Should BusyBox and uClibc also make a "flag version" like Embedded Linux?

Ralf Friedl Ralf.Friedl at online.de
Thu Nov 11 10:37:01 UTC 2010


Baruch Siach wrote:
>>> Look: Linux has to deal with binary only modules, which the developers hate.  
>>> To compensate for this, they go out of their way to avoid having a stable 
>>> internal API (which could argualy be used as a copyright barrier and thus 
>>> prevent the modules from being derived works of the Linux kernel to which 
>>> GPLv2 must apply).  To avoid this, they break internal compatability 
>>> essentially every release.  They go out of their way _not_ to make forward-
>>> porting modules easy (otherwise they'd have a checklist each release saying do 
>>> this this and this, and you'll be up to date).
>>>       
[snip]
> Wow. I was under the impression that TI are good Linux community members. At 
> least judging from the volume of company sponsored activity around their SoCs 
> (OMAP, DaVinci). Maybe the CODEC devision is different in this regard. I see 
> the same distinction between the Freescale ARM (i.MX) and PowerPC departments.
>   
There are many devices based on TI chips, but in all "source" 
distributions for these devices I've seen so far, there is either a 
tiatm object only or it's missing completely. So far it seems none of 
the kernel developers wants to do something about it.

So either there this copyright barrier doesn't exist, or the kernel 
developers aren't willing to enforce it. It makes life more difficult 
for everyone without achieving the stated goal.

Ralf Friedl


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