Avoiding copyright violation with closed source modules

Avoiding copyright violation with closed source modules

Posted Jan 8, 2007 1:16 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Avoiding copyright violation with closed source modules by dlang
Parent article: Looking forward to 2007

Well, the header file argument isn't that including the header files makes the binary device driver a derivative work of the kernel. It's that the binary device driver contains within it a derivative work of the header files, in the sense that object code is a derivative work of source code. So if you distribute the entire binary driver, you're distributing the header file object code and the copyright owner of the header files gets to control it.

But the header file argument isn't what most people use anyway; they use the derivative work argument from the top of this thread which doesn't involve use of any literal Linux code at all.

SCO's derivative work claim is even more tenuous than the Linux device driver one. It's a William's Axe argument that SCO owns parts of Linux that never had any relation to SCO-owned code.

(A museum somewhere in England has in its collection the actual axe used by William The Conqueror in battle, and by many of his successors. It is so old that between the time of William's death and the time it was preserved in the museum, the handle had been replaced 3 times and head 4 times).

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