On Wednesday, 6 September 2017 at 06:43:45 UTC, Brad Roberts
wrote:
On 9/5/2017 10:19 PM, Joakim via Digitalmars-d wrote:
I'll also note that if a developer uses GPL software on the
server, he doesn't have to give any source to users who access
apps on the server remotely. For example, Google uses a linux
kernel with proprietary modifications on a million servers
running their search engine, yet my understanding is that they
have not made most of those modifications available, as
they're not required to under the GPL. By contrast, every
Android vendor has to release the source for their linux
kernel. It's not a coincidence that GPL software took off on
the sever, until and except for Android's kernel.
Your understanding is somewhat flawed. Google is a major
contributor to the linux kernel as well as quite a few other
projects. They are extraordinary members of the open source
community and the internet at large. They have one of the most
proactive security teams out there as another example.
Please, do a little research. While there's a lot to dislike
about google and their public facing services, they offset that
quite a bit in my eyes through how their engineering staff
behaves.
My understanding is based on research, specifically this lwn
article from 8 years ago, which says they didn't work with the
kernel community much back when they were mostly running linux on
servers:
https://lwn.net/Articles/357658/
Of course, as I noted, they've since had to release the source to
the linux kernels they use for Android, because the GPL requires
it. I haven't seen anything about their releasing much of their
modifications to their server kernels, please share your research
if you know more about that.
