[Tfug] GPL Worthless?

[Bexley Hall]

Hi John,

--- On Sat, 9/8/12, John Hubbard <ender8282 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > How many different tablets are on the market?  What percentage of
> > them have an underlying GPL'd kernel?  How many of *those* have
> > made their sources available?  Before you answer, do some research.
> > I would be *thrilled* if you come up with *any* (hint:  I've been
> > doing this, recently)
> 
> The kindle source is available to download [1]. The Nook
> Color is also available [2].  I'm not sure what percent
> of the market those two account for, but they are likely the
> most heavily modified beyond the plain andriod source
> available from Google [3].  Are there people out there
> who sell tablets but doesn't distribute the source? Yes
> there surely are.  Do they account for large swaths of
> the market? I doubt it.  The bigger vendors are likely
> following the letter (even if not the spirit) of the law
> because their legal department told them to.  The small
> vendors are probably flaunting the rules because most people
> have better things to do with their time than go after
> vendors only selling a few thousand tablets.
> Bexley: Which tablet(s) that uses a GPL kernel are you
> unable to find the source for?
> 
> [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200203720
> [2] http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/Terms-of-Service-NOOK-Color/379003278
> [3] http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/Terms-of-Service-NOOK-Color/379003278

Just because something *claims* to be "available" doesn't
mean that it truly is, in practical terms.

E.g., I chased down the first link at the first link that you
posted -- the most recent source for the kindle fire
(Kindle_src_6.3.1_user_4107720.tar.gz).  In the tarball, I found
~150 images for which the sources are not available.  Nor the
(proprietary) tools that one would use to build those sources.

[How many of those are specific to *just* the Kindle Fire is unknown
as there is nothing that tells me what the Fire uses -- I'm not
going to wade through a hierarchy of Makefiles just to see]

How do I reap the benefits the GPL intends for me if it *legally*
allows this much functionality to be locked away from me?  That
I can neither inspect, repair or enhance??

E.g., I designed a slot machine some years ago in which I used
several "cheap" processors to implement subsystems that allowed
me to offload the main processor of some of the more mundane
chores.  One of those tasks was driving a graphic "ticket printer".
The exact hardware and software protocols that the printer required
were embedded in that microcontroller.  I could publish the
source for the application yet, if I withheld the sources for that
*firmware*, you could never substitute a different printer.  Nor
change certain aspects of the "printouts".

Yet, I could publish the design under the GPL/LGPL even relying on
other libraries and subsystems that I may have dragged into the
project under similar terms.

While "legal", it's just not *fair* (in my case, the entire system
was proprietary so it wasn't an issue).

The GPL ignores modern technology (by "modern", I mean techniques
that were in use 60 years ago and are now *commonplace*).  It
really only works among folks who *want* to share -- in which
case, I argue that it's not *needed*!

--don