Comment by MaxBarraclough

> If there is no "approved" method for creating Linux drivers under licenses other than the GPL, that seems like a major problem that Linux should be working to address.

It's a feature, not a bug. Linux is intentionally hostile to binary-blob drivers. Torvalds described his decision to go with the GPLv2 licence as the best thing I ever did. [0]

This licensing decision sets Linux apart from BSD, and is probably the reason Linux has taken over the world. It's not that Linux is technically superior to FreeBSD or OpenSolaris.

> Expecting all Linux drivers to be GPL-licensed is unrealistic and just leads to crappy user experiences

'Unrealistic'? Again, Linux took over the world!

As for nVidia's proprietary graphics drivers, they're an unusual case. To quote Linus: I personally believe that some modules may be considered to not be derived works simply because they weren't designed for Linux and don't depend on any special Linux behaviour [1]

> Why are all drivers expected to use the GPL?

Because of the 'derived works' concept.

The GPL wasn't intended to overreach to the point that a GPL web server would require that only GPL-compatible web browsers could connect to it, but it was intended to block the creation of a non-free fork of a GPL codebase. There are edge-cases, as there are with everything, such as the nVidia driver situation I mentioned above.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Linux&...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linux_kernel&oldi...