[Buildroot] Is GPLv2 the right license for Buildroot?

Thomas Petazzoni thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com
Mon Sep 16 18:01:35 UTC 2013


Dear ANDY KENNEDY,

On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 17:45:00 +0000, ANDY KENNEDY wrote:

> >   - on an embedded system, the probability that there is a GPL
> > program is rather high (eg. busybox, the Linux kernel);
> 
> Not always.  There is still a high contingent in the States that use
> VXWorks, and then a lesser population use a home-grown kernel without
> every touching GPL code.

I believe Yann was implicitly saying "embedded Linux system". Buildroot
is of no-use for VxWorks based systems or other non-Linux operating
systems.

> I agree with Yann on this point.  I don't see a valid reason to change
> the license of BuildRoot (even if you wanted to make it a less
> restrictive license for the main package/*.mk files).  In my current
> company, I have discussed in great detail exactly what must be done
> in order to comply with the GPL.  The team I'm on has taken great
> care to isolate the code into two sections:  Open Sourced code
> (including MIT license stuff, etc) and IP code.  I have stressed the
> importance of carefully considering how applications are made, what
> dependencies we have on the applications, etc.  My company is
> on-board with (when we get to the point in which we are shipping
> Linux as the OS on a product) releasing all the non-company code.

Sure. But in Buildroot, things are more complicated: within Buildroot
*itself* there may be parts that you have to redistribute (i.e package
recipes for GPL programs), and some other parts you may not be willing
to redistribute (i.e package recipes for your own applications, or your
root filesystem overlay). This makes it quite difficult for a company
using Buildroot to easily separate what must be distributed from what
shouldn't be distributed.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com


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