[olug] OT: more Hans goodness

[Luke -Jr]

On Wednesday 09 July 2008, Bill Brush wrote:
> I think you're on shaky legal ground equating "derivative" and
> "written to work with."
>
> You'd have to have access to the source code of the driver to show
> that it's "derivative" of any OSS and the bar for declaring that
> something is derived from something else is fairly high.

Since it is impossible to make a non-deriving Linux kernel module, access to 
source is not needed. Besides which, part of the source code *is* publicly 
available, or else the module wouldn't work as well as it does since the ABIs 
change frequently.

> Since the source code isn't available someone would have to sue the provider
> of said drivers to obtain it.  As we saw with the SCO case, proving
> infringement, and actually doing something about it is very difficult
> and expensive.

SCO only showed that proving *non-existent* infringement was difficult and 
expensive. That does not tell us anything about how proving a real 
infringement would play out.