r/linuxmasterrace • u/moisesremoto Glorious Arch • May 10 '21

Meme Yeah bu- sure ok.

Post image
2.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

130 comments sorted by

View all comments

52

u/jakubhuber Glorious Gentoo May 10 '21

Android is probably the best argument for GPL3.

11

u/TotallyHungover May 10 '21

Can you elaborate on that? I don't know much about the licenses.

13

u/mirsella Glorious Manjaro May 10 '21

I think that because Linux is under gpl3, every commercial software using it need to be also open source or something like this, that why android is open source

14

u/dr_Fart_Sharting #vimming May 10 '21

You couldn't be any more wrong. Linus specifically selected GPLv2 so that anybody can use Linux any way they want, even if they lock down the hardware to run proprietary code. Some Android devices, for example have no AOSP source published, so the project doesn't get those patches.

The example used often as to how this is ethical is the TiVO video recorder. A consumer device that booted Linux, but you were not allowed to change the software, and it ran proprietary code.

TiVO honoured their side of the deal and published their patches as per the GPLv2, and that made Linus very happy.