Subj : Re: *nix Licenses
To   : paul lee
From : Richard Falken
Date : Thu Jan 07 2021 03:02:03

  Re: Re: *nix Licenses
  By: paul lee to Richard Falken on Wed Jan 06 2021 08:18 pm

 >  RF> You'd get helpful answers if you told us what the product is.
 > 
 > Thanks... some of the responses here were just attacks, or I didn't understa
 > their replies.
 > 
 > I do a bunch of projects marrying antiques with current tech. I refurbish ol
 > record-player consoles into current hi-fi equipment. I either use the origin
 > amplifier, or a current Tube-amp and marry it with a raspberry pi and some
 > open-source software (rpi-fruibox) that I have the license to distribute.
 > 
 > I just wonder about using the underlying Linux OS. Am I allowed? I guess I n
 > to pass the license to my lawyer, which sucks because... $100 for an hour.
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
 > |08.........

Ok, so you plan to sell an appliance and need a firmware for it.

Long story short:

If your appliances use modified Linux or GNU components, you must release the
source code. This is: if your appliance uses a modified kernel, a custom
patched version of bash or whatever, you must release the source code of that
component. Since your business model is selling hardware, this should be no big
deal anyway.

If you appliance uses unmodified Linux / GNU components, then you need not to
worry. You may incorporate propietary extensions to your firmware - say, a
propietary GUI - without releasing the code, as long as your extensions don't
represent a modification of GPL licensed components. ie: you can distribute a
bash script under a propietary license as long as you don't modify bash itself
..

Beware many Linux distributions include non-free components, so you'll have to
strip those out if you want to redistribute them.

You can still release the source code of your firmware and have a successful
product.- The Linksys that paved the way for the creation of OpenVRT come to
mind.

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