From owner-freebsd-advocacy Tue Jan 9 22:44:35 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from homer.softweyr.com (bsdconspiracy.net [208.187.122.220]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 52DE037B400 for ; Tue, 9 Jan 2001 22:44:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (helo=softweyr.com ident=Fools trust ident!) by homer.softweyr.com with esmtp (Exim 3.16 #1) id 14GF5s-0000Bz-00; Tue, 09 Jan 2001 23:50:48 -0700 Message-ID: <3A5C0648.603AB543@softweyr.com> Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 23:50:48 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: David Johnson Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: any Linux distros which are not Open Source? References: <3A5BA9E2.34D6D857@softweyr.com> <3A5BB045.40F9856@acuson.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG David Johnson wrote: > > Wes Peters wrote: > > > > If it's GPL, it's *illegal* unless it is open source. > > > > People (and companies) break the law all the time, and usually get away > > with it. > > The Linux kernel has an exception written in to allow for system calls. Where? In what license? > I also recall that Linus allows closed source loadable modules. In Linus does, but does the license? Linus opinions are not the contract which allows you to distribute the code; the GPL *is*. > practice it is very similar to the LGPL. A lot of the closed source > Linux stuff operates on this exception instead of outright violating the > license. I don't know how Rio does things, but it shouldn't be too hard > to use Linux in an embedded environment without having to actually > modify the kernel. Actually, the kernel usually has to be heavily modified to support the limited run-time environment, but this work is usually released to anyone who wants it, since it's useless without the specific hardware. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message