Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Posted Sep 23, 2006 5:17 UTC (Sat) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872)
In reply to: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3 by tbird20d
Parent article: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

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.

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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.