Hi Bradley, > I think most people on this list would be surprised to learn and will > probably doubt me when I say there is a not-really-coordinated, but > nearly universal, effort by many "Linux"-related companies, working > very hard to squelch anyone who attempts to enforce the GPL, and > doubly so against anyone who coordinates many people together to > enforce GPL (like I do).
I'm not surprised. One UK manufacturer I chased obtained Linux from a well-known supplier of embedded Linux. When I pointed out to the, genuinely surprised, manufacturer their obligations they went upstream and I had a very long phone call with the source of their Linux who tried to persuade me that the vanilla public upstream release was sufficient and the manufacturer need not supply their tailored one, despite all the new device-support work they'd done. Finally, the manufacturer shipped the wrong source on an expensive CD. Then altered the bootloader on newer shipped units to Tivoise it. The embedded Linux supplier did a poor job IMO; Linux wasn't suitable for the manufacturer's unusual case where the hardware was sold well below cost because of expectations of per-unit post-sales revenue that could easily be avoided with new firmware. Cheers, Ralph.
