From: Brent Fulgham <bfulgham@xpsystems.com>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 13:12:57 -0700

Re: Licenses and stubborn people

>Are we just assuming Linus won't allow BSD'd code into the kernel,
>or is it explicitly stated somewhere, or has someone asked??
>
The Linux kernel is GPL'd.  The GPL places limitations on things that can be
linked to the GPL'd program (basically, if it links in as a module and you
compiled it using the Linux header files) it must be GPL'd as well.  The
reason for this is that inline functions and similar that are defined in the
headers get included in the modules (in some cases) and therefore you are
"extending" the GPL'd software.

In reality, Linus probably doesn't care, but the code *is* licensed under
GPL, so it should be followed.

We spent some time discussing this on the Berlin project (yes, even at the
vapor-ware stage), and settled on a BSD-type license.  Then we changed to
LGPL for the libraries and header files, GPL for the executables.

For what its worth...

-Brent