Embedded Linux and the GPL [LWN.net]

Embedded Linux and the GPL

Posted Jun 10, 2003 22:12 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
Parent article: Embedded Linux and the GPL

If the embedded Linux product really has loadable modules, then yes, it would appear that the product's provider can keep the source to those modules proprietary, at least according to Linus' interpretation. However, I would expect that many embedded systems will not have a separate disk or flash device from which the modules are read in and loaded; rather, they will be directly compiled into the kernel. The GPL is quite clear on that matter: if it's a single executable, whether in ROM, flash, or on a disk, the source to the whole executable must be provided.

Does the Linksys device really have loadable kernel modules?

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Embedded Linux and the GPL

Posted Jun 10, 2003 22:54 UTC (Tue) by jeff@uclinux.org (guest, #8024) [Link]

Yes, even the smallest (uC)linux embedded systems need a root filesystem
and do support loadable modules. Most practical embedded systems need to
do that, the drivers for systems at the top end of the price curve (in this case
802.11a/g, b was last year's game) are written for hardware which is proprietary.

In the case of the Linksys device, the wlan driver is a _huge_ module, which is
probabily what people want.

./lib/modules/2.4.5/kernel/drivers/net/wl:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 301701 Mar 5 15:49 wl.o

The embedded vendors know they can sign the NDA and get it from
Broadcom if they have a customer who will buy piles of chips, BTW.

The only way to deal with this stuff is to to be polite and point it out,
although the real question is why didn't the vendor who did the work
for Linksys deal with these GPL issues for them and make even a simple
tarball of the Free components available. However, there is no reason
to think you could expect to get source to the whole product, nor should
you expect to!