OpenPGP Card

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 12:59:48AM +0200, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> Lionel Elie Mamane Wrote: 

>> Not unless that PKCS#11 module "is normally distributed with the
>> major components of the operating system". (Assuming here that the
>> PKCS#11 module would is a library that GnuPG would dlopen.)

> So how come GPGed application can use display driver that is vendor
> provided?

The application does not link to the display driver. On Microsoft
Windows, the display driver is part of the kernel, and AFAIK
applications communicate with the kernel through syscalls (eventually
wrapped by gdi32.dll, kernel32.dll, etc), not linkage. On a Unix
system, the program communicates with the "display" through the
networking layer, so there is also absolutely no linkage.

But there is indeed a case to be made that if the library implements a
well-known, standard ABI, then linking to it is not a GPL
violation. <shrug> Legally it depends whether the linked program is a
"derived work" from the program or not.

> And how come GPGed application can print on a printer using a
> proprietary driver from HP (for example)?

On a Unix system, again, programs don't link with a printer
driver. They exec() lpr over a pipe and dump postscript to it over the
pipe. Just a matter of passing data around to another process, no
library linkage.

> I can show you that it GPLed program loads these drivers...

Yes, show me, I'm curious.

-- 
Lionel