From: jfc@athena.mit.edu (John F Carr) Subject: Re: What would people think of binary-only software on Linux? Date: 28 Feb 1993 11:13:53 GMT
In article <1993Feb28.021753.28159@leland.Stanford.EDU> bir7@leland.Stanford.EDU (Ross Biro) writes:
> 1) The Linux Kernel is covered by the GPL. That means that
>anything distributed as part of the kernel, or to be linked into the
>kernel must include an offer of source and no limit on the
>redistribution.
That is not true. I can produce a .o file to be linked into the kernel and
not provide source, if the source for my .o is not derived from copyrighted
source distributed under the GPL. A kernel containing my .o file is covered
by the GPL, since the rest of the kernel contains code covered by the GPL.
Complete source is not available, so the kernel can not be redistributed,
but that doesn't prevent me from distributing the object file.