Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm sure that someone (Tommy?) can fill in the details. I have only a vague memory of it, I'm afraid. If I recall correctly, the issue was that, according to the GPL, if you statically link with a GPL library, then that makes the entire module GPL'd, and you have to supply all its source code, which Bookeen weren't. Or something like that...
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If you statically link a driver into the kernel it is considered part of the kernel and therefore the GPL covering the kernel extends to the driver and covers that code as well. If you do not want your code covered by the GPL you can dynamically link it so it is not an integral part of the code.
The idea behind handling this that way is that it should be possible for everyone to compile and use GPLed code. If you statically link then it is not possible for someone else to compile the kernel (at least not without major hacking) without the code you held back and therefore you made use of GPLed code for free but gave nothing back in return (as the released code is not useable without your code).
Of course, the option to dynamically link has a couple of drawbacks but there has to be some incentive to share your code with the community... :-)