Slashdot Mirror
Kororaa Accused of Violating GPL
AlanS2002 writes "The Kororaa Project, a pre-configured binary install method for Gentoo Linux which bundles nVidia's and ATI binary drivers in its Kororaa Xgl Live CD , has put its Live CD on hold after being accused of violating the GPL. The issue appears to be the distribution of the Linux Kernel and nVidia's/ATI binary drivers together. When the binary drivers are built the GPL'ed code is included in the binary result, which is a violation."
I always thought it was ok as long as they provided everything necessary to build the CD on your own, IE all of the GPL code that was used and which non-GPL packages (the nVidia and ATI drivers) were used.
Nope. You have to provide every piece of source code necessary to build it. The maintainers of KORORAA don't have the source code to NVidia and ATI drivers. Hence the violation.
If anything I would have expected this to be a violation of nVidia and ATI's copyright, distributing their drivers rather than sending people to their respective websites to download.
Except they (well, at least NVidia) explicitly allow redistribution. They do this because nobody is legally allowed to (because of the GPL), and therefore they get to look like the "good guys" instead of just a bunch of mean-spirited SCOX/Microsoft toolies that want to hurt Linux users.
By making the driver closed-source, they've made it such no Linux-based systems can ship with support for NVidia or ATI displays. Of course, free drivers are starting to get pretty good for ATI and NVidia, and I'm sure "the good guys" will eventually swoop in to protect all those suckers that bought NVidia or ATI video hardware, but until then, don't confuse the issue by suggesting even for a minute that the GPL is hurting anybody here...
Linux is a GPLd OS. If that doesn't suit you then you're quite right to use something else.
good points