LG violates gpl? take 2

[Joseph Heenan]

Luca Olivetti wrote:

>> Unfortunately, the GPL does nothing to force a company to support you 
>> in installing the code they provide,
> 
> Apparently it does, see
> http://www.gpl-violations.org/faq/sourcecode-faq.html

It's certainly in the spirit of the license to provide them.

However GPLv2 (which the kernel & busybox are licensed under) is not 
water tight. Tivo, for example, have been quite able to avoid people 
installing their own linux kernels on Tivos through the use of signed 
images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

The use of the words "scripts" here:

"... plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of 
the executable."

is also quite problematic, and does not create a legal requirement to 
provide proprietary executables required to install the kernel or any 
need to provide instructions if the installation is by a set of manually 
run commands.

(Note that I'm not a lawyer, etc.)


Joseph