3 ms·
GPL doesn't require upstreaming, only that it's available. Lots of hardware companies don't want their code in the mainline kernel and make no effort to make it
by kryptiskt 5y ago
GPL doesn't require upstreaming, only that it's available. Lots of hardware companies don't want their code in the mainline kernel and make no effort to make it fit in. There are huge masses of Linux kernel code out there that can't be upstreamed because the kernel developers wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
- nix23 5y ago>GPL doesn't require upstreaming, only that it's available. That's not correct, you just have to make it available IF you redistribute the code. That's why you will never see a Google Data-center Linux-Kernel.
- bombcar 5y agoThe poster is making the distinction between working to merge your changes upstream and just dumping your changes on an unsuspecting world. The latter occurs decently often in the Linux Kernel world, and if there isn't much desire for the changes they can technically exist but never get merged. Whereas there are other drivers where the only one that cares about them is the company that uses them, but their developers have worked to get it actually upstreamed and help maintain it.
- heavyset_go 5y ago> GPL doesn't require upstreaming, only that it's available. While the GPL doesn't require upstreaming, it does require that derivative works that are distributed to users must make sources available. If those sources are available, then users or project maintainers can choose to upstream those changes if they want to. Apple, Sony, Nintendo etc don't make those source changes available despite distributing derivative works to users, so users and project maintainers can't upstream changes even if they wanted to.