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GPL and Android vendors | 119 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
GPL and Android vendors
Authored by: PJ on Thursday, December 06 2012 @ 07:16 PM EST
It is a possibility.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

GPL and Android vendors
Authored by: Chromatix on Thursday, December 06 2012 @ 10:09 PM EST
It's important to distinguish the GPLv2 from the GPLv3. The latter has the anti-patent provisions in it, the former does not.

The Linux kernel itself remains under GPLv2. Part of this is because Linus is not as "hardline" as RMS on software freedom matters. Linus would prefer to see wide acceptance of Free Software, whereas RMS believes in the utmost purity of freedom.

Several other of the most critical Free Software components, such as the C library, fall under the LGPL rather than the full GPL. This allows them to be statically linked into closed-source software, as long as they are not modified from an open-source version.

What the anti-patent clause in GPLv3 means is that an entity which distributes GPLv3 software may not assert patents against other users of GPLv3 software, without losing the right to use GPLv3 software themselves. It also means that distributing GPLv3 software that an entity owns patents on automatically grants recipient users a recursive licence to those patents.

I bet Apple and Microsoft are quite careful to avoid distributing GPLv3 software.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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