Re: licensing issue

[Fabrice Gautier <gautier@email.enst.fr>]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001 19:44:53 +0200
Erik Mouw <J.A.K.Mouw@ITS.TUDelft.NL> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 09:31:48PM +0530, Raghav P wrote:
> > Will these 2 scenarios cause any licensing issue under Linux/GPL:
> > 
> > (i) A bootloader that passes proprietary arguments(specific to a
> > architecture) to linux kernel. I understand we need to open the Linux source
> > code but should the bootloader source code be made open source?
> 
> I think you don't have to, the PC BIOS is also not open source and
> still boots an open source kernel.

I think it depends what kind of "arguments" the bootloader passes to the
kernel.

As everybody says, its more a matter of interpreting what is a
derivative work. 

Imagine if you want to port linux to a new arch
You could have all the arch specific stuff implemented in the boot
loader then modify the kernel so it calls functions inside the
bootloader. I think in this case this would be a GPL violation.
This woudl also be the work of a very twisted mind indeed...

A less twisted thing is the Redboot bootloader
(http://sources.redhat.com/redboot/), which license is, I think,
incompatible with the GPL.


-- 
Fabrice Gautier <gautier@email.enstfr>

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