The other view is that what would have otherwise been "non-people's" OS contributions now belong to the people. All these "corporate" coders are putting code out in the open. Isn't this better than everybody working on closed-source kernels?
Those that are violating the GPL would have done what instead? License a closed-source kernel? Use a BSD and not contribute back?
Even though corporate Linux may not always co-align with my interests as a user, it seems to align at least as much as any non-corporate dev who's contributing to Linux. I'm only one person, but the GPL projects that don't have full-time or at least paid maintainers seem to align with my interests as a user with the same or less frequency as the ones with a corporate maintainer.
So I'm not sure that corporate/non-corporate is a useful distinction for this.
>They are keenly aware that if Linux takes a hardline GPL approach it will gain the reputation of being unfriendly to corporations. That perception will kill Linux in the long run.
I'm not sure I agree with either of these statements, to be honest. Those corporations that are violating the license aren't contributing back to Linux anyway; so losing them won't kill Linux. And Google or other corporate Linux sponsors are not going to be scared away by having to conform to the GPL.