Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

[Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmail.fm>]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 01:58:26AM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2007, Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
> > Tivo gets sick of the endless flamewars on lkml, signs a copy
> > of QNX, pushes it out to the hardware.  No more Linux on Tivo.
> 
> What do we lose?
> 
> Do we actually get any benefit whatsoever from TiVO's choice of Linux
> as the kernel for its device?

Sure, if they make any changes or fixes to Linux.  Other than that,
only the same benefit that Microsoft get from Windows piracy - TiVo
employees become familiar with Linux and are more likely to use it
and maybe contribute more in another job later.

What we don't get is TiVo having a better kernel than everyone else
because they've put some work into extending it without giving that
work back.

I see stuff in arch/powerpc/kernel/ which is Copyright "TiVo, Inc"
and more recent stuff in usb/net/asix.c and usb/net/mcs7830.c which
is more than I've ever contributed to the kernel, despite making
extensive use and even selling services where I ran servers with
Linux on them but didn't allow my customers to change the kernel
on the servers if there was some feature they wanted to play with.

> Do TiVO customers lose anything from the change from one non-Free
> software to another?  (the Linux binary, as shipped in the TiVO, has
> become non-Free)

Not particularly, no.  Other than maybe some nice features that TiVo
gains from being able to use Linux.

Bron.
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