[Samba] vfs module license particulars

[Jeremy Allison]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2005 at 10:44:27AM -0700, Jeremy Drake wrote:
> 
> OK, let's try a slightly different question/approach.  If I, as a random
> samba user interested in such a thing, wanted to write an oracle vfs
> module such as described in the original quote, and I released this vfs
> code under the gpl, would this be allowed?  The library for calling into
> oracle is proprietary, as is oracle itself, but the logic for mapping an
> oracle db into a filesystem-like structure would be contained in the vfs
> and thus gpl.  I find it hard to believe that someone who uses oracle and
> uses samba, and would like to interface them and distribute an open source
> work could not do so due to mis-matching between the oracle license and
> the gpl.  An example of such a thing is pam_oci8, which is a GPL module
> which (indirectly) links against OCI.

It's probably in violation, but the writer and distributor is not in
violation - the user who links the two together is. I told you it was
complicated :-). IANAL - this is similar to the NVidia case, where NVidia
is not in violation as they don't ship Linux, but people who ship the
Linux kernel + the NVidia driver probably are.

Jeremy.