Erm, the Novell/MS agreement is garbage. It doesn't protect people who redistribute code they receive from Microsoft, and only applies to commmercial free software producers (i.e. Sun) insofar as that code ends up in OpenSuSE. If the same "infringing" code ends up in RedHat then Redhat (and the people who supplied RedHat with the code)can be sued.
Novell can implement all sorts of Microsoft-patented ideas, hand it to and if that project is distributed by a commercial distro, then the distro can be sued by Microsoft for patent violations. Novell is in the clear due to the agreement, people who redistribute their code aren't.
Novell might get clobbered by section 7 of the GPL (or, in this case, the equivalent LGPL section), but only if it tries distributing the same code itself.
I don't know if this scenario is likely - but Microsoft are certainly hyping it up as a possibility. Did you catch Monkeyboy's proclamation the other day about how Linux infringed its patents, and Linux users owe them money?
This case looks like it'll help shut up those morons who think free software licenses (i.e. the GPL) are unenforcable.
We've had Sitecom's laughable 'exhaustion of rights/first sale' argument thrown out of court in Germany.
In another German case, D-Link tried to claim that the GPL was invalid, therefore they had a right to use GPL'ed code as if it was public domain. That didn't get them anywhere.
And Daniel Wallace has been slapped eight ways to Sunday in two court cases (one of them being taken to appeal) for attempting to claim that the GPL violated the antitrust laws. Impressively, he spurred three different judges to each give a ringing endorsement to the GPL, one of them going so far as to refer to Linux as 'GNU/Linux' exclusively throughout his final ruling!
Now here, the defendant is mirroring a common anti-GPL troll, by claiming the Artistic License is a contract, not a license, and that code given for free on the internet is public domain. He's going to lose of course, and the precedent will almost certainly apply to the GPL when he does.
Now all we need is for some kook to try claiming that the GPL, or some other similar license, is preempted by the US constitution (You still there, SCO?), and that's pretty much all the standard anti-GPL attacks exhausted.
Looks like free software's legal foundations are being solidly built as we speak...
What makes you think that Microsoft is going to only go after people who use Microsoft software for part of their business? People who've never used Microsoft software, referred to it, or looked at it are just as likely to be sued for patent infringement as those who do - that's part of what's wrong with software patents. Given that, is there any reason why Linux users in general shouldn't be scared? If they don't use SuSE, then Microsoft has started lifting the barriers (i.e. antitrust) to being able to sue them or, more realistically, their vendor. Even if they DO use SuSE, then they live in fear of Microsoft suing someone else over patented ideas implemented in GPLed code that's also in SuSE; if that happens, then it becomes impossible to distribute the same code in SuSE due to the 'Patrick Henry' clause in GPL section 7.
At best, this deal is just an exercise in antiLinux FUD and Microsoft has no intention of really suing. But we can't tell; if we could, it wouldn't be FUD.
The Chinese have taken away power from the people and given it to the state for the benefit of the ruling political elite and a number of friendly corporations, exploiting the people while spying on them and taking away their freedoms. That is just a more extreme case of what is currently happening in the West.
Well I'm remembering various Guardian articles, so I can't draw any citations up at will. "Inside BOSS" by Gordon Winter, an ex South African Intelligence officer, does make the claim that MI5 did use this tactic to find out the name of every Communist voter.
Hmm, the reports I'm thinking about go back to the 1940s right through to the 1970s at the very least - your article talks about the practice since the RIPA in 1983, so perhaps that law streamlined the process of mass political spying so that Special Branch didn't need to get involved. (That might partly account for the 3 million subversives that MI5 was keeping tabs on by 1991).
I dunno about Leftpondia, but us UKians have had unsecret "secret" ballots for decades. Every ballot paper has a serial code written on it, and when you turn up to vote, they write that serial code beside your name in a ledger and hand you your ballot paper. There have been reports by vote counters, going back 60 years now, of Special Branch officers (our secret political police AND the people who look into electoral fraud) removing the boxes of left wing candidates for further examination. They then have 6 months to match the names with the ballot papers and hand the data to MI5 or whoever, before the ballots are destroyed.
Strangely enough, the Nazi party used to hold referenda with the same tactic. However, the Nazis were circumspect enough to put THEIR serial numbers in invisible ink (who'd have thought the Gestapo were more subtle than the British police force?), and the consequences of voting wrong were more severe (i.e. being hauled off to concentration camps instead of mysteriously "losing" your government job).
Not quite. There's two points to make. One, because of GPL section 7, Novell's patent deal with Microsoft is more or less useless for Novell, and not worth the paper it's written on - it's a false sense of security for Novell.
Secondly, we're in MORE danger now, because of this deal. One of the possible legal retorts against patent infringement would be some sort of 'patent abuse' defence. If Microsoft was clobbering ALL Linux distros with patent lawsuits, then the victims could point out that the law would have the effect of destroying competition and upholding Microsoft's illegal monopoly in operating systems.
With Microsoft now partnering with one Linux distributor, that defence looks less likely to work, since they can point at their cooperation with SuSE. "We're not trying to kill competitors, we just want compensation for our precious eye pee". It's now easier for Microsoft to successfully sue.
The beauty of this is, that after the first strike, Microsoft's own partners subsequently get clobbered by a mixture of GPL enforcement and community disgust. Boom! Linux removed from the game as a commercial product.
That's why they're partnering with a major commercial Linux distributor, that pays them rent.
When they sic their attack lawyers on RedHat or whoever, then they can say 'Oh, we're not destroying all the competition, we just want to be compensated for our Intellectual Pee -look how we're helping SuSE'. That way avoids the 'patent abuse' defence, where RedHat could say that Microsoft can't enforce it's patents in a way that would destroy competition and uphold Microsoft's illegal monopoly.
Of course, the side effect is that the remaining Quisling distros, like SuSE, have to stop distributing their GPLed code, under section 7 of the GPL - that will be the doing of the kernel developers, so no antitrust issues arise.
After that, there will be no commercial Linux, just noncommercial distros. The CEOs start buying Vista. Mission accomplished.
The nature of the Novell/Microsoft deal is somewhat irrelevant. The problem is the threat of Microsoft launching patent attacks against ANYONE over anything in SuSE. The public statements say that Microsoft won't launch a patent suit against noncommercial distributors or against Novell - that still leaves commercial distributors open to a patent lawsuit.
If THAT happens, Section 7 of the GPL kicks in and Novell loses the right to distribute GPLed code in SuSE. Section 7 is the 'liberty or death' clause which says that if you can't distribute GPLed code without some patent(or other) restriction being imposed on your customers, you cannot distribute GPLed code at all. The idea is to prevent code being proprietarised using legal machinery other than copyright - having someone offering GPLed code under a partial patent umbrella that effectively bars, say, commercial distribution, is exactly the sort of thing that section 7 was designed to prevent.
(My theory is that the main reason Microsoft had to offer patent protection to at least one Linux distributor was to skirt antitrust problems if it starts using patent law to crush competition. )
Errr, clue: The reason you're having a hard time thinking of new ways that advertisers can rape your consciousness is because it's already being raped in every possible way that they can think of already.
These days, it's almost impossible to watch TV, use the internet, turn on the radio, go to the cinema, read a newspaper or magazine, walk down the street, check your snailmail, answer the telephone, play a video game , or even go to school without being psychologically invaded and manipulated into buying one piece of consumer trash or another. Taking back just ONE part of society from those devious corporate skullfuckers would be a huge victory.
If you want a Godwinish analogy, your argument is comparable to saying it would be A Bad Thing to kick Hitler out of North Africa or Stalingrad, because he'd only use the leftover troops to invade Poland again, only a bit harder.
Well by 'all media outlets' you mean the BBC and the only two other TV channels in existence at the time. It doesn't change my point in the slightest - the BBC was still the subject of government control, even if that control spilled over into other (generally highly-regulated) broadcast media.
Anyways, IIRC, it was Channel 4 which dubbed the actors voices over the spokespeople (who weren't necessarily terrorists, merely sympathisers) - the BBC happily stayed well within the spirit of the ruling.
Erm, I do prefer the BBC over any of the corporate media outlets, but you're dead wrong on government interference. The obvious cases would be the banning, for twenty years, of Peter Watkins' "The War Game" in 1966, the banning of Alan Clarke's 'Scum' for about 10 years, and the confiscation of Duncan Campbell's 'Zircon' documentary and the ridiculous silencing of Sinn Fein's spokespeople in the 1980s.
Those are obvious because there WAS the public outcry you talk about. You don't often hear about many instances of BBC censorship, like say, the BBC blocking of dozens of programs on the subject of Northern Ireland, dating back to the 1950s, including silliness such as a Star Trek: TNG episode cut for mentioning the IRA, and an Alan Whicker documentary on betting shops banned for showing, in passing, sectarian graffiti. One study showed about 50-60 Northern Ireland related programs were actually censored as of 1987, and the knock-on effect of programme-makers preempting the censors and not submitting controversial material would constitute the 'chilling effects' that US lawpeople talk about.
It's probably going to get worse soon too. The next time the BBC pisses off the government in some way, then Rupert Murdoch is going to have another crack at firing up his 'privatise the BBC' campaign, just like he did with Hutton. The BBC now has a clear incentive to toe the line...
Sure, the advertising-supported corporate media aren't any better but the BBC has its own problems...
"The LGPL was originally created for STATICALLY linked libraries."
Beg to differ.
"Distribute your executable, plus the obj files for your executable which would be needed to relink with a new library, plus the sources for the LGPL'd library, and then you were in compliance with the LGPL. (This was the agreement reached in 1988-89 between the lawyers for the FSF and those for the company I worked for at the time.)"
You just reinforced my point. The LGPL is for dynamically linked libraries, which is why you couldn't distribute a statically linked binary, but instead needed the workaround whereby the user had to link it himself. Had your executable linked at runtime with the LGPL library, you wouldn't need that kluge. Go to the gnu site and check out the difference between a 'work that uses the library' and a 'work that contains the library'
Not quite. WINE also reimplements a lot of the core DLLs it links to, so it's perfectly feasible, in fact rather easy, to run WINE without any windows code being anywhere near it. You can't say that about most Linux blob drivers, which mostly need Linux to run. The Nvidia blob is, of course, an exception.
Haha, nice troll. I refer the right honourable coward to TFA wherein we see a 2 year old known root exploit in Unix kernels finally receiving some attention from the closed source developer.
"I don't think they can be considered a "derivative work" because really they add functionality to the kernel, not take functionality from it"
Adding functionality has nothing to do with copyright law. If you don't believe me, add some binary-only functionality to gcc or emacs and see how long it takes for Eben Moglen to get on your phone.
"besides there's too many other backdoor ways of getting round it"
Well you can shift your blob down into firmware or up into userspace. I think the kernel devs would be happier with that than with you tainting their kernel.
"So, rather than just making a sensible, stable, driver ABI we have something not stable which doesn't support binaries. It's just a PITA to have to recompile all the bloody VMWare drivers every time a slightly revised kernel comes out. This is the kind of thing that just hurts users without doing anything to the vendors which it is meant to spite."
If youre recompiling drivers, then you should be asking your vendors to put the drivers in the kernel, where all the maintenance and interface twiddling gets done by the kernel maintainers. It also means the kernel people can revise and twiddle the interface when they feel like it, instead of turning the kernel into a mush of backwards compatibility kluges like windows. The kernel writers have looked long and hard at what happens when you encourage binary only drivers, on the lkml, and they have their reasons for keeping it the way it is. Check it out here.
You guys like to think you're making pragmatic compromises; you're making foolish short-sighted mistakes. Look at THIS case, where a known bug has sat in a video driver for 2 whole years and counting...
The FSF disagrees with your position. They believe that dynamic linking of code DOES produce derivative works - presumably a similar way to which writing, say, a (non-parodic) Batman story could be a derivative work even though you didnt pilfer the same text, merely the characters and the universe. That's why they wrote the LGPL, the license that you CAN dynamically link proprietary code to.
There are plenty of people who disagree with them, which is why I said this is a grey area.
The problem is not that a root exploit exists. Shit happens. Those can be fixed and the world moves on.
The problem is that all users of Nvidia graphics cards are helpless to make their machines safe because Nvidia has control over the source code. If Nvidia says 'Screw you' or goes bankrupt, then their users are screwed. Had they GPLed their driver, then someone else could have fixed it.
And that's exactly what's happened in this case.
If you read the TFA, you'll see that NVidia has known about this bug for TWO GODDAMN YEARS already and NOT fixed it. Surely that's one big 'SCREW YOU' to the Linux, Solaris and BSD communities right there.
They might be prevented by pointing out that the definition of derivative work in copyright law could well mean that most Linux drivers would fall within that definition, so that the linux license makes it unlawful to distribute them under anything other than the GPL.
The Nvidia blob is perhaps a special case, since it's really a windows driver with a GPLed wrapper, so the Linux community tends to turn a blind eye, as long as the driver isn't distributed alongside the kernel. Anyone trying to write a blob driver for Linux, from scratch, would be on shaky ground. Even Linus has said that if you wrote your driver with Linux in mind, it's a derivative work.
This is a grey area and there's not a lot of case law to decide exactly what is, and isn't, a derivative work in software, so a debate does occasionally flare up, most recently with the Kororaa livecd.
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Erm, the Novell/MS agreement is garbage. It doesn't protect people who redistribute code they receive from Microsoft, and only applies to commmercial free software producers (i.e. Sun) insofar as that code ends up in OpenSuSE. If the same "infringing" code ends up in RedHat then Redhat (and the people who supplied RedHat with the code)can be sued.
Novell can implement all sorts of Microsoft-patented ideas, hand it to and if that project is distributed by a commercial distro, then the distro can be sued by Microsoft for patent violations. Novell is in the clear due to the agreement, people who redistribute their code aren't.
Novell might get clobbered by section 7 of the GPL (or, in this case, the equivalent LGPL section), but only if it tries distributing the same code itself.
I don't know if this scenario is likely - but Microsoft are certainly hyping it up as a possibility. Did you catch Monkeyboy's proclamation the other day about how Linux infringed its patents, and Linux users owe them money?
We at Aim Here Research laboratories are now about to begin a similar time travel experiment!
We are now going to attempt to post the reply to a slashdot thread BEFORE posting the first post in the thread!
Wish us luck, guys. This could revolutionise the internet!
Test has succeeded!
Oh yes. Screamers. Not a great film, but it was based on a Philip K Dick short story called 'Second Variety'...
Whee!
This case looks like it'll help shut up those morons who think free software licenses (i.e. the GPL) are unenforcable.
We've had Sitecom's laughable 'exhaustion of rights/first sale' argument thrown out of court in Germany.
In another German case, D-Link tried to claim that the GPL was invalid, therefore they had a right to use GPL'ed code as if it was public domain. That didn't get them anywhere.
And Daniel Wallace has been slapped eight ways to Sunday in two court cases (one of them being taken to appeal) for attempting to claim that the GPL violated the antitrust laws. Impressively, he spurred three different judges to each give a ringing endorsement to the GPL, one of them going so far as to refer to Linux as 'GNU/Linux' exclusively throughout his final ruling!
Now here, the defendant is mirroring a common anti-GPL troll, by claiming the Artistic License is a contract, not a license, and that code given for free on the internet is public domain. He's going to lose of course, and the precedent will almost certainly apply to the GPL when he does.
Now all we need is for some kook to try claiming that the GPL, or some other similar license, is preempted by the US constitution (You still there, SCO?), and that's pretty much all the standard anti-GPL attacks exhausted.
Looks like free software's legal foundations are being solidly built as we speak...
What makes you think that Microsoft is going to only go after people who use Microsoft software for part of their business?
People who've never used Microsoft software, referred to it, or looked at it are just as likely to be sued for patent infringement as those who do - that's part of what's wrong with software patents. Given that, is there any reason why Linux users in general shouldn't be scared? If they don't use SuSE, then Microsoft has started lifting the barriers (i.e. antitrust) to being able to sue them or, more realistically, their vendor. Even if they DO use SuSE, then they live in fear of Microsoft suing someone else over patented ideas implemented in GPLed code that's also in SuSE; if that happens, then it becomes impossible to distribute the same code in SuSE due to the 'Patrick Henry' clause in GPL section 7.
At best, this deal is just an exercise in antiLinux FUD and Microsoft has no intention of really suing. But we can't tell; if we could, it wouldn't be FUD.
The Chinese have taken away power from the people and given it to the state for the benefit of the ruling political elite and a number of friendly corporations, exploiting the people while spying on them and taking away their freedoms. That is just a more extreme case of what is currently happening in the West.
Well I'm remembering various Guardian articles, so I can't draw any citations up at will. "Inside BOSS" by Gordon Winter, an ex South African Intelligence officer, does make the claim that MI5 did use this tactic to find out the name of every Communist voter.
Hmm, the reports I'm thinking about go back to the 1940s right through to the 1970s at the very least - your article talks about the practice since the RIPA in 1983, so perhaps that law streamlined the process of mass political spying so that Special Branch didn't need to get involved. (That might partly account for the 3 million subversives that MI5 was keeping tabs on by 1991).
I dunno about Leftpondia, but us UKians have had unsecret "secret" ballots for decades. Every ballot paper has a serial code written on it, and when you turn up to vote, they write that serial code beside your name in a ledger and hand you your ballot paper. There have been reports by vote counters, going back 60 years now, of Special Branch officers (our secret political police AND the people who look into electoral fraud) removing the boxes of left wing candidates for further examination. They then have 6 months to match the names with the ballot papers and hand the data to MI5 or whoever, before the ballots are destroyed.
Strangely enough, the Nazi party used to hold referenda with the same tactic. However, the Nazis were circumspect enough to put THEIR serial numbers in invisible ink (who'd have thought the Gestapo were more subtle than the British police force?), and the consequences of voting wrong were more severe (i.e. being hauled off to concentration camps instead of mysteriously "losing" your government job).
Not quite. There's two points to make. One, because of GPL section 7, Novell's patent deal with Microsoft is more or less useless for Novell, and not worth the paper it's written on - it's a false sense of security for Novell.
Secondly, we're in MORE danger now, because of this deal. One of the possible legal retorts against patent infringement would be some sort of 'patent abuse' defence. If Microsoft was clobbering ALL Linux distros with patent lawsuits, then the victims could point out that the law would have the effect of destroying competition and upholding Microsoft's illegal monopoly in operating systems.
With Microsoft now partnering with one Linux distributor, that defence looks less likely to work, since they can point at their cooperation with SuSE. "We're not trying to kill competitors, we just want compensation for our precious eye pee". It's now easier for Microsoft to successfully sue.
The beauty of this is, that after the first strike, Microsoft's own partners subsequently get clobbered by a mixture of GPL enforcement and community disgust. Boom! Linux removed from the game as a commercial product.
I hope I'm wrong about this.
That's why they're partnering with a major commercial Linux distributor, that pays them rent.
When they sic their attack lawyers on RedHat or whoever, then they can say 'Oh, we're not destroying all the competition, we just want to be compensated for our Intellectual Pee -look how we're helping SuSE'. That way avoids the 'patent abuse' defence, where RedHat could say that Microsoft can't enforce it's patents in a way that would destroy competition and uphold Microsoft's illegal monopoly.
Of course, the side effect is that the remaining Quisling distros, like SuSE, have to stop distributing their GPLed code, under section 7 of the GPL - that will be the doing of the kernel developers, so no antitrust issues arise.
After that, there will be no commercial Linux, just noncommercial distros. The CEOs start buying Vista. Mission accomplished.
The nature of the Novell/Microsoft deal is somewhat irrelevant. The problem is the threat of Microsoft launching patent attacks against ANYONE over anything in SuSE. The public statements say that Microsoft won't launch a patent suit against noncommercial distributors or against Novell - that still leaves commercial distributors open to a patent lawsuit.
If THAT happens, Section 7 of the GPL kicks in and Novell loses the right to distribute GPLed code in SuSE. Section 7 is the 'liberty or death' clause which says that if you can't distribute GPLed code without some patent(or other) restriction being imposed on your customers, you cannot distribute GPLed code at all. The idea is to prevent code being proprietarised using legal machinery other than copyright - having someone offering GPLed code under a partial patent umbrella that effectively bars, say, commercial distribution, is exactly the sort of thing that section 7 was designed to prevent.
(My theory is that the main reason Microsoft had to offer patent protection to at least one Linux distributor was to skirt antitrust problems if it starts using patent law to crush competition. )
Errr, clue: The reason you're having a hard time thinking of new ways that advertisers can rape your consciousness is because it's already being raped in every possible way that they can think of already.
These days, it's almost impossible to watch TV, use the internet, turn on the radio, go to the cinema, read a newspaper or magazine, walk down the street, check your snailmail, answer the telephone, play a video game , or even go to school without being psychologically invaded and manipulated into buying one piece of consumer trash or another. Taking back just ONE part of society from those devious corporate skullfuckers would be a huge victory.
If you want a Godwinish analogy, your argument is comparable to saying it would be A Bad Thing to kick Hitler out of North Africa or Stalingrad, because he'd only use the leftover troops to invade Poland again, only a bit harder.
"Will this not make tv stations go bankrupt?"
You seem to talk about this as though it's a bad thing.
Well by 'all media outlets' you mean the BBC and the only two other TV channels in existence at the time. It doesn't change my point in the slightest - the BBC was still the subject of government control, even if that control spilled over into other (generally highly-regulated) broadcast media.
Anyways, IIRC, it was Channel 4 which dubbed the actors voices over the spokespeople (who weren't necessarily terrorists, merely sympathisers) - the BBC happily stayed well within the spirit of the ruling.
Erm, I do prefer the BBC over any of the corporate media outlets, but you're dead wrong on government interference. The obvious cases would be the banning, for twenty years, of Peter Watkins' "The War Game" in 1966, the banning of Alan Clarke's 'Scum' for about 10 years, and the confiscation of Duncan Campbell's 'Zircon' documentary and the ridiculous silencing of Sinn Fein's spokespeople in the 1980s.
Those are obvious because there WAS the public outcry you talk about. You don't often hear about many instances of BBC censorship, like say, the BBC blocking of dozens of programs on the subject of Northern Ireland, dating back to the 1950s, including silliness such as a Star Trek: TNG episode cut for mentioning the IRA, and an Alan Whicker documentary on betting shops banned for showing, in passing, sectarian graffiti. One study showed about 50-60 Northern Ireland related programs were actually censored as of 1987, and the knock-on effect of programme-makers preempting the censors and not submitting controversial material would constitute the 'chilling effects' that US lawpeople talk about.
It's probably going to get worse soon too. The next time the BBC pisses off the government in some way, then Rupert Murdoch is going to have another crack at firing up his 'privatise the BBC' campaign, just like he did with Hutton. The BBC now has a clear incentive to toe the line...
Sure, the advertising-supported corporate media aren't any better but the BBC has its own problems...
Just as well you don't, Mr Johan F D Louwers
of 89 Newstraat,
De Bildt
NL 3732DJ
You never know what kind of freaks and stalkers and lunatics are roaming the net these days...
"The LGPL was originally created for STATICALLY linked libraries." Beg to differ. "Distribute your executable, plus the obj files for your executable which would be needed to relink with a new library, plus the sources for the LGPL'd library, and then you were in compliance with the LGPL. (This was the agreement reached in 1988-89 between the lawyers for the FSF and those for the company I worked for at the time.)"
You just reinforced my point. The LGPL is for dynamically linked libraries, which is why you couldn't distribute a statically linked binary, but instead needed the workaround whereby the user had to link it himself. Had your executable linked at runtime with the LGPL library, you wouldn't need that kluge. Go to the gnu site and check out the difference between a 'work that uses the library' and a 'work that contains the library'
Not quite. WINE also reimplements a lot of the core DLLs it links to, so it's perfectly feasible, in fact rather easy, to run WINE without any windows code being anywhere near it. You can't say that about most Linux blob drivers, which mostly need Linux to run. The Nvidia blob is, of course, an exception.
Haha, nice troll. I refer the right honourable coward to TFA wherein we see a 2 year old known root exploit in Unix kernels finally receiving some attention from the closed source developer.
"I don't think they can be considered a "derivative work" because really they add functionality to the kernel, not take functionality from it"
Adding functionality has nothing to do with copyright law. If you don't believe me, add some binary-only functionality to gcc or emacs and see how long it takes for Eben Moglen to get on your phone.
"besides there's too many other backdoor ways of getting round it"
Well you can shift your blob down into firmware or up into userspace. I think the kernel devs would be happier with that than with you tainting their kernel.
"So, rather than just making a sensible, stable, driver ABI we have something not stable which doesn't support binaries. It's just a PITA to have to recompile all the bloody VMWare drivers every time a slightly revised kernel comes out. This is the kind of thing that just hurts users without doing anything to the vendors which it is meant to spite."
If youre recompiling drivers, then you should be asking your vendors to put the drivers in the kernel, where all the maintenance and interface twiddling gets done by the kernel maintainers. It also means the kernel people can revise and twiddle the interface when they feel like it, instead of turning the kernel into a mush of backwards compatibility kluges like windows. The kernel writers have looked long and hard at what happens when you encourage binary only drivers, on the lkml, and they have their reasons for keeping it the way it is. Check it out here.
You guys like to think you're making pragmatic compromises; you're making foolish short-sighted mistakes. Look at THIS case, where a known bug has sat in a video driver for 2 whole years and counting...
The FSF disagrees with your position. They believe that dynamic linking of code DOES produce derivative works - presumably a similar way to which writing, say, a (non-parodic) Batman story could be a derivative work even though you didnt pilfer the same text, merely the characters and the universe. That's why they wrote the LGPL, the license that you CAN dynamically link proprietary code to.
There are plenty of people who disagree with them, which is why I said this is a grey area.
The problem is not that a root exploit exists. Shit happens. Those can be fixed and the world moves on.
The problem is that all users of Nvidia graphics cards are helpless to make their machines safe because Nvidia has control over the source code. If Nvidia says 'Screw you' or goes bankrupt, then their users are screwed. Had they GPLed their driver, then someone else could have fixed it.
And that's exactly what's happened in this case.
If you read the TFA, you'll see that NVidia has known about this bug for TWO GODDAMN YEARS already and NOT fixed it. Surely that's one big 'SCREW YOU' to the Linux, Solaris and BSD communities right there.
They might be prevented by pointing out that the definition of derivative work in copyright law could well mean that most Linux drivers would fall within that definition, so that the linux license makes it unlawful to distribute them under anything other than the GPL.
The Nvidia blob is perhaps a special case, since it's really a windows driver with a GPLed wrapper, so the Linux community tends to turn a blind eye, as long as the driver isn't distributed alongside the kernel. Anyone trying to write a blob driver for Linux, from scratch, would be on shaky ground. Even Linus has said that if you wrote your driver with Linux in mind, it's a derivative work.
This is a grey area and there's not a lot of case law to decide exactly what is, and isn't, a derivative work in software, so a debate does occasionally flare up, most recently with the Kororaa livecd.