Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Posted Sep 22, 2006 23:23 UTC (Fri) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901)
In reply to: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3 by Tester
Parent article: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

And even if the kernel stays under the GPLv2, the FSF's code will be under gplv3, so we are pretty much guaranteed that any Linux distributor except for tiny embedded systems will have to do accept the license.

This is not the case. I work with several large consumer electronics companies, and I can assure you that the balkanization referred to by the kernel developers in the position statement is a very real possibility.

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Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Posted Sep 23, 2006 5:17 UTC (Sat) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link] (1 responses)

Agreed. It's not unlikely that the embedded market will turn to some yet-to-be-invented hybrid environment, with Linux as the kernel and something non-FSF running in userspace. I imagine we'll see various embedded vendors each selling their own closed source POSIX-compliant userspace kit (libc + basic utils) with varying degrees of support for popular non-GPLv3 packages such as Apache.

It would be sad to see the embedded market lose the benefits of commoditized software, but that's a far more likely scenario than RMS forcing the world to give up DRM. Nobody wants to see the NAS market move from Samba to six different broken CIFS packages or the STB market move from FFmpeg to six different broken AVI demuxers, but if the FSF is successful in tearing the industry in two, that's exactly where we're headed.

Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Posted Sep 23, 2006 10:49 UTC (Sat) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link]

>Linux as the kernel and something non-FSF running in userspace
In a lot of devices this has already happened: replacing the GNU
environment with something that will fit into a sensible amount of flash
is often a high priority when trying to do something with Linux on a
cost-sensitive device. The obvious choice at the moment seems to be
busybox + uclibc. This is free software (GPL and, I think LGPL but could
be wrong) and from a look at their mailing list it seems unlikely busybox
will relicense as v3 in the near future.

Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Posted Sep 23, 2006 19:34 UTC (Sat) by Tester (guest, #40675) [Link]

>> And even if the kernel stays under the GPLv2, the FSF's code will be under gplv3, so we are pretty much guaranteed that any Linux distributor except for tiny embedded systems will have to do accept the license.

> This is not the case. I work with several large consumer electronics companies, and I can assure you that the balkanization referred to by the kernel developers in the position statement is a very real possibility.

I was refering to the computer companies (IBM, HP, Sun, SGI, etc) and not the embedded world. And those have just started getting rid of their own OSes. So yes they could in theory replace the GPLv3 code, but they wont. Because they have discovered how costly it is to do.