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To: Allen Benn who wrote (9712)	5/25/2001 1:07:09 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

Re: GPL constraints First, please see linux.org for the actual text of the GPL. It's very plain English and doesn't require a lawyer to understand. Note particularly these sections: Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). ... These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. I think these paragraphs make it quite clear that GPL does not apply to any application written to run on a Linux kernel regardless of how that application is distributed. This simply means that you cannot modify the kernel without coming under the scope of the GPL. If due to the nature of the application it cannot be designed to run purely as an application then to protect one's IP all that is necessary is to split the application into two parts: a set of kernel modifications which are subject to GPL and a separate stand-alone application which is not. Generally this would be done by inserting "hooks" into the kernel. The hooks themselves would fall under the GPL but an application which made use of those hooks would not since those hooks are now just part of the extended Linux API.

To: Allen Benn who wrote (9712)	5/25/2001 7:25:15 PM
From: lkj	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10309

Hi Allen, This is not a response to your post. This is a portion of a message from a friend who knows a lot more about Linux than me. We had this dicussion weeks ago. Regards, Khan ------------------ Well WindRiver didn't exacly purchase 'BSD' they purchased the developers of one of the commericial BSD flavors BSDI. This certainly has some implications for WindRiver but none for Linux. Remember that vxWorks is completely based off of an old version of the FreeBSD kernel and continues to use drivers from FreeBSD development. BSDI develops a commerical BSD UNIX and several of the developers that work for BSDI are leaders in the FreeBSD project. This will certainly buy them some excellent developers who are very good at what they do. I think that WindRiver needs to control the focus of BSD development a little more to suit some of the higher-end capacity markets they are going after. I don't think it is a bad acquisition at all. Why would they discount Linux? Well part of the reason is that they would hate to see people invest in a lot of the evolving embedded versions of Linux. Redhat with past purchase of Cygnus has really surprised WindRiver. Please be aware that Cygnus and WindRiver have worked with each other much in the past with regard to cross platform/target compilers as well as libraries. Now Cygnus has been working on eCos and other RedHat related projects. I can see them also being afraid of the 'open source' mentality. Since WindRiver demands huge amounts of money for their source code to just pieces of their OS/libraries/drivers. They have certainly lied through their teeth saying that anybody developing for Linux cannot sell their IP or keep it. What you CANNOT do is take Gnu Public License code (GPL) and merge it with your own without making your code public. But that is an irrelavant point since libraries that ANY program links against are not under GPL, they are under another license called LGPL or Library GPL. Which allows you to link to a GPL library without having to display or distribute your source code at all. Remember you don't have to use the GPL or LGPL license if you don't want and any drivers you write for linux don't have to be either. NVIDIA as an example release their proprietary graphics drivers/libraries for Linux and you don't have access that anything that is their IP. Look at others like Adobe, Real Player, Symplicity, Corel Wordperfect etc... none of these guess from high end EDA tools, word processors, or multimedia apps/drivers has released a line of code.