Re: How to Avoid GPL Issue

[Alan Cox]

On Sad, 2003-06-28 at 00:04, G. C. wrote:
> Dear Sir or Madam,
> 
> We are trying to port a third party hardware driver into Linux kernel and 
> this third party vendor does not allow us to publish the source code. Is 
> there any approach that we can avoid publicizing the third party code while 
> porting to Linux? Do we need to write some shim layer code in Linux kernel 
> to interface the third party code? How can we do that? Is there any document 
> or samples?
> 
> Thank you very much in advance,

I can understand why you asked the question here, but you need to ask a
lawyer. The GPL license forbids derivative works being nonfree (eg
binary only). Your question boils down to "what is not a derivative
work", which is a lawyer not a programmer question