's not?  Find me a person that
>  doesn't believe Linus has "authority" over the Linux kernel and I'll
>  show you a fool.

Actually, Luke is correct. Moral authority has no standing in
copyright law. Linus' standing as a leader in the community is all
well and good, but his celebrity status does not override the standing
of all the other copyright holders.

That said, the knife cuts both ways. Linus cannot grant an arbitrary,
legally binding exception, because he is one of many copyright holders
on the kernel. On the other hand, any other arbitrary group of
copyright holders cannot take nVidia, or any other vendor, to court if
one of the effected copyright holders refuses to agree to the suit.

There is no doubt that Linus does hold moral authority, and that his
pronouncements (on nVidia or anything else) hold a lot of sway with
developers and users. However, the fact remains that he does not, as
far as I am aware, have the ability to speak legally for the entire
universe of kernel copyright holders, or even the smaller set that
owns the code nVidia happens to touch. So his words, however,
comforting to nVidia, do not constitute a liability shield.

Matthew Copple

-- 
Matthew G. Copple
mcopple at kcopensource.org