4 ms·
Since the Linux kernel linker code is designed to enforce Linus Torvalds's opinion of how the GPL plus a syscall exception should work, he likely has a legal cl
by kmeisthax 3y ago
Since the Linux kernel linker code is designed to enforce Linus Torvalds's opinion of how the GPL plus a syscall exception should work, he likely has a legal claim against Nvidia for circumvention of copyright protection (DMCA 1201). This is obviously something Linus would never do, and it would be patently awful for the FOSS ecosystem as a whole if he did... but I kinda want to see him do it anyway just because of Nvidia's shenaniganery over the years.
- jeroenhd 3y agoIt's not a bad claim to have in case Nvidia ever decides to take legal action against the Linux foundation. Launching a viable counter suit with a serious impact on Nvidia's business opportunities should work as a nice deterrent against future problems.
- aseipp 3y agoThere's a pretty good argument to be made that Linux, the most high-profile GPL project in existence, not trying to enforce its license/copyright terms on reasonable grounds, is far, far worse for the FOSS ecosystem than the alternative of being sort-of-mean to corporation XYZ (where XYZ = Nvidia, VMWare, RandomHardwareCorp Inc, whatever). If the biggest 800lb Gorilla in the room isn't willing to go to court over it, that doesn't paint a very rosy picture for the rest of us. If Linux is going to just use "soft" mechanisms to force the hands of MegaCorps when they do blatant license/copyright violations, then they might as well put a fork in the GPL, call it done, and switch to BSD3 or MIT+Apache or something. And before people yell at me, this is precisely how LLVM operates; the project does not use strong copyleft licensing, but purely technical means, to "force" upstream cooperation, due to factors like APIs churn and extremely high development velocity. And it seems to work pretty well, actually, without watering down their respective chosen license.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cogman10 3y agoLawsuits are like nuclear war in this instance. If someone starts the ball rolling, it's a long and expensive legal battle with tons of parties involved. Consider the Oracle v Google lawsuit which started in 2010 and was resolved in 2021. With the number of companies involved in the kernel you are looking at a much longer and more expensive trial all around. This has always been the weakness of both the GPL and the US civil justice system.
- llm_thr 3y agoThe difference is that the suit in that case was for billions of dollars. The suit in this case would be for compliance with the GPL.
- beanjuiceII 3y agonvidia are in compliance, they are working around it with a shim, that is why he says the new guards are put in place to enforce the "intention" of the original changes. There is no case
- Zigurd 3y agoThat's not really how licences work. "Ha, ha I have a workaround that negates the intent of your license with a clever hack" is not a defensible position.
- beanjuiceII 3y agothat is how licenses work, they aren't about what you "intend"
- MichaelZuo 3y agoEvery additional interest involved in the case would multiply legal complexity, and legal costs, probably exponentially.
- cogman10 3y agoThe remedy is only one part of the cost of lawsuits. Discovery and attorney fees would be a big portion of the picture here. If there's no settlement reached, each party will have a right to collect and comb through documents related to the lawsuit. Further, they'd have the right to interview (take a deposition of) everyone involved in decisions surrounding the controversy. That means, nVidia would (likely) have the right to start talking to people in HP, Intel, AMD, Oracle, broadcom, On semiconductor, etc. Practically anyone involved with kernel development and decision making around kernel development. The US civil legal system is designed to try and force parties into settlement. However, when you have a major corporation with cash to burn, they can win simply by dragging everything out.
- teddyh 3y agoReportedly, LLVM, while initially successful, has severely slowed down its development lately, with many historical contributing companies having abandoned LLVM in order to focus on their own company-specific languages. So LLVM may no longer be the beacon of permissive licensing that it once seemed to be.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoCould you elaborate on this? It's the first I've heard of it, but maybe I'm just too out of the loop.
- teddyh 3y ago<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32924033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32924033>
- Scoring6931 3y agoIs your source a random person on the Internet? I work daily with LLVM and haven't noticed any slowdown in contributions by employees from Google or Apple.
- teddyh 3y agoI seem to recall seeing mentions elsewhere, but this was all I could find. However, as I don’t have any first-hand knowledge myself, I’ll gladly yield to your superior experience.
- dagmx 3y agoAfaik the only notable departure has been Google for Carbon, but afaik even they use llvm as the backend. I believe the only negative consequence has been to clang not llvm itself.
- teddyh 3y agoIt could be that I am conflating Clang with LLVM.
- kmeisthax 3y agoCounterargument: The FSF would get very mad if you made a DMCA 1201 claim based off GPL code. In fact, they explicitly put a "this software is not DRM" clause in GPLv3, to prevent exactly this kind of lawsuit. That being said, even in the alternate universe where Linus decided to relicense to GPLv3 + syscall exception[0], they could still make a normal infringement claim on the GPL copyleft. DMCA 1201 claims are just a really ironic thing to add to such a lawsuit. [0] TiVo clause be damned
- cryptonector 3y agoOr perhaps Linux et. al. suing Nvidia and others might cause pressure to relax the DMCA. We can only speculate.
- 3np 3y agoI really don't think there is such a thing as a moral obligation to sue, and/or to do so consistently.
- gameoverhumans 3y agoIf Linus is happy to literally give NVIDIA the finger [1], then maybe he/Linux Foundation would be willing to give NVIDIA the legal spanking they deserve (IMO)? We can only dream :) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIdxbWhHSM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIdxbWhHSM
- garaetjjte 3y agoLinus opinion on GPL enforcement is clear: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/2016-August/003580.html https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/... >Let's be clear about this: lawsuits destroy. They don't "protect". Lawsuits destroy community. They destroy trust. They would destroy all the goodwill we've built up over the years by being nice.
- account42 3y agoOpinions can change. We should all know by now that appeasement only works as long as the other party is acting in good faith and harsher solutions exist for a reason.
- gameoverhumans 3y agoI agree. It's also worth noting that, in 2016 when Linus shared this view, NVIDIA's market cap was 60B. It's now 1200B: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/market-cap https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/market... At some point, when you have a trillion dollar entity acting in bad faith for that long, maybe your only option left (besides giving them the finger) is to pursue them in courts.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoFrom the article, Hellwig's write-up: > Given that symbol_get was only ever intended for tightly cooperating modules using very internal symbols it is logical to restrict it to being used on EXPORY_SYMBOL_GPL and prevent nvidia from costly DMCA circumvention of access controls lawsuits. Which is such a lovely way of putting it. Of making a mock of Nvidia obviously flouting all intent & regard & doing whatever the heck they want.
- throwaway09223 3y agoAny of the thousands of contributors to the Linux kernel can make this claim. Linus doesn't have any special authority here.
- zb3 3y agoWhy would it be awful? I agree that DMCA 1201 is awful, but if Nvidia can use that, we should be able to do it as well.
- gary_0 3y agonVidia is actually a Silver Member of the Linux Foundation[0], meaning they (and 1200 other Silver companies) contribute $5000/year. I wonder how a lawsuit would work, given that some portion of Linux's legal costs would be paid with nVidia's own money. Plus a majority of the LF's members are probably partners or customers of nVidia, and some members are competitors. [0] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members (I had to grep the HTML to find it)