Your line of logic is the following:
[glibc includes kernel header] + [glibc is legal] -> [including kernel headers in any non-GPL project is legal]
In his comments on this site he has stated that the reason glibc is available under the LGPL is that the headers it uses were added to glibc by the kernel maintainers who held the copyright to them[1][2].
I've no idea if this is true, but it seems to be the crux of the issue, if indeed the headers are covered by copyright as Linux Torvalds believes (unless we are to assume that glibc is also in violation of the GPL). Perhaps somebody familiar with GNU and glibc knows if this is the case.
[glibc includes kernel header] + [glibc is legal] -> [including kernel headers in any non-GPL project is legal]
Either you're not responding to my comment, or you are misunderstanding me very badly. This is not what I'm saying in the least. I'm saying that if Google were to create a legal interface to the kernel, they would be in the clear. Two apparent ways to do this are (1) have someone who owns the copyright to the kernel header contribute the appropriate portions of your library and give consent to whatever license you choose, or (2) do a clean room implementation of the interface.
Google would most likely have to do the second, but they absolutely could do so. Apparently they think they've come up with a third, but it may not be good enough, which leads us to the article that spawned this discussion.
Rereading your post, you are correct, I misinterpreted it. My apologies.
So you are saying the licence used for Bionic doesn't come into play if Google do a "clean room implementation" of the headers? If they do that, they can use any licence they like, since they are not using any copyrighted parts of the kernel.
This does leave me unsure on another point though. How does the GPL prevent the linking of a GPL library from a non-GPL binary? One can distribute the binary without including the library, so you aren't distributing it, and just using the headers from the library is apparently OK, as long as you do a clean implementation and don't use headers containing any inline functions. What legal mechanism does that leave for the GPL to prevent linking by non-gpl works? As I understand it the GPL is entirely based on copyright. If I never distribute the library in question, I never have to agree to the terms of the GPL since I never copy it (putting aside personal use of the library).
Comments
Your line of logic is the following: [glibc includes kernel header] + [glibc is legal] -> [including kernel headers in any non-GPL project is legal]
In his comments on this site he has stated that the reason glibc is available under the LGPL is that the headers it uses were added to glibc by the kernel maintainers who held the copyright to them[1][2].
I've no idea if this is true, but it seems to be the crux of the issue, if indeed the headers are covered by copyright as Linux Torvalds believes (unless we are to assume that glibc is also in violation of the GPL). Perhaps somebody familiar with GNU and glibc knows if this is the case.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2337064 [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2336690
[glibc includes kernel header] + [glibc is legal] -> [including kernel headers in any non-GPL project is legal]
Either you're not responding to my comment, or you are misunderstanding me very badly. This is not what I'm saying in the least. I'm saying that if Google were to create a legal interface to the kernel, they would be in the clear. Two apparent ways to do this are (1) have someone who owns the copyright to the kernel header contribute the appropriate portions of your library and give consent to whatever license you choose, or (2) do a clean room implementation of the interface.
Google would most likely have to do the second, but they absolutely could do so. Apparently they think they've come up with a third, but it may not be good enough, which leads us to the article that spawned this discussion.
Rereading your post, you are correct, I misinterpreted it. My apologies.
So you are saying the licence used for Bionic doesn't come into play if Google do a "clean room implementation" of the headers? If they do that, they can use any licence they like, since they are not using any copyrighted parts of the kernel.
This does leave me unsure on another point though. How does the GPL prevent the linking of a GPL library from a non-GPL binary? One can distribute the binary without including the library, so you aren't distributing it, and just using the headers from the library is apparently OK, as long as you do a clean implementation and don't use headers containing any inline functions. What legal mechanism does that leave for the GPL to prevent linking by non-gpl works? As I understand it the GPL is entirely based on copyright. If I never distribute the library in question, I never have to agree to the terms of the GPL since I never copy it (putting aside personal use of the library).