On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 11:19:36AM -0400, Harold Hallikainen wrote:
> Interesting discussion! If you produce an embedded system product that
> has, say, a custom application running on a GPL operating system or making
> calls to GPL libraries, how much source code must you release? Do you need
> to release the source code of the custom application, or just the open
> source stuff that you are including unmodified?

The former.

BTW AFAIK there are no GPL operating systems. Linux is GPL with a usual use
clause that states that usual usage of the OS by an application does not
consistute a derived work.

But the embedded system make the whole discussion a bit more murky.
Generally libraries will be LGPL. Under normal circumstances, the LGPL does
not require the source of an application that merely uses the library to be
released. However the code for the application must be released in such a
form so that the end user can upgrade the library if they so choose. On the
desktop, with shared libraries, this is simply the executable as the shared
libraries are dynamically linked in each time the application runs.

However, in an embedded system most of the time the application and
libraries share the same space and are statically linked, or compiled
together. So in order to meet the LGPL "relink requirement", this requires
the release of the source, so it reverts back to the GPL.

No neither license is real efficient in terms of balancing the rights of
the user and the rights of the developer in the embedded system case.

BAJ
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