Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

Bron Gondwana
2007-06-14T07:00:26Z

On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 01:58:26AM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2007, Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> > Tivo gets sick of the endless flamewars on lkml, signs a copy
> > of QNX, pushes it out to the hardware. No more Linux on Tivo.
>
> What do we lose?
>
> Do we actually get any benefit whatsoever from TiVO's choice of Linux
> as the kernel for its device?

Sure, if they make any changes or fixes to Linux. Other than that,
only the same benefit that Microsoft get from Windows piracy - TiVo
employees become familiar with Linux and are more likely to use it
and maybe contribute more in another job later.

What we don't get is TiVo having a better kernel than everyone else
because they've put some work into extending it without giving that
work back.

I see stuff in arch/powerpc/kernel/ which is Copyright "TiVo, Inc"
and more recent stuff in usb/net/asix.c and usb/net/mcs7830.c which
is more than I've ever contributed to the kernel, despite making
extensive use and even selling services where I ran servers with
Linux on them but didn't allow my customers to change the kernel
on the servers if there was some feature they wanted to play with.

> Do TiVO customers lose anything from the change from one non-Free
> software to another? (the Linux binary, as shipped in the TiVO, has
> become non-Free)

Not particularly, no. Other than maybe some nice features that TiVo
gains from being able to use Linux.

Bron.