this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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GPL3 has extra restrictions banning patients etc. So yeah a lot of GPL 2 code written by companies that open software but not hardware. Would have legal questions about running with GPL 3
GPL 3 was created to be more restrictive to non-open hardware.
GPLv3 is less proprietary than GPLv2, in the sense that it does a better job at protecting end-users from being abused by device makers that would try to close up their Linux-based system.
Only if those device makers are willing to use it. And that has always been the tightrope linux has walked.
Its very history as a x86 platform means it has needed to develop drivers where hardware providers did not care. So that code needed to run on closed hardware.
It was bloody rare in the early days that any manufacturer cared to help. And still today its a case of rare hardware that needs no non free firmware.
Free hardware is something I'll support. But it is stallman et als fight not the linux kernel developers. They started out having to deal with patented hardware before any one cared.
Yeah, but dudes there are kinda pissed off about semantics, IMO. Like, unless there's a PR from tuxedo using the same v3, I don't think it should concern them in the slightest... And instead of saying "keep in mind it's not upstreamable" they go out of their way to mark tuxedo's patches as proprietary 🤨
Well related to the owner is the very definition of proprietary. So as far as upstream vs not available for upstream is concerned. That is what the term is used for in linux.
So yep by its very definition while a manufacture is using a licence that other distributions cannot embed with their code. Marking it proprietary is how the linux kernal tree was designed to handle it.
EDIT: The confusion sorta comes from the whole history of IBM and the PC.
Huge amounts of PC hardware (and honestly all modern electronics) are protected by hardware patients. Its inbuilt into the very history of IBMs bios being reverse engineered in the 1980s.
So as Linux for all its huge hardware support base today. It was originally designed as a x86(IBM PC) compatible version of Unix.
As such when Stallman created GPL 3 in part as a way of trying to end hardware patients. Linux was forced to remain on GPL 2 simply because it is unable to exist under GPL 3 freedom orientated restrictions.
The proprietary title is not seen as an insult. But simply an indication that it is not in the control of the developers labelling it.
Ah, okay, thanks for clarification
Tuxedo is violating Linux's licence - driver modules use the kernel and therefore have to be released under a compatible licence. That's all.
Did you mean patents?
yeah, auto correct.