TechView: Linus Torvalds, Inventor of Linux (Huffington Post)

Posted May 27, 2014 12:57 UTC (Tue) by jb.1234abcd (guest, #95827)
In reply to: TechView: Linus Torvalds, Inventor of Linux (Huffington Post) by madscientist
Parent article: TechView: Linus Torvalds, Inventor of Linux (Huffington Post)

> "... all Linux copyright holders seem content to go along with Linus's interpretation, which is (as I understand it) that if your kernel module only uses a particular set of well-defined APIs, then it is actually not a derived work of the kernel and so the GPL (as a copyright license) cannot legally apply to it."

Considering the above w/r to "uses a particular set of well-defined APIs",
is then, by analogy, Google Android's Bionic libc free from violating Linux
kernel's GPLv2 ?

Ref:
http://lwn.net/Articles/434318/

TechView: Linus Torvalds, Inventor of Linux (Huffington Post)

Posted May 27, 2014 13:16 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Bionic has _always_ been in the clear. It uses only userspace kernel functionality.

Linus and other developers have always stated that the kernel GPL does NOT cross into userspace.