Re: GPL 2(b) HUH?

[Ben Pfaff]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> writes:

> Barry Margolin wrote:
>> It's not the scheduler that's a derivative, it's the new Linux
>> kernel that results from replacing the scheduler in the old kernel.
>> I.e.
>>
>> Linux - schedulerA + schedulerB => derivative of Linux.
>
> But the new scheduler itself is not entangled with the copyright
> of Linux. And the combined work of Linux + new scheduler is a
> derivative of Linux only if the changes to use the new scheduler
> involved enough modifications to Linux to consider them a significant
> work of authorship.

Linux is not designed to support pluggable schedulers, and in
fact Linus has expressly said that he does not want Linux to
easily support dropping in alternate schedulers.  Thus,
implementing a new scheduler in Linux is fairly likely to require
significant modifications to Linux outside the new scheduler
itself.
-- 
Ben Pfaff 
http://benpfaff.org