Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by denotational 1177 days ago
> It wouldn't.

Are you a lawyer? Asking in good faith, because if you are then this is the first qualified opinion I’ve seen on the matter.

Everything else has been people claiming to have received legal opinions, see for example the email from Linus in my sibling comment.
1 comments
mustache_kimono 1177 days ago
TBF, so long as we are arguing from authority, Linus isn't a lawyer either, and has produced heresay ("I talked to some lawyers..."), but no attorney's opinion on the matter.

The reasonably charitable case for your parent comment is -- Linus suggests such linking might show "willful infringement" IF an out of tree module used these symbols, AND, as indicated by the parent, these changes were distributed together implicating the GPLv2 license's Sections 2 and 3.

Otherwise how would this ever be a problem? If I linked to a GPLv2 only interface in the privacy of my own home, never distributing the changes, what section of the license requires me to make available my changes? The GPLv2 gives me explicit permission to modify the sources?

link
denotational 1177 days ago
> TBF, so long as we are arguing from authority, Linus isn't a lawyer either, and has produced heresay ("I talked to some lawyers..."), but no attorney's opinion on the matter.

Yes, that’s essentially a rephrasing of my comment that you replied to.

link
mustache_kimono 1177 days ago
Then perhaps I misunderstood your comment? It went pretty hard at a guy/gal who was simply stating the obvious -- permission to modify sources is already given within the GPLv2 itself. Imagine this colloquy --

Linux devs: "We've created a GPL only interface. Here are the sources."

Downstream user: "Okay I've modified these symbols to be not be GPL only anymore."

Linux devs: "You can't do that!"

Downstream user: "But you've given me permission to modify the sources in your license?!"

Certainly a copyright holder can give special additional permission to use software in contravention of the express terms of the license. The only problem is getting the copyright holders agreement to do so. My understanding of what you have argued is -- a copyright holder can place additional restrictions on the use and modification of software in contravention of the express terms of the license hidden within the software itself. You state:

    The legal status of this is uncertain, since a number of questions naturally arise:
    1. Is it acceptable to mark a Kernel module as a GPL module (this is done via a macro in the source) but release it under a license that is not GPL-compatible?
    2. Is it acceptable to recompile the Kernel to remove this restriction?
    As far as I know neither of these have ever been tested, and there are differing opinions.
This line of thought is problematic for several reasons. This most salient of which is -- this is exact argument used against ZFS in the kernel: that the CDDL's additional terms/restrictions are incompatible with the GPLv2.

Imagine again --

Linux devs: "We've created a kernel module that can't be used by Russians invading Ukraine."

Other kernel devs, estates of deceased developers, etc.: "But our understanding was that all our contributed sources would be available under the GPLv2, not some weird hybrid which can be modified willy nilly with new restrictions by any future dev."

When someone says -- "Here is your license to use my software," it is reasonable to believe you can take them at their word, and there aren't additional license restrictions lurking somewhere else.

link