2 ms·

Brad Kuhn says: "Google wasn't seeking to circumvent the GPL at all." That's wrong. Not only did Google throw out numerous GPL notices from the original headers

Brad Kuhn says: "Google wasn't seeking to circumvent the GPL at all." That's wrong. Not only did Google throw out numerous GPL notices from the original headers, but it explicitly stated in the context of Bionic its goal to "keep [the] GPL out of user-space" on page 36 of this official presentation: http://androidteam.googlecode.com/files/Anatomy-Physiology-of-an-Android.pdf http://androidteam.googlecode.com/files/Anatomy-Physiology-o... I already pointed to that from my blog post on the Bionic story (http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/03/googles-android-faces-serious-linux.html http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/03/googles-android-face...) but just wanted to show this example of a definitive error in Kuhn's generally very unconvincing blog post.

lukeschlather 16y ago
I think he's saying that the Android developers in question don't have a proper understanding of the GPL, and rather than trying to circumvent it, they were trying to circumvent the LGPL. Which as he said, is pointless, because you can write a proprietary or BSD-licensed application and interface with the LGPL without any problems. The only reason to do what they did is if they wanted to distribute a full kernel that works like Linux, but is BSD-licensed. Obviously they did no such thing, nor did they even attempt to do so.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Google is full of very smart people. Wouldn't it be smarter, if they wanted a BSD-licensed Linux workalike running on ARM, to start from, say, NetBSD?