Most Android vendors lost Linux dist rights, could face shakedown or shutdown

fosspatents.blogspot.com

14 points·glhaynes··2 comments

Both this article and the one by Naughton that it links to confuse Google keeping their Apache 2 Honeycomb source closed with them not releasing their GPL'd linux underpinnings, which is a fundamental error. It throws doubt on everything else they build on that premise, or rather it would if they were genuine attempts at discussion rather than astroturfers and professional trolls.

There's probably interesting stuff to discuss about what the GPL means in some corner cases and Android vendors compliance, but this is just the latest in a long line of increasingly desperate PR moves in an underhand campaign against Android and should be read in that light.

Yup: so long as the manufacturers in question have access to kernel sources, there's no GPL violation here. The Android code is not under the GPL and lies on the user-space side of the kernel interfaces, and so can take advantage of the explicit exemption from the GPL those interfaces enjoy.

The trouble is, some Android manufacturers do have a record of not giving access to kernel sources, as Matthew Garrett has documented: those manufacturers really are setting themselves up for trouble down the line if any kernel developer decides to make an example of them.

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