I'm sure this will show up on gnu.misc.discuss soon, so I'll stop, too,
after this one reply.
> The two fun questions are
>
> 1. Linus gave specific additional permissions to people for some binary
> modules with restrictions. Does Mosix violate his agreement with them
>
> 2. Since Linus owns <10% of the code do his additional permissions mean
> anything anyway ?
There's a fun question that comes before those:
0. Is any additional permission even needed for binary modules?
Considered from a copyright point of view, I don't see any difference
between kernel modules and applications. From a copyright point of
view, in both cases, you've got some blob of code that makes use of
exported services of some other blob of code. Copyright law is not
going to care that one runs in user mode and one runs in kernel mode,
or that they run in separate address spaces. It will just care whether
or not one blob contains copyrighted material from the other blob.
Just as I don't need Microsoft's permission to write Windows drivers
and distribute them under any license I wish, I don't think I actually
need anyone's permission to write Linux modules and distribute them
under any terms I wish, assuming, in both the Microsoft and Linux
cases, that I'm careful not to use any code from system header files
that might lead to Microsoft or Linux code in my object files.
Things are going to get really interesting if/when component-based software
becomes the norm. Over in the Windows world, MS seems to be turning
everything into collections of OLE2 components. Perhaps the same will
happen with CORBA and Linux. It is not clear that GPL works well in a
componentized world--it seems to be somewhat of a relic from a time when
applications were monolithic and statically linked, running under
proprietary kernels.
--Tim Smith
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