This is perhaps the most ignorant thing I have read on/. . Congratulations on your achievement sir. I assume your screen flashed when you hit submit and you got an "achievement unlocked" logo at the bottom of your screen.
What is your point Reverand Dave? Do you have anything constructive to say or are you just going to sit there and insult me?
This isn't FreeRepublic. There is no reason to oppose gay marriage other than bigotry. So either just say "I'm opposed to gay marriage because I'm a stupid* bigot" or don't post about it on Slashdot because that shit doesn't fly around here.
*Lumping homosexuality with rape, murder and pedophilia
I'm trying to find a coherent reason in what you wrote but I found nothing but an ad hominem attack. You have nothing constructive to say so you resort name calling. Bravo.
Gay marriage does not exist. Marriage is defined by gender, not sexuality. Go buy yourself a dictionary. Marriage is between a man and a woman regardless of whether they are attracted to each other sexually. Marriage is not merely about being in "love" but rather about a decision to spend the rest of your life with one person of the opposite sex. Marriage came into being to create a stable environment to raise children.
You would not be here if not for marriage, you would be part of a family that could afford to pay for your schooling and you would not have "grand parents". Everything you have is because of marriage and yet you have no respect for the institution. It is an institution which means that you should not mess with it willy nilly just to make some whiners happy. Let them be and be responsible for yourself. You can be responsible to other people but that does not mean that you are responsible "for" other people or their feelings. Be true to yourself and stop trying to please others.
So called "gay" marriage means nothing to religion or god. It is an artificial construct created by liberals in the past decade or so. Gay marriage will not be recognized by god and it will not get you out of jail/hell when judgement day comes. There is no point for gay marriage.
Wow, thanks for all of the hate and vitriol. Did it ever cross your mind that those privileges of married couples came at a cost to personal freedom? Did it occur to you that you would not be here on this planet spewing your hate at me if not for your heterosexual parents? Did it not occur to you that you owe your existence and your heritage to a long line of married couples who did their best to support each other and to raise their children to their best ability?
Marriage is about sacrifice and surrender. It is not about "your" rights and what "you" want. It is about wanting to share your life with someone and that is precisely what those gay activists don't get. They are so damn focused on themselves that they completely miss the purpose of marriage. They think it is a "right" when marriage is about giving up rights for collectivism. It is a form of communism. Shocking isn't it? Why do you think so many marriages fail? They fail because selfish pricks like you are never able to learn how to be selfless and care about the other person even when they are not at their best.
Love in a marriage is not just about those butterfly feelings people have for each other when they first meet but rather a mature love where you care about that other person even when it is hard to like them.
Giving a fuck whether they're born gay or by choice only underlines how morally misguided you are. Gay rights are human rights.
Gay people are human and therefor have human rights. Those rights have nothing to do with them being gay and everything to do with being human. If you cannot understand that then you are genuinely confused. Marriage is not a right for anyone. When was the last time you had to have a license for speech? When did you need a license for any other right? Something that requires a license is a privilege rather than a right and can be taken away from you at any time.
What are you trying to say? I'm a human first, male second and heterosexual third in that order. If you identify yourself by your sexuality first and foremost then that means you are a bit shallow and obsessed with sex.
Consider this in the light of the recent lawsuit between Oracle and Google which declared that an API cannot be considered protected by copyright and consider that the GPL relies on Copyright Law. Also consider that the GPL does not diminish or extinguish the original copyright of the GPL licensed code. With all things being equal, it should not diminish the rights of the client code author either. Would not client software dynamically linked only contain references to the API and therefor be in the clear and make the separate LGPL license completely unnecessary for dynamic linking of libraries?
Consider this in technical terms and in the light of copyright law rather than the intentions or wishes of the author of the library.
The crusades came after 400 years of aggression. Spain had been invaded and France was in danger. Also, the Eastern Roman Empire was under constant attack by "peaceful" muslim armies that had converted or killed almost all of the Christians and Jews living in Northern Africa.
Religion is a special case. With [insert non-religious dogma here], it's often very difficult to convince people to die for your cause, you know... because of death and the will to live and stuff. With religion, you can promise them AN ETERNITY OF BLISS... see how there's a qualitative difference?
Right, tell that to all of the people killed in the Soviet Union or the Cuban revolution or Pol Pot or the Cultural Revolution in China. Shall I go on?
It's not clear to me if "Innocence of Muslims" would qualify or not since I haven't seen it.
It would not apply since nobody in Canada stopped the "piss christ" exhibit either. I have not seen the Youtube views either but from my understanding, it does not incite people to commit violence against a group which is what hate speech is defined as from my understanding. Any protests calling for the "death" to america occurring in Canada would be considered hate speech however.
WTF? I think you are a bit confused. Everyone has individual rights but some collective rights are enshrined in society with specific rules and requirements. For example, you cannot marry your cousin or your sister. You also cannot marry a dog, cat, goat or an inanimate object. Marriage has a specific societal purpose and in fact strips some of your individual rights and freedoms in exchange for collective rights. Nobody is denying gay people their individual rights just because some of us feel that marriage has a very specific terms and conditions. Those terms and conditions apply to us all.
What you are asking society to do is to redefine those rules to suit a minority of people who feel that they were "born" that way. What about psychopaths? Should we abolish murder as a crime to that they can have their "fun" too? Should we also get rid of laws protecting children from pedophiles so that they can live their "lifestyle" freely? Rapists? Where are you going to draw they line? How can you draw the line if you just moved it? What gives you the right to both remove and redraw the lines? When does it end? What are the standards?
The reality of life is that society has a common set of rules that everyone has to abide by regardless of how anyone might feel for the good of society as a whole. You can never please everyone all of the time so you should try to do what is best for society and the individual. That will mean that some people will not get what they want because they exist outside of the norm.
Maybe the gays need to just grow a pair and live their own lives in peace. They will never receive absolute approval from society and they need to accept that. They can still "live" together without a piece of paper like they have before.
How can something be stolen if it is being given away? The whole point of BSD is that you are "free" to use what is being offered for "free" and you are "free" to contribute back into the community code base to make the product better for everyone else. Through that collaboration you can end up with a better product but everyone is always "free" to take that product of the collaboration and run with it to create something unique.
The problem is someone is also "free" to take your product, wrap it around something proprietary with a brand name and sell it, taking all the profit and not returning anything back to the group.
If you don't care about who profits from your code (and in particular, you don't mind that someone else profits from your work), BSD is just fine.
Yes, and the problem is? Freedom has no conditions. When you are free, you can make a choice to contribute back to the community or not. What you are advocating is not freedom but slavery in exchange for code.
Many men are evil. Religion makes many more men do more evil. If we have less religion, there will still be evil, just much less.
"ALL" men (humans) are evil. You are a human being so you are evil too. The nerve of your atheists to go around judging people and thinking that you are better than some others. We are all in the same boat by our natures. If you think that you are pure then you are delusional.
The Soviet union had less religion and look at how that turned out. If you paint all religions with the same brush then that shows how blind, ignorant and prejudiced you are. You are "prejudging" without looking at the attributes of each religion and what they believe and what they abhor. They are not the same.
All religions eventually devolve into violence and racism. All religious people directly encourage the existence of religion.
No, I think you have that backwards. All men are evil. Violence and racism has existed since the dawn of time in all human societies even in ones with ideologies that thought as you do and went around killing religious people. The Soviets tried to eliminate religion with violence. You are part of the problem. You are a bigot. You hate what you do not understand. Not all religions are equal.
Ever heard of the 10 commandments? Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not covet, thou shall not bear false witness (lie). All of those are permissible in a certain religion with millions of followers. They even condone suicide. All of those things are considered a sin in Judaism and Christianity.
You are blaming all religions for something caused by human nature. You are evil like the rest of us but some of us strive to overcome our natures rather than allowing it to overcome our will.
That's funny... I recall the judge cleared that all up. What kind of stretched strawman are you trying for here?
The kernel devs already have a legally tested copyright to the Linux kernel source. This is NVidia trying to license their API and failing. Why defend them? Oh and it's rich for you to call Alan Cox a hypocrite while you incorrectly tell him what his chosen license means.
You cannot license an API. You can only license the implementation of an API and you could prevent static linking but not dynamic linking. The GPL attempting to prevent dynamic linking is an overreach. Dynamic linking, by definition, requires an exposed public interface which is an API for all intents and purposes. That is how dynamic linking works. With static linking, you are incorporating the other code with yours and it becomes one and has to be distributed as one piece which means it might have to be distributed under the same license as what you are linking into. With dynamic linking, you don't have to distribute the original library/kernel with your utility/driver and so you are not distributing anything other than client code referencing the API which cannot be protected by the GPL.
As the Oracle versus Google shows us, you cannot license/copyright and API. The Oracle case was about reimplementing/emulating an API whereas most programmers program "against" an API. Neither can be restricted by license/copyright. You can only dictate the distribution of the library itself. I am free to dynamically link against a GPL'd library. As long as I do not distribute that library with my program, I am free and clear because I did not actually distribute any of their code. References in my code to their exposed public API do not constitute a violation of the GPL as proven my the Oracle versus Google case.
If I were to release such a binary and a GPL'd library author tried to sue me, they would lose because you cannot copyright an API. The whole point of an API is for interoperability. API stands for Application Programming Interface. Any public interface in a library is an API.
I am really not understanding this. We use Win32API in Wine. The reason being that it is just an API and not Windows code. But the kernel API is different? Is this some sort of extension of the "statically link" clause in the GPL?
An API cannot be GPL'd or have any other license. Some of the requirements to implement a client for that API can be but most case law seems to suggest that you could reverse engineer such requirements using clean room techniques by making sure that the implementer never saw the original GPL'd codebase.
The Oracle case was about whether Google took Oracle copyrighted code to reimplement the API/Runtime of Java. In this case, Alan Cox is trying to dictate the license that a client of the API uses. That is a major overreach on his part. Unless if the API requires specific classes to be passed/referenced as value types which are only described inside of GPL'ed code and not describe in any documentation external to that source, he cannot say squat about licensing of the client code. I don't care if he thinks that the GPL gives him that right because the GPL does not overrule the copyright of any author especially anyone dynamically linking to a library. Effectively, what this means is that the majority of LGPL'ed code is really no different than the equivalent GPL'ed code because the GPL cannot dictate licenses of dynamically linked code. They can insist that their library is not distributed with the executable but that is as far as it goes. The GPL needs to be challenged in court on these grounds. I believe the linking clauses are an overreach and violate copyright of others.
If the API only makes use of generic value types then they can be used by anyone without having to reference any GPL'ed code. A long only the method signatures (the API) are referenced in your code and the API does not require any undocumented class objects as parameters then Mr Cox can whine and complain all he likes but he does not have a legal leg to stand on. APIs, whether being reimplemented or accessed by clients cannot be copyright.
Mr. Cox would have to use a "magic" class type known only to his GPL'ed code to lock down the API but that could be circumvented potentially with a clean room reverse engineering project to determine the structure of that class and reimplement it. Alternatively, he could have a generic initialization method that only actually unlocks the API if you override the abstract class with a specific implementation known only to the GPL'ed code.
Sorry Alan, but if you really don't want to share then don't release your code in the first place.
As far as I understand it, this is not an "interface" in the sense of header files. It's an interface to a particular hardware I/O use-case and is implemented in the kernel in real, compiled, C code. It's much like how the socket code in the kernel is an "interface" for user applications to use network hardware. While sys/socket.h might not be copyrightable, the underlying implementation in the kernel is.
I'm pretty sure this makes it subject to the GPL. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Header files are a language specific concept. Not all languages use header files. Some languages just define the interface in another file with the same extension as the class.
If you expose methods the the "public" either as methods in a class or an interface then that constitutes an API. If you don't want the public to use your library without looking at your code base and therefor being "infected" by it, then don't expose your method calls as public in either your class or interface.You can use polymorphism to expose a generic method that can be transformed into more specific methods internal to your class. Using those methods would require having intimate knowledge of your codebase which would prevent a "clean room" implementation of a client to the library.
Another option would be to use a magic number or magic object type to "lock" your library from use by anyone without implementing a class contained within your GPL'ed codebase. Any client not able to reproduce the same object type with the correct attributes would fail to operate.
The GPL is a classic example of developers who have no real understanding of copyright and property rights working with lawyers who do not understand how software development works coming up with a license that those does not reflect the reality of either software development or the law around property rights.
How tyrannical that people who write code want a say in how it's used. The bastards!
You can simply choose to not share them in the first place.
I don't think you understand how dynamic linking works. I do not have to distribute libraries that I have dynamically linked my binary to. The end user can download them separately and that binary will work with those libraries as long as the interface has remained the same.
If it is OK to scan documents for fair use and it is OK to break DRM then linking to GPL'ed code without having to be GPL'ed should be legal as well under interoperability terms.
Your rights end where mine begin. If you expose an API in your library then I have a right to link to it. As long as I do not copy the code into my codebase then you should have no say in how my code is licensed.
But this is not about the API, it's about linking your code with GPL licensed parts of the Linux kernel. This is nothing like Oracle vs Google.
That is the main problem with the GPL. Linking is not the same as including code in your codebase. The GPL should never be allowed to prevent linking because that hinder interoperability which is supposed to be one of the main tenants of the larger open source initiative. What good is "open" source if it can never be interoperable?
I sincerely hope that linking causing a viral infection with GPL is struck down by a court as being an illegal. It would benefit everyone including the GPL community. RMS is now the worst enemy of open source.
If this were BSD, Alan Cox would have had his hard work stolen from him against his will, and he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. Nvidia could have taken his code and released it in their binary blobs, and he'd never see any benefit from it again.
So why is that a reason for him to go BSD instead of GPL?
How can something be stolen if it is being given away? The whole point of BSD is that you are "free" to use what is being offered for "free" and you are "free" to contribute back into the community code base to make the product better for everyone else. Through that collaboration you can end up with a better product but everyone is always "free" to take that product of the collaboration and run with it to create something unique.
Nvidia are the bad guys here, not Alax Cox nor the GPL.
But I'm torn because Nvidia is the only great solution for 3d on Linux right now. So my pragmatic self is screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Intel Ivy Bridge stuff is pretty awesome though, I use it more than the dedicated Nvidia gpu on my Clevo. I'm really hoping the next iteration of Intel GPUs makes dedicated support obsolete but it's just a dream;).
No, Alan Cox and the GPL are the bad guys here. They are trying to copyright an API which is precisely what Oracle tried to do and you probably were against it. You are being a hypocrite.
The GPL is incompatible with copyright laws in various countries and because of that, it needs to be challenged by a company like NVIDA in a court of law. Alan Cox cannot copyright/GPL his API any more than Oracle could copyright their Java API. The GPL is supposed to be built on top of copyright law but if it is incompatible with that law then it is not a valid license and needs to be rewritten.
GPL infringement happens when you have a non-GPL compat app accessing memory of another -- which is why linking dynamically against GPL is no-go (needs LGPL). Passing data-structures is historically a problematic area.
Sadly, that probably means that the GPL is incompatible with copyright law in a number of jurisdictions. I look forward to seeing a company like NVIDA challenge the GPL in court for the good of us all. Tyranny is never a good thing regardless of who the tyrant is or whether you agree with their aims.
This viral nature has never sit right with a lot of people. No license can extinguish the copyright of another.
If it leads to vendor GPU drivers being developed in the open then I'm in!
Why were you upset again?
Because everyone was arguing that APIs are not copyrightable in the Oracle vs. Google case but somehow you think that they should be GPL? GPL is built on copyright law which means that you are saying that Oracle was right and that an API can be copyright protected.
Don't be a hypocrite. You either believe that APIs are copyrightable which means that Google should pay Oracle or you don't. If you don't then you cannot say that they are protected by GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
This is perhaps the most ignorant thing I have read on /. . Congratulations on your achievement sir. I assume your screen flashed when you hit submit and you got an "achievement unlocked" logo at the bottom of your screen.
What is your point Reverand Dave? Do you have anything constructive to say or are you just going to sit there and insult me?
This isn't FreeRepublic. There is no reason to oppose gay marriage other than bigotry. So either just say "I'm opposed to gay marriage because I'm a stupid* bigot" or don't post about it on Slashdot because that shit doesn't fly around here.
*Lumping homosexuality with rape, murder and pedophilia
I'm trying to find a coherent reason in what you wrote but I found nothing but an ad hominem attack. You have nothing constructive to say so you resort name calling. Bravo.
Gay marriage does not exist. Marriage is defined by gender, not sexuality. Go buy yourself a dictionary. Marriage is between a man and a woman regardless of whether they are attracted to each other sexually. Marriage is not merely about being in "love" but rather about a decision to spend the rest of your life with one person of the opposite sex. Marriage came into being to create a stable environment to raise children.
You would not be here if not for marriage, you would be part of a family that could afford to pay for your schooling and you would not have "grand parents". Everything you have is because of marriage and yet you have no respect for the institution. It is an institution which means that you should not mess with it willy nilly just to make some whiners happy. Let them be and be responsible for yourself. You can be responsible to other people but that does not mean that you are responsible "for" other people or their feelings. Be true to yourself and stop trying to please others.
So called "gay" marriage means nothing to religion or god. It is an artificial construct created by liberals in the past decade or so. Gay marriage will not be recognized by god and it will not get you out of jail/hell when judgement day comes. There is no point for gay marriage.
Wow, thanks for all of the hate and vitriol. Did it ever cross your mind that those privileges of married couples came at a cost to personal freedom? Did it occur to you that you would not be here on this planet spewing your hate at me if not for your heterosexual parents? Did it not occur to you that you owe your existence and your heritage to a long line of married couples who did their best to support each other and to raise their children to their best ability?
Marriage is about sacrifice and surrender. It is not about "your" rights and what "you" want. It is about wanting to share your life with someone and that is precisely what those gay activists don't get. They are so damn focused on themselves that they completely miss the purpose of marriage. They think it is a "right" when marriage is about giving up rights for collectivism. It is a form of communism. Shocking isn't it? Why do you think so many marriages fail? They fail because selfish pricks like you are never able to learn how to be selfless and care about the other person even when they are not at their best.
Love in a marriage is not just about those butterfly feelings people have for each other when they first meet but rather a mature love where you care about that other person even when it is hard to like them.
Giving a fuck whether they're born gay or by choice only underlines how morally misguided you are. Gay rights are human rights.
Gay people are human and therefor have human rights. Those rights have nothing to do with them being gay and everything to do with being human. If you cannot understand that then you are genuinely confused. Marriage is not a right for anyone. When was the last time you had to have a license for speech? When did you need a license for any other right? Something that requires a license is a privilege rather than a right and can be taken away from you at any time.
What are you trying to say? I'm a human first, male second and heterosexual third in that order. If you identify yourself by your sexuality first and foremost then that means you are a bit shallow and obsessed with sex.
Consider this in the light of the recent lawsuit between Oracle and Google which declared that an API cannot be considered protected by copyright and consider that the GPL relies on Copyright Law. Also consider that the GPL does not diminish or extinguish the original copyright of the GPL licensed code. With all things being equal, it should not diminish the rights of the client code author either. Would not client software dynamically linked only contain references to the API and therefor be in the clear and make the separate LGPL license completely unnecessary for dynamic linking of libraries?
Consider this in technical terms and in the light of copyright law rather than the intentions or wishes of the author of the library.
The crusades came after 400 years of aggression. Spain had been invaded and France was in danger. Also, the Eastern Roman Empire was under constant attack by "peaceful" muslim armies that had converted or killed almost all of the Christians and Jews living in Northern Africa.
Religion is a special case. With [insert non-religious dogma here], it's often very difficult to convince people to die for your cause, you know... because of death and the will to live and stuff. With religion, you can promise them AN ETERNITY OF BLISS... see how there's a qualitative difference?
Right, tell that to all of the people killed in the Soviet Union or the Cuban revolution or Pol Pot or the Cultural Revolution in China. Shall I go on?
Hate speech is not protected in Canada.
It's not clear to me if "Innocence of Muslims" would qualify or not since I haven't seen it.
It would not apply since nobody in Canada stopped the "piss christ" exhibit either. I have not seen the Youtube views either but from my understanding, it does not incite people to commit violence against a group which is what hate speech is defined as from my understanding. Any protests calling for the "death" to america occurring in Canada would be considered hate speech however.
WTF? I think you are a bit confused. Everyone has individual rights but some collective rights are enshrined in society with specific rules and requirements. For example, you cannot marry your cousin or your sister. You also cannot marry a dog, cat, goat or an inanimate object. Marriage has a specific societal purpose and in fact strips some of your individual rights and freedoms in exchange for collective rights. Nobody is denying gay people their individual rights just because some of us feel that marriage has a very specific terms and conditions. Those terms and conditions apply to us all.
What you are asking society to do is to redefine those rules to suit a minority of people who feel that they were "born" that way. What about psychopaths? Should we abolish murder as a crime to that they can have their "fun" too? Should we also get rid of laws protecting children from pedophiles so that they can live their "lifestyle" freely? Rapists? Where are you going to draw they line? How can you draw the line if you just moved it? What gives you the right to both remove and redraw the lines? When does it end? What are the standards?
The reality of life is that society has a common set of rules that everyone has to abide by regardless of how anyone might feel for the good of society as a whole. You can never please everyone all of the time so you should try to do what is best for society and the individual. That will mean that some people will not get what they want because they exist outside of the norm.
Maybe the gays need to just grow a pair and live their own lives in peace. They will never receive absolute approval from society and they need to accept that. They can still "live" together without a piece of paper like they have before.
How can something be stolen if it is being given away? The whole point of BSD is that you are "free" to use what is being offered for "free" and you are "free" to contribute back into the community code base to make the product better for everyone else. Through that collaboration you can end up with a better product but everyone is always "free" to take that product of the collaboration and run with it to create something unique.
The problem is someone is also "free" to take your product, wrap it around something proprietary with a brand name and sell it, taking all the profit and not returning anything back to the group.
If you don't care about who profits from your code (and in particular, you don't mind that someone else profits from your work), BSD is just fine.
Yes, and the problem is? Freedom has no conditions. When you are free, you can make a choice to contribute back to the community or not. What you are advocating is not freedom but slavery in exchange for code.
Many men are evil. Religion makes many more men do more evil. If we have less religion, there will still be evil, just much less.
"ALL" men (humans) are evil. You are a human being so you are evil too. The nerve of your atheists to go around judging people and thinking that you are better than some others. We are all in the same boat by our natures. If you think that you are pure then you are delusional.
The Soviet union had less religion and look at how that turned out. If you paint all religions with the same brush then that shows how blind, ignorant and prejudiced you are. You are "prejudging" without looking at the attributes of each religion and what they believe and what they abhor. They are not the same.
All Religion==evil.
All religions eventually devolve into violence and racism. All religious people directly encourage the existence of religion.
No, I think you have that backwards. All men are evil. Violence and racism has existed since the dawn of time in all human societies even in ones with ideologies that thought as you do and went around killing religious people. The Soviets tried to eliminate religion with violence. You are part of the problem. You are a bigot. You hate what you do not understand. Not all religions are equal.
Ever heard of the 10 commandments? Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not covet, thou shall not bear false witness (lie). All of those are permissible in a certain religion with millions of followers. They even condone suicide. All of those things are considered a sin in Judaism and Christianity.
You are blaming all religions for something caused by human nature. You are evil like the rest of us but some of us strive to overcome our natures rather than allowing it to overcome our will.
That's funny... I recall the judge cleared that all up. What kind of stretched strawman are you trying for here?
The kernel devs already have a legally tested copyright to the Linux kernel source. This is NVidia trying to license their API and failing. Why defend them? Oh and it's rich for you to call Alan Cox a hypocrite while you incorrectly tell him what his chosen license means.
You cannot license an API. You can only license the implementation of an API and you could prevent static linking but not dynamic linking. The GPL attempting to prevent dynamic linking is an overreach. Dynamic linking, by definition, requires an exposed public interface which is an API for all intents and purposes. That is how dynamic linking works. With static linking, you are incorporating the other code with yours and it becomes one and has to be distributed as one piece which means it might have to be distributed under the same license as what you are linking into. With dynamic linking, you don't have to distribute the original library/kernel with your utility/driver and so you are not distributing anything other than client code referencing the API which cannot be protected by the GPL.
They WROTE the fucking API asshole.
They can license it however they wish.
As the Oracle versus Google shows us, you cannot license/copyright and API. The Oracle case was about reimplementing/emulating an API whereas most programmers program "against" an API. Neither can be restricted by license/copyright. You can only dictate the distribution of the library itself. I am free to dynamically link against a GPL'd library. As long as I do not distribute that library with my program, I am free and clear because I did not actually distribute any of their code. References in my code to their exposed public API do not constitute a violation of the GPL as proven my the Oracle versus Google case.
If I were to release such a binary and a GPL'd library author tried to sue me, they would lose because you cannot copyright an API. The whole point of an API is for interoperability. API stands for Application Programming Interface. Any public interface in a library is an API.
I am really not understanding this. We use Win32API in Wine. The reason being that it is just an API and not Windows code. But the kernel API is different? Is this some sort of extension of the "statically link" clause in the GPL?
An API cannot be GPL'd or have any other license. Some of the requirements to implement a client for that API can be but most case law seems to suggest that you could reverse engineer such requirements using clean room techniques by making sure that the implementer never saw the original GPL'd codebase.
The Oracle case was about whether Google took Oracle copyrighted code to reimplement the API/Runtime of Java. In this case, Alan Cox is trying to dictate the license that a client of the API uses. That is a major overreach on his part. Unless if the API requires specific classes to be passed/referenced as value types which are only described inside of GPL'ed code and not describe in any documentation external to that source, he cannot say squat about licensing of the client code. I don't care if he thinks that the GPL gives him that right because the GPL does not overrule the copyright of any author especially anyone dynamically linking to a library. Effectively, what this means is that the majority of LGPL'ed code is really no different than the equivalent GPL'ed code because the GPL cannot dictate licenses of dynamically linked code. They can insist that their library is not distributed with the executable but that is as far as it goes. The GPL needs to be challenged in court on these grounds. I believe the linking clauses are an overreach and violate copyright of others.
If the API only makes use of generic value types then they can be used by anyone without having to reference any GPL'ed code. A long only the method signatures (the API) are referenced in your code and the API does not require any undocumented class objects as parameters then Mr Cox can whine and complain all he likes but he does not have a legal leg to stand on. APIs, whether being reimplemented or accessed by clients cannot be copyright.
Mr. Cox would have to use a "magic" class type known only to his GPL'ed code to lock down the API but that could be circumvented potentially with a clean room reverse engineering project to determine the structure of that class and reimplement it. Alternatively, he could have a generic initialization method that only actually unlocks the API if you override the abstract class with a specific implementation known only to the GPL'ed code.
Sorry Alan, but if you really don't want to share then don't release your code in the first place.
As far as I understand it, this is not an "interface" in the sense of header files. It's an interface to a particular hardware I/O use-case and is implemented in the kernel in real, compiled, C code. It's much like how the socket code in the kernel is an "interface" for user applications to use network hardware. While sys/socket.h might not be copyrightable, the underlying implementation in the kernel is.
I'm pretty sure this makes it subject to the GPL. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Header files are a language specific concept. Not all languages use header files. Some languages just define the interface in another file with the same extension as the class.
If you expose methods the the "public" either as methods in a class or an interface then that constitutes an API. If you don't want the public to use your library without looking at your code base and therefor being "infected" by it, then don't expose your method calls as public in either your class or interface.You can use polymorphism to expose a generic method that can be transformed into more specific methods internal to your class. Using those methods would require having intimate knowledge of your codebase which would prevent a "clean room" implementation of a client to the library.
Another option would be to use a magic number or magic object type to "lock" your library from use by anyone without implementing a class contained within your GPL'ed codebase. Any client not able to reproduce the same object type with the correct attributes would fail to operate.
The GPL is a classic example of developers who have no real understanding of copyright and property rights working with lawyers who do not understand how software development works coming up with a license that those does not reflect the reality of either software development or the law around property rights.
How tyrannical that people who write code want a say in how it's used. The bastards!
You can simply choose to not share them in the first place.
I don't think you understand how dynamic linking works. I do not have to distribute libraries that I have dynamically linked my binary to. The end user can download them separately and that binary will work with those libraries as long as the interface has remained the same.
If it is OK to scan documents for fair use and it is OK to break DRM then linking to GPL'ed code without having to be GPL'ed should be legal as well under interoperability terms.
Your rights end where mine begin. If you expose an API in your library then I have a right to link to it. As long as I do not copy the code into my codebase then you should have no say in how my code is licensed.
But this is not about the API, it's about linking your code with GPL licensed parts of the Linux kernel. This is nothing like Oracle vs Google.
That is the main problem with the GPL. Linking is not the same as including code in your codebase. The GPL should never be allowed to prevent linking because that hinder interoperability which is supposed to be one of the main tenants of the larger open source initiative. What good is "open" source if it can never be interoperable?
I sincerely hope that linking causing a viral infection with GPL is struck down by a court as being an illegal. It would benefit everyone including the GPL community. RMS is now the worst enemy of open source.
If this were BSD, Alan Cox would have had his hard work stolen from him against his will, and he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. Nvidia could have taken his code and released it in their binary blobs, and he'd never see any benefit from it again.
So why is that a reason for him to go BSD instead of GPL?
How can something be stolen if it is being given away? The whole point of BSD is that you are "free" to use what is being offered for "free" and you are "free" to contribute back into the community code base to make the product better for everyone else. Through that collaboration you can end up with a better product but everyone is always "free" to take that product of the collaboration and run with it to create something unique.
Nvidia are the bad guys here, not Alax Cox nor the GPL.
But I'm torn because Nvidia is the only great solution for 3d on Linux right now. So my pragmatic self is screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Intel Ivy Bridge stuff is pretty awesome though, I use it more than the dedicated Nvidia gpu on my Clevo. I'm really hoping the next iteration of Intel GPUs makes dedicated support obsolete but it's just a dream ;).
No, Alan Cox and the GPL are the bad guys here. They are trying to copyright an API which is precisely what Oracle tried to do and you probably were against it. You are being a hypocrite.
The GPL is incompatible with copyright laws in various countries and because of that, it needs to be challenged by a company like NVIDA in a court of law. Alan Cox cannot copyright/GPL his API any more than Oracle could copyright their Java API. The GPL is supposed to be built on top of copyright law but if it is incompatible with that law then it is not a valid license and needs to be rewritten.
Sadly not :)
GPL infringement happens when you have a non-GPL compat app accessing memory of another -- which is why linking dynamically against GPL is no-go (needs LGPL). Passing data-structures is historically a problematic area.
Sadly, that probably means that the GPL is incompatible with copyright law in a number of jurisdictions. I look forward to seeing a company like NVIDA challenge the GPL in court for the good of us all. Tyranny is never a good thing regardless of who the tyrant is or whether you agree with their aims.
This viral nature has never sit right with a lot of people. No license can extinguish the copyright of another.
If it leads to vendor GPU drivers being developed in the open then I'm in!
Why were you upset again?
Because everyone was arguing that APIs are not copyrightable in the Oracle vs. Google case but somehow you think that they should be GPL? GPL is built on copyright law which means that you are saying that Oracle was right and that an API can be copyright protected.
Don't be a hypocrite. You either believe that APIs are copyrightable which means that Google should pay Oracle or you don't. If you don't then you cannot say that they are protected by GPL.
Digital video cameras killed film video camera's what?
Mojo. It stole its mojo.