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Old 16th December 2020
thirdm thirdm is offline
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Join Date: May 2009
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Well sort of. I mean, the GPL applies to the whole of Linux whether subsets of it got into it on a non-copyleft license or not. The key is that that other license isn't replaced but complemented by the GPL, so if you take out just that part, if linux devs are nice about licensing what they add to that file under that same, say, ISC license, then you are free to make use of that file on the terms of that other non-GPL license if that's your choice. This is what Moglen and Choudhary are suggesting I think.

Quote:
It doesn't surprise me to see Intel and AMD avoiding GPL.
Me neither. Sounds like in a lot of corporations there are people promoting the idea that the GPL is to be avoided. When a BSD person says that I can respect it. But the way it's going around companies, by certain folk, is a bit ugly to me. I mean, it's their copyright, if they are distributing code and don't like copyleft fine. But it's uglier in that you'll see programmers (often who aren't distributing anything) propagating this anti-GPL sentiment (and often FUD) in a similar way to how certain corporate programmers will snicker at you if you don't opt for the Macintosh laptop when companies give that choice or if you say you like the Perl programming language. Or they pronounce it has a rule of programming: "GPL considered harmful". When they explain their motives it's not as pure as I'll read on OpenBSD mailing lists and the web site, say. Rather it sounds all tied into companies wanting to do exactly what the copyleft proponents are actively wanting to avoid (taking on non-equal terms to those you give your customers), that and members of said companies being loyal company men.

Quote:
So the Linux kernel is not fully GPL-2 and I remember reading a list of the licences, somewhere a few years back, but can't find it now...
To repeat, the files under BSD, ISC, etc. licenses are (also) GPLed when they are distributed as part of Linux as per the terms of the GPL. It is not per file and grabs hold of the whole work (the common objection by those who dislike it, I guess.)

I forgot the link to what I quoted earlier:
https://www.softwarefreedom.org/reso...rnel-cddl.html
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