Leveraging Linux when Hardware is a Commodity?

AKInnovation asks: "My company produces peripheral hardware used in commercial applications, such as retail POS. In our market, amongst other such hardware manufacturers, we are the only ones to offer Linux software solutions (drivers). This distinction has recently won us several large accounts. When the hardware becomes a commodity, and you must compete on the software side to keep the money coming in, how can releasing your code as Open Source be rationalized to management?"

Comments

Re:Easy: Its the people.(GPL question)

[AlecC]

As I understand it, yes. The GPL requires release of the code only to the customer who pays you for it. You must transfer to the customer full rights to the GPL original code and to your updates to that code. The customer then has the right to release that code under the GPL - or not, which is probably what they will choose. The GPL does not say that you must release back to the developer community, only that you must release full GPL sources to anyone to whom you sell the code. If your customer then sells your code on, they are equally bound by the GPL to give the code, with full GPL rights, to their customers.

I.e. A business can add their business idea to GPL code (including implemented by you) for their own, essentially in-house, purposes. However, they cannot take a lot of GPL code, sprinkle a few neat ideas onto it, and market the result as a closed source package.