Anonymous Patron writes “It seems that StarOS might be in violation of the GPL. What’s interesting is that they provide links to all the GPL and BSD software they use in their Station Router (a commercial Wireless router) but there is no source for the modifications they made to the linux kernel which prevent you from seeing kernel messages when it boots and also stops you from mounting the root filesystem outside of StarOS and of course they don’t give you a shell. Is this legal? The GPL forbids use of GPL’ed code in closed-source, proprietary software.”
Note from Bill Drew: “Anonymous Patron” does not offer any documentation on this issue just speculation.
Not entirely true
“The GPL forbids use of GPL’ed code in closed-source, proprietary software.”
That alone is not true. You can use GPL in closed-source software; you only have to supply the sources that are direct derivatives of the GPL’ed code. For instance, Apple does not have to reveal its Darwin code, even though a lot of the underlying code is based on *BSD.
Re:Not entirely true
Well they only give a link to the kernel.org vanilla source… the kernel image they provide in their staros intall is clearly modifed (obfuscated). There is no shell only some curses type of interface and there is no way to audit the system. If they modify the GPL kernel source and distribute it, they must release the source code code with it!!
Re:Not entirely true
Sweet.
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