RE: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers


On Saturday 17 February 2007 15:19, David Schwartz wrote:

Static Controls argued that taking the TLP was the only practical way to
make a cartridge that would work with that printer.

Which shows how that case is different from writing Linux drivers. For
example, looking at the example the OP was himself proposing a few
alternative approaches to work around the limitation they were hitting:
could just switch to static major/minors instead of dynamics ones, they
could skip sysfs, or they could even reimplement something like sysfs
themselves, or whatever other interface they deem useful for the
purpose of
plopping in their own binary blob on top of it, sort of like what nVidia
and ATi do for their stuff.

These are all different functional ideas.

It is no response to an argument like this to say, "you could always express
a different idea". Copyright only protects the one way the author chose to
express an idea. You should not ever need to change an idea to get around
copyright.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but have you read Lexmark v. Static
Controls? There was a section where they talked about how perhaps you could
have used a different algorithm to measure the toner level.

You may have to change your idea to get around a patent, but you should
never, ever have to change a functional idea to get around a copyright.

Do you realize that you are arguing for software patents? And worse, for
patents that are easy to get (and last as long) as copyrights.

DS


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