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.
There'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.
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.
Are they? Because big companies seem to sue each other all the time, even while actively collaborating in other areas. Is Linus suing NVIDIA for blatantly working around technical measures to prevent copyright infringement really worse than Apple suing Samsung for selling phones that look like theirs, or than Oracle suing Google because they made Java-compatible APIs?
> 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.
Sounds more like normal "war". Yeah, you'd have to figure out who would finance Linus' side, but it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult.
> With the number of companies involved in the kernel you are looking at a much longer and more expensive trial all around.
Why would other companies be involved? Linus doesn't have to sue everyone, he can just sue NVIDIA. Other companies might submit briefs, but that would be voluntary.
> Why would other companies be involved? Linus doesn't have to sue everyone, he can just sue NVIDIA. Other companies might submit briefs, but that would be voluntary.
In a civil lawsuit, both parties are entitled to "discovery" which means knowing what the other party knows about the controversy in question. It would be reasonable discovery for nVidia to want interviews with engineers in HP that have contributed to kernel development. Whether these companies want to be involved in the lawsuit or not, they'll get dragged in because they've directly participated in kernel development and/or governance.
Now, discovery isn't unlimited, so it's possible for a judge to say "actually, this steps too far, you only need to talk to linus" but that's in no means a guarantee.
The 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.
nvidia 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
That'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.
Counterargument: 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.
Reportedly, 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.
Afaik 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.
I 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.
It'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.
> 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.
If 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 :)
>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.
Opinions 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.
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.
nVidia 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.
