What Happens to Relicensed Open Source Projects and Their Forks?

Post by graemep » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 12:41 PM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #29

graemep wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trying to obtain code dumps is hard enough for major brands, outright impossible for the myriad of cheap clones. And embedded is even worse, almost no one cares about distributing the GPL code of the BSP, mainly due to fear of violating chipset vendor NDAs. Sounds like an opportunity for the copyright holders to make some money by suing and dual licensing.

What money? You get to spend millions litigating the matter and the end result is a tarball with a couple new drivers. They do a board rev in 6mos, forget their obligations, and you're back where you started.

Post by pabs3 » Fri, Jan 03, 2025, 2:50 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #9

msla wrote: post #2

Related: "Fear of Forking" by Rick Moen http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/forking.html

> That's why forking is uncommon in open-source code, and even more so in (specifically) GPLed code: The improvements one group makes in its would-be "fork" are freely available to the main community. Unfortunately, in the smartphone world this just isn't reality. Trying to obtain code dumps is hard enough for major brands, outright impossible for the myriad of cheap clones. And embedded is even worse, almost no one…