Re: GPL vs non-GPL device drivers

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>]

On Wed, 2007-02-14 at 21:16 -0800, v j wrote:
> This is in reference to the following thread:
> 
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/14/63
> 
> I am not sure if this is ever addressed in LKML, but linux is _very_
> popular in the embedded space. We (an embedded vendor) chose Linux 3
> years back because of its lack of royalty model, robustness and
> availability of infinite number of open-source tools.


I think you have a bit of a misunderstanding... Linux is not royalty
free. Just the royalty is not in the form of cash, but in the form of
having to give your improvements back to the open source world.

(this is paraphrasing the intent of the GPL basically, you can argue for
hours if drivers are separate or improvements, and I'm not interested in
that debate, it has been debated to death before and only lawyers will
in the end be able to settle that on a case by case basis).

If your mindset is "how much can I take take take without giving back
back back" then personally I think you're sort of acting like a parasite
in this context.... 


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