Slashdot Mirror
GPL Issues Surrounding Commercial Device Drivers?
Demiurg asks: "My company has recently decided to support Linux for it's embedded networking products which means that I'm starting to write Linux device drivers for our hardware. The company was very concerned about GPL issues and consulted a lawyer - who advised us to go for a user-space driver, saying that this is the only safe way to avoid GPL issues. I tried to give them a few examples of companies distributing binary only drivers (NVIDIA and Rational) but was told that these companies do not distribute binary only drivers - they only allow you to download them from a web site (which is not an option for an embedded product). What does Slashdot have to say about the issue? Is writing a user-mode (and hence not very efficient) driver the only way for a company to protect it's intellectual property? Please refrain from giving answers like 'all code should be GPL' - although I personally may agree, such answers will not help me convince management to make the change." Are there any lawyers (or readers with the right legal knowledge) out there that can confirm or contradict this recommendation?
I got the first post!! I win, I win.
because it is slooooooooooooooooooow !!! :-)
(Adolf Hitroll Rewlz
Cue 10,001 Slashdot folks ANL posts... :)
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Weird, I came to slashdot.org with the intention of posting a Very similar question.
I recently downloaded the Apple developer kit, and basically signed away any right to disclose what the hell is available on their developer site. They use this "IOKit" for writing device drivers, but I want to write an open source device driver for Serial-to-USB converters (the iBook unfortunately has no serial or parallel port!!) So does anyone know of any resources where I can learn how to write a device driver for OS-X without using the closed-source developer kits Apple provides?
Why stick up for big business?
Two senior security staff at Finnish telco Sonera have been remanded in custody, charged with breaching customer privacy by allegedly riffling through private telephone records in an attempt to identify an internal mole.
Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's biggest daily newspaper, reports today that the Helsinki District Court ordered the pair to be held in custody amid fears that they would interfere with an investigation by Finland's National Bureau of Investigation into suspected violations of communications privacy by Sonera.
The paper reports that the two men remanded in custody are Juha E. Miettinen, who heads Sonera's Eurasia project, and another unnamed man who is "a top figure in Sonera's security operations". In late 2000 and early 2001, the pair allegedly "secretly investigated the private telephone records of dozens of company employees and outsiders in an effort to find the source of leaks of confidential corporate information to the media", the paper reports. This leaked information, which found its way into Helsingin Sanomat and other Finnish papers, concerning conflicts within the Sonera administration.
The NBI investigation was launched recently at Sonera's own request, after an earlier internal investigation which concluding telephone records had been accessed - but nothing illegal had taken place - proved unconvincing.
Telephone companies in Finland are legally obliged to guarantee the privacy of telecommunications, so the case is being viewed as a serious matter.
Under Finish law, access to telephone records is restricted to police or the authorities and normally requires court authorisation. The target of any such investigation must normally be told phone records were scrutinised after an investigation is concluded. ®
This will probably get modded down as offtopic, but COMPANY NAMES ARE SINGULAR. It's "Nvidia is, not are. Microsoft has released, not have released. A company is one thing, made up of many parts. It's just not plural, ok? This mistake happens so often around here. It's nauseating.
``a history major knows what software is and may even know what a divise drive is''
Whew...those history majors must be really smart... I even don't know what a divise drive is... Or maybe it is actually divide drive?
Divide Drive, n: The drive to divide the opposition, in order to better be able to help them. Historically, this has been attributed to the Red Army in the Russian Revolution. See also Russian Revolution.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Garth was the coolest. Dana Carvey rocks!
I think you mean Communications majors are a joke. :D
I have a BS in CS and took many ECE and EE courses. Engineering is very, very easy for anyone who is good at collecting like terms.