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RE: making a non-GPLed module






> Finally some interesting words in the boring 

I agree ;-)

> Indeed, if you give away (or sell) patches to whatever 
> copyrighted software
> (in this case, the Linux kernel), and the patches only include 
> your own code,
> 100% your code, I see no reason how the license of the original 
> program can
> effect your ability to distribute those patches!
> 
> Compare this to someone selling a page of text, and saying "if 
> you insert this
> after page 17 of The Book of Whatever, then the resulting book 
> would be much
> funnier.". How can this be regarded a copyright violation? As a 
> more realistic
> example, consider someone giving away (or selling) patches that modify a
> commercial computer game (add levels, add cheats, etc.). This might be a
> violation of some crappy anti-reverse-engineering law (DMCA?) but not a
> copyright violation in the traditional sense.

I don't agree. I can't publish a sequeul to "Gone with the Wind" under my name and using the original characters. The copyright owners would sue me and win (this had happend in the US, btw). For this reason I believe that the argument you brought is not correct. But it is interesting, never the less - I'll ask my lawyer and let you all know ;-)

> There's one exception to what I just said, though, and I'm not sure if it
> applies to the GPL (I think it doesn't). If when you, as the end user, got
> the copyrighted work (kernel, book, etc.) agreed never to insert other
> stuff (patches, pages, etc.) into it, then you'll need to abide by that
> agreement.

There is no such clause in the GPL, nor would I believe RMS would let it to ever be one.


-- 
Gilad Ben-Yossef <gby@kagoor.com>
Tel: +972(9)9717330 | Fax: +972(9)9717334   | Cel: +972(54)756701
Kagoor Networks ltd | http://www.kagoor.com | 



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