Re: device driver & GPL

svlin@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:

I am developing a device driver under Linux. My customer is asking me
to release the source code of the device driver. Should I need to
release the driver source code according GPL (General Public
License)? Thanks for your help.

If you own the copyright on your source code, that's certainly your decision. If your customer owns the copyright, that's your customer's decision. In the United States, works-for-hire are generally considered to be owned by whoever's paying for it. So, if your customer is paying you to write the device driver, by default your customer owns the copyright.

So, your first step is to have a written agreement with your customer regarding who owns the copyright on your device driver. Then, the copyright owner gets to decide whether to release it under the GPL, or not.

One thing that works in favor of the GPL: if you wrote good enough code, it's clean and readable, and you release it under the GPL, and you contact the person who is responsible for maintaining a corresponding portion of the Linux kernel, there's a fairly good chance that your code can eventually be a part of a standard Linux kernel. You will probably will need to make some minor changes to your formatting style, and such, but if it's under the GPL, and it's clean, it goes into the kernel.

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