Re: Google are using linux kernel - what do you know about the source?

[Matti Aarnio <matti.aarnio@zmailer.org>]

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 04:50:35PM +0200, Diego Calleja wrote:
> El Wed, 23 May 2007 16:23:44 +0200, Gergo Szakal <bastyaelvtars@gmail.com> escribió:
> 
> > Greetings to all list-members!
> > 
> > Recently I have read that Google are selling enterprise hardware that
> > is running a modified version of the Linuk kernel [1]. I decided to ask
> > them whether the source is available. I did this via the question form
> > they offered.
> 
> http://code.google.com/mirror/gsa.html

Gerco,

Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

There you will notice that use of Linux KERNEL does not mean that
your must publish sources for your proprietary application, or to
make it easy for somebody to make a distribution competeting with
yours.  People like Oracle have realized this a long ago, and are
selling their commercial products also for Linux platform.

Google has made available all parts of the system that they are
obliged under GPL to make available.  

Perhaps person supplying the reply from Google didn't quite understand
what the product is, and that it has lots of components where you
can get sources for, although nothing exiting and special happens
in them.  A better reply from Google would have been:

    "The GSA is made of a branded PC hardware, Linux operating
     system (sources of components available) plus proprietary
     Google search engine suite."

/Matti Aarnio