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Comment by dastx | Hacker News Reader

> fork

It'll probably be a closed source fork. Defeating the whole purpose of Librem.

GNOME and Linux are under the GPL. So are phosh (Purism's shell), Chatty (their messaging app) and probably a lot of other components. So you can't make a closed fork.

Linux kernel is GPL.

Now try to get the right version sold with an Android phone.

It often seems to take some persistence, but typically it is possible to get the kernel sources. The manufacturers can drag their feet for a while but ultimately they have to give it to you.

Compare that to the rest of the software on an Android device; you'll have no luck convincing Samsung to give you the source to any of the UI bits on their phones, for example.

The GPL is a huge improvement in this regard.

Semi-related, but apparently Win10 WSL now includes the Linux kernel.

Being as that's GPL, it seems strange the GPL license isn't somehow "virally" infecting windows, making other things OSS.

They have released the source for their fork: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel.

Linux specifically does not use the GPLv3 for exactly this reason. rms et al. complained about "tivoization", which came from tivo shipping boxes that contained the code but were locked down. Linus didn't really care as much, or at least not enough to re-license. He didn't like the restriction, and new that such a provision would prevent exactly what MS is now doing: allowing more freedom for the users.

Thanks, that's useful info. :)

That's orthogonal though. WSL would be fine even with GPLv3. It runs on a hypervisor. WSL poses no restrictions on modifying the source of the kernel. You can fork, rebuild and run. You can't on a tivo device.

Not exactly. Microsoft is trying to expand functionality in certain places to allow things like CUDA acceleration, AF_PACKET support, and other important hardware-y things that WSL can't handle. You're right that you can run a different kernel, but Microsoft has modified theirs for WSL. For that reason, they have to release modifications.

It's usually quite easy, they're often on Github though some companies host them themselves. There are a few companies (looking at you Lenovo) who release partial/non-working sources but most vendors do comply with the GPL.

https://github.com/nokia-dev/android_device_nokia_sdm660-com...

https://github.com/OnePlusOSS/android_kernel_oneplus_sdm845

https://github.com/MiCode/Xiaomi_Kernel_OpenSource

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/ZenFone/ZS630KL/ASUS_I01W...

https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/android-9.0.0_...

https://consumer.huawei.com/en/opensource/

etc.

I think the Librem5 will have a CC-by-SA 4.0 license, aka copyleft, so it'd have to be open source.

That's a weird statement. Why would they use a CC license, rather than a software license like the GPL?

Have you read the GPL? It makes very little sense for hardware (it’s actually a pretty weird license full of all kinds of software specific things. “Linking” to “operating system components” for example doesn’t make them a derivative work, whatever all that means. There’s quite a lot of other stuff.)

The argument for using the GPL when creating copyleft software is that most copyleft software uses the GPL and you want everything to have a compatible license, that’s not really the case for hardware.

> > fork

> It'll probably be a closed source fork. Defeating the whole purpose of Librem.

wouldn't that also defeat sales too?

might not, system76 comes off like purism and sells well, but I believe they have hardware that requires binary blobs.

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