GPLv2 enforcement

Posted Mar 22, 2007 11:00 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: GPLv2 enforcement by malor
Parent article: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

Plus it's only a copyright infringement by the DISTRIBUTOR.

If the distribution downloads the blob from NVidia on installation, who's breaking copyright? Not the distro, they never mixed GPL and proprietary. Not NVidia, they own it. And not the user, they had NVidia's permission.

It is PERFECTLY LEGAL to mix GPL and proprietary code. You just can't distribute the result. If I wanted to ship a program that was a mix of proprietary and GPL, I would simply ship a build environment. All the GPL as source, the proprietary as object modules. Get the user to run a make script to build the program. ALL LEGAL AND ABOVE BOARD.

It just wouldn't look good to a user, and I wouldn't do it because I don't think it's in the spirit of the GPL. But it's perfectly legal ...

Cheers,
Wol