Re: freed_symbols [Re: People, not GPL [was: Re: Driver Model]]

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 20:28 +0200, Pascal Schmidt wrote:
> Now, if the driver has an internal abstraction layer that seperates the
> kernel side of things from the real work the driver does, I would agree
> that only the abstraction layer is a derived work and has to be GPL'd,
> not the rest of the driver.

> Most drivers don't work that way because of the additional 
> overhead.

And because making such distinction is pointless, since the GPL'd
wrapper and the core driver would not be distributed 'as separate works'
but rather 'as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program',
where the Program in this case is the GPL'd wrapper part. 

Hence under the terms of the final paragraph of section 2 of the GPL,
the code of the driver would also have to be released under the same
terms.

-- 
dwmw2

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