Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 18, 2016 12:14 UTC (Mon) by larma (guest, #106468)
Parent article: Maru: a pocket desktop

I am not an expert, but afaik running Debian in a container on a proprietary operating system is not a GPL violation. If it would be a GPL violation, VMware would be basically bankrupt tomorrow.

So to summarize: Maru is an Android system that runs a LXC container that has a directory mounted to the Android mass storage, a virtual screen that is directed to the Android secondary screen (maybe using VNC?) and is running some pre-configured Debian distribution.

And now the funny thing: all this is already possible since long time ago. People were experimenting with Xvnc servers running in a Debian or ArchLinuxARM chroot environment and are able to use this VNC from remote systems or, with a VNC viewer app, even on the device screen itself. I myself did this on a rooted Android 2.3 smartphone over 3 years ago.

Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 18, 2016 12:27 UTC (Mon) by smcv (subscriber, #53363) [Link] (3 responses)

> running Debian in a container on a proprietary operating system is not a GPL violation

It isn't, but distributing a disk image containing the binaries for that Debian container, without the corresponding source code, is.

For the packages that are unmodified, pointing to the corresponding source on a Debian mirror might be sufficient for non-commercial distribution to not violate the GPL, but I assume there are at least some modified GPL packages here - most notably the Linux kernel.

Reputable Debian derivatives like Ubuntu and SteamOS are rather careful to have corresponding source code for everything they distribute.

Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 18, 2016 12:43 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Actually, since it's running in a container, there is no Debian kernel package at all.

In any case, I mentioned the GPL issues because they are there, but the stated intent is to open-source the entire project. So hopefully this isn't an area of serious, long-term concern.

Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 18, 2016 12:57 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (1 responses)

Being a container image, I would not expect it to have any Linux kernel, modified or not. Is this not the case?

Maru: a pocket desktop

Posted Apr 18, 2016 22:27 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Depends on how lazy/bad the container programmer was.

I expect that if you go to something like Docker's official container registry you will find vast numbers of copyright violations of one form or another. Violations of GNU userland, kernels, apache licensing violations, etc?

If somebody pulls in a Ubuntu container their app is it Canonical's job to provide the source code or is the person redistributing the resulting software binaries?

If you have Joe Blow posting a container for his blogging software it is technically going to be a violation if he doesn't provide written notice and provide all the source code along with the container. Lots of the times the only reference a container has is some github page and even then a lot of those projects never last very long.

With the commodization of operating systems that things like containers represent you see the costs of copyright compliance for various FLOSS items soring in comparison to the costs of actually building and distributing the software. Luckily most people don't seem to care because access to every bit of source code is not really a high priority and if it was they know where to easily get it. However there could be some pretty serious problems down the road if some critical copyright holder decides to try to force everybody to take his copyright very seriously.