GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper

Posted Oct 25, 2006 21:02 UTC (Wed) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841)
In reply to: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper by josh_stern
Parent article: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper

The only difference between GPL and LGPL is that the latter comes with a promise not to argue about the exact issue being argued about here. So what is your point, exactly?

GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper

Posted Oct 25, 2006 22:45 UTC (Wed) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

My point is that ndiswrapper seems like something that really should be LGPL rather than GPL as it depends on linking with proprietary code in order to be useful to people. Since my understanding of EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL is that it is specifically designed as a mechanism for some kernel authors to prohibit their code from being used within a work that is not really GPL, the approach taken by the kernel developers as described in the article seems reasonable to me. They are basically saying that ndiswrapper's claim to be GPL compatible is a sham. That is, it's doubtful that those developers who made their contributions EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL had really wanted to allow something like ndiswrapper.