Re: How to Avoid GPL Issue

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
28 Jun 2003 20:22:36 +0100


On Sad, 2003-06-28 at 00:04, G. C. wrote:
> Dear Sir or Madam,
>
> We are trying to port a third party hardware driver into Linux kernel and
> this third party vendor does not allow us to publish the source code. Is
> there any approach that we can avoid publicizing the third party code while
> porting to Linux? Do we need to write some shim layer code in Linux kernel
> to interface the third party code? How can we do that? Is there any document
> or samples?
>
> Thank you very much in advance,

I can understand why you asked the question here, but you need to ask a
lawyer. The GPL license forbids derivative works being nonfree (eg
binary only). Your question boils down to "what is not a derivative
work", which is a lawyer not a programmer question

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/