[olug] Tiny computers

[Luke-Jr]

On Wednesday 07 April 2010 11:03:20 pm T. J. Brumfield wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 9:26 PM, Luke-Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> > But then it's no longer Linux, but a proprietary fork thereof and not
> > much better than NTKRNL.
> 
> On the Linux kernel and trademark, the ultimate authority is Linus. He
> said specifically that the Nvidia driver can not be considered a
> derived work (which would be different from a fork to begin with)
> because it was a Windows driver first, and then ported over to Linux.

On the Linux trademark, you are correct. However, Linus has no authority to 
change the terms of the kernel, nor the nature and relationships of the code 
involved. While the nVidia blob itself is undoubtedly an independent work, the 
source code shim tying it to Linux is undeniably derived and infringes on the 
GPL terms.  Furthermore, all legal matters aside, it still makes a proprietary 
kernel and defeats the purpose of GNU/Linux in the first place.

> Linus also specifically allows tons and tons of proprietary firmware
> blobs to be included in the mainline kernel. So is the mainline kernel
> itself also not Linux?

Firmware does not link or run as part of Linux ever. The fact that they are 
included in the tree is mere aggregation, not any kind of derivation at all.

> > Video cards run the same regardless of architecture on (real) Linux.
> 
> So a GPU paired with an ARM, MIPS, PPC, x86, or x86_64 architecture
> will all behave the same?

Sure, at least I've never seen otherwise... I know that my AGP Radeon card 
works in my EFIKA (PowerPC) and that RouterBoard (MIPS) takes generic Mini PCI 
Express cards... x86_64 certainly works the same as x86_32 in pretty much 
anything driver-related.