[nycbug-talk] kernels

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jun 3, 2004, at 2:52 PM, mlists at bizintegrators.com wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 01:52:16PM -0400, Bob Ippolito wrote:
>> NVidia's drivers aren't "accepted" by Linux either.  They are however
>> legally allowed to exist, and perhaps some distributions of Linux
>> include them for the convenience of the users.
>>
>> OpenBSD's license allows you to do more or less whatever you want,
>> including linking in proprietary drivers.  The reason they don't exist
>> is just because nobody has written them.  If I were to release some
>> distribution of OpenBSD, I would be allowed to include whatever
>> proprietary code I want in whatever form I so choose regardless of how
>> it's linked to other code, because the BSD license is open to such
>> scenarios.
>
> Yes, but that would be BobBSD.

Exactly.  Linux is just the kernel, and the kernel team definitely does 
not "accept" anything that is not compatible with their license.  It's 
the distributions (none of which are called just Linux) that choose 
whether or not to "accept" proprietary kernel modules.

-bob


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