Netgpu and the GPL

Posted Aug 3, 2023 22:20 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Netgpu and the GPL by NYKevin
Parent article: Making life (even) harder for proprietary modules

3. If NVIDIA *has* given permission to create this sort of thing (e.g. in their EULA), then the fact that it's being done by Facebook and not NVIDIA is immaterial. NVIDIA could just as easily do it themselves.

It's not quite immaterial; if the resulting work is a copyright infringement of someone else's work (e.g. the Linux kernel), then the fact that it's done outside NVIDIA protects NVIDIA from being ordered to open up their proprietary driver as a remedy for infringement.

This is very much a corner case, since courts rarely order that sort of specific performance where monetary damages are possible, but it gives NVIDIA a reason to prefer to give permission and let someone else do it rather than do it themselves.