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.
However we have a worrying trend here. If at some point it becomesQuestion to the world here: Distros make, as a matter of course, a series of modifications to the Linux Kernel so that their modules or features work. What stops VJ making a patchset which effectively s/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL/EXPORT_SYMBOL/g 's the kernel source then distributing that under the GPL? He then supplies his un-GPL'd modules to the world which just happen to only run on the modified kernel. I've read the GPL of course (IANAL though) and I can't see what this violates except the /spirit/ of the license. Don't get me wrong, I'm strongly against anyone doing what I just mentioned, I believe it to be immoral taking someone's GPL'd code and mangling it in such a way. I speak as an embedded developer myself whose company decided that running our code under Linux and distributing our code under the GPL was far preferable to running closed-source software on a closed-source platform.
illegal to load our modules into the linux kernel, then it is
unacceptable to us. We would have been better off choosing VxWorks or
OSE 3 years ago when we made an OS choice. The fact that Linux is
becoming more and more closed is very very alarming.