[OT] The GPL and possible violations

[Michael A. Peters]

On Fri, 2006-02-17 at 07:22 -0500, Matt Higgins wrote:
> Here is what linus thinks 
> 
> http://kerneltrap.org/node/1735

That's for shipping a binary module.
Shipping a kernel with a binary module is different in my view - because
shipping the kernel means you are shipping GPL software that is modified
by the kernel module.

If you are just shipping the binary module - and not the kernel, you
aren't shipping a GPL product that the module modifies when loaded.
That's what nvidia does - they ship a module, the user installs the
module. But with linksys - they are shipping a kernel that has its
functionality altered by the module - just as if they had compiled it
into the kernel itself.