[LinuxBIOS] Can we provide BIOS service base on the Linux BIOS

Stefan Reinauer stepan at coresystems.de
Sun Jul 29 15:16:00 CEST 2007


* Rasmus Wiman <rasmus at wiman.org> [070729 14:49]:
> Just curious... How about software that runs "on top of" Linuxbios? I
> assume that Microsoft won't have to release Windows under GPL just
> because Linuxbios can boot it :) , but what about payloads? If someone
> wants to create a completely closed-source payload for LinuxBIOS, would
> theybe allowed to do that? One possible example could be Microsoft.
> Suppose that LinuxBIOS really took off and Microsoft would want to
> adapt NTLDR so it could be a payload, would they be allowed to do it?

The payload is "loaded" from an "archive" or "filesystem" by LinuxBIOS
and thus does not have to be released under GPL because it is used with
LinuxBIOS.

On the Linux side, you could compare this with a tar archive or a
filesystem containing both proprietary and open source programs in one
entity. This is a very common scenario and explicitly allowed.

The same applies for LinuxBIOS.

Of course any payload that uses/links against GPL code would have to be
GPLed because of that fact.

Stefan.

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