Kernel source unavailable...

[Jarod Wilson]

On May 4, 2011, at 2:47 AM, Bill Bogstad wrote:

> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 1:12 AM, Jarod Wilson <jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On May 4, 2011, at 1:02 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>> 
>>> The LG Optimus M (MS690) android phone sold by MetroPCS uses the Linux
>>> Kernel.  As far as I can tell, they don't make the source available.
>> 
>> If its running Android, perhaps Google more or less already takes care
>> of that?
>> 
>> http://android.git.kernel.org/
> 
> LG or MetroPCS may have changed something.    Not to mention the
> 'which' version question even if one of the versions available from Google
> is the right one.
> 
> Legally, everything I've ever read says that whoever gave you
> a binary licensed under the GPL is responsible for making a direct
> offer for the source.
> Not just passing it off to someone else not even involved in the
> binary distribution.
> If this wasn't the case then RedHat could just point at kernel.org for
> the kernel sources...

Red Hat[1] most definitely patches its kernels. There's no confirmation
whether LG is or is not. If they're not, or if all of those modifications
are already pushed to Google and/or android.git.kernel.org, then I'm
not sure why they couldn't just point users there, but as the saying
goes, I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on television.

I'm reasonably sure that if Red Hat actually published[2] its Red Hat
Enterprise Linux kernel git trees on git.kernel.org, and didn't provide
any other way to get the RHEL kernel source, it would be entirely
compliant with the GPL, unless the fact that kernel.org is not a
domain owned by Red Hat is somehow an issue.

[1] Its "Red Hat", two words, both capitalized, not RedHat or Redhat
[2] In an ideal world, where we didn't have companies trying to make
a profit offering cheaper support than Red Hat for software they
haven't poured massive amounts of engineering resources into, Red Hat
*would* push its RHEL kernel git trees. Its a whole lot easier to
charge very little for support if you don't have any devel costs to
recoup...

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org