[Alfred, please attribute quoted material; also, please don't send me two copies, I'm subscribed to the list. My Mail-Followup-To header field shows this.]
On 04-Jan-2006, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
I'm trying to see what point Gre Kroah-Hartman is trying argue, he seems to be on one hand arguing against a stable internal Linux driver interface
That, and actively promoting a vigorously changing ABI to make it more difficult to maintain proprietary drivers. His argument is that if you want your driver to be easily maintained, submit it for inclusion in the kernel so the whole community can maintain it as GPL code.
but on the other hand, excluding non-free drivers from Linux; which are already illegal (the only problem is enforcing the copyright for Linux, which is more or less impossible).
Why is that "more or less impossible"? Any party who breaches copyright on Linux code becomes vulnerable to a suit from any of the copyright holders in that code. This sometimes results in visible suits:
URL:http://news.com.com/Fortinet+settles+GPL+violation+suit/2100-7344_3-5684880.html
Much more often though, if we are to believe FSF's counsel Eben Moglen, the mere opening of discussions on GPL violation is enough to make the problem quitely disappear by having the code released (or, less often, stop being distributed).
Having a (maybe even just a partial) stable interface for drivers, is immensly useful
As discussed on Greg's site, a stable driver *API* is necessary and useful; a stable driver *ABI* is far too rigid, and of benefit mostly to proprietary out-of-tree kernel drivers.
It is also easy to make it impossible for non-free drivers to abuse this for their own evil purposes, just GPL it, and collect copyright assignment then serve papers to companies/people who violate the GNU GPL license.
I'm not sure how this fits with your "enforcing the copyright for Linux... is more or less impossible" statement.
I think that (from a very brief reading of the URL's you posted, thanks for that by the way) Greg Kroah-Hartman is trying to do a good thing, but doing it in the wrong place. Linux is after all not the only free kernel out there...
It's by far the one free kernel the hardware vendors want in on, though, and thus an excellent point to apply pressure on them.