Re:VMWare Taken to Court Over GPL Violation
by belorn on Thursday March 05, 2015 @03:36PM
(#9153641)
If I understand you correctly, you think Microsoft would be held liable for copyright infringement if someone installs a GPLv2 driver into their own personal installation of windows?
That is not how copyright infringement work. To be held liable, you have to distribute* a copyrighted work and then fail to comply with the license. Microsoft is as you say not distributing GPL'ed kernel modules, so there is no possible way* for them to help liable for GPLv2 windows kernel modules.
A third-party windows distributor could be help liable if they bundled the modules with preinstalled windows machines. In that case, that third party would have to stop distributing the module, or beg Microsoft to release the source code for windows under GPLv2.
* The pirate bay crew got charged for assisting in copyright infringement without distribution, but at least there was the accusation that someone somewhere did distribute a copyrighted work without permission.
That is not how copyright infringement work. To be held liable, you have to distribute* a copyrighted work and then fail to comply with the license. Microsoft is as you say not distributing GPL'ed kernel modules, so there is no possible way* for them to help liable for GPLv2 windows kernel modules.
A third-party windows distributor could be help liable if they bundled the modules with preinstalled windows machines. In that case, that third party would have to stop distributing the module, or beg Microsoft to release the source code for windows under GPLv2.
* The pirate bay crew got charged for assisting in copyright infringement without distribution, but at least there was the accusation that someone somewhere did distribute a copyrighted work without permission.