Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers

[Richard Knutsson]

David Schwartz wrote:
> Most certainly the spirit of the GPL is that it's fair use to tinker with a
> work to get it to work on your hardware. Is it not fair use to share that
> with other licensees of the original work? Should Microsoft be able to
> prevent me from distributing patches to Windows that fix bugs or add
> features?
>   
Yes they can, since you have (most likely) breached the contract! To fix 
a bug in Windows you will have to de-assemble their code (if you are not 
on their pay-role, of course) and that is explicitly forbidden. You are 
in no way allowed to read how Windows does things.
Or you may just have made random changes and it happens to work, I still 
don't think they would like it (what other thing may happened by that 
patch?)

Richard Knutsson

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