More fishy behavior from AVM [LWN.net]

More fishy behavior from AVM

Posted Nov 2, 2011 18:26 UTC (Wed) by arnd (subscriber, #8866)
Parent article: ELCE11: Till Jaeger on AVM vs. Cybits

The same company also does doesn't try very hard to actually ship the full source code. If you look the kernel source, you quickly find code like

struct bus_type *platform_bus_type_ptr = &platform_bus_type;
EXPORT_SYMBOL(platform_bus_type_ptr);

and

struct workqueue_struct *__ti_create_workqueue(const char *name, int singlethread)
{
      return __create_workqueue(name, singlethread, 0 /* nicht frezeable * /, 0 / * keine realtime */);
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(__ti_create_workqueue);

where they take symbols meant for kernel-internal use (EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL) and export them to their own binary modules.

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More fishy behavior from AVM

Posted Nov 3, 2011 5:25 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

Sounds like excellent grounds for a counter-suit.

Some companies just don't quite understand the licenses on the software they use, or intend to comply but manage to make some procedural screwups. Those companies need a bit of education and help to come into compliance.

But for cases like this, where AVS has intentionally violated the GPL, and blatantly attempted to deny others the same rights they use themselves ("he asked AVM if it really meant to make that claim against the GPL software, and AVM affirmed that"), I think we'd all be better served by the "smoking crater to serve as an example to others" approach.

Binary Modules

Posted Nov 4, 2011 10:11 UTC (Fri) by simlo (subscriber, #10866) [Link]

NVIDIA can ship non-GPL modules because it is not shipped along with the kernel and those drivers are not developed for Linux and therefore not a derivative work.

But you can't ship binary modules along with the kernel. The modules are part of the same program and must be under GPL. Kernel + modules is a derivative work and must be GPL as a whole. If they are dynamically or statically linker into the program does not matter.