More Linux Portable Media Players On The Way

An anonymous reader writes "According to LinuxDevices.com, Taiwanese motherboard maker FIC will unveil a Linux-based portable media player (PMP) at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. FIC's 'Vassili' includes a 3.6-inch color LCD screen and a 20GB hard drive, and supports files in MPEG 1-4, MP3, WMA, WAV, ASF, AVI, and JPEG format. Speaking of Linux-based PMPs, Archos will also showcase its lastest PMP, the Pocket Media Assistant PMA400 at CES, and other Linux-based PMPs have recently been announced by iRiver, Veritouch, and Zupera."

Comments

Does running software on Linux imply it's GPL?

[MikShapi]

Copylefting is a mixed bag. On one hand it forces (Forcing != "Free as in speech") users of GPL code into GPL'ing their contributions, while on the other hand it scares them away for fear the code they invested money in developing is opened up, a mental barrier they're not always keen on crossing.
Sometimes this seems moral (if you fixed a bug in open source, share it and let everyone benefit) whereas sometimes it doesn't (Should I legally have to open-source 2 million lines of closed code of a product with a unique business advantage for using an MD5 routine that was under GPL? Not very attractive, nor very free (AsInSpeech) )

What this iRiver issue speaks of is very scary, as it makes the GPL even scarier for the corporate market decision-makers (who control the big bucks yet who don't always share our techie affinity for Free/Open stuff), and makes a lot of MS FUD come true.

GPL applies its "viral" nature (i.e. license "spreads" to your work if you use anything that has it) once you either incorporate GPL source or link against GPL libraries.

LGPL is more convenient, as it applies its viral nature to source code alone, not linked libraries, so if you want to "contain" what your closed-source company needs to share and yet use open source, you use LGPL libraries or wrap LGPL code in your own library and open-source that library. The rest of the product is not subject to opening that way.

What this article implies is that by running under a GPL kernel with the GPL'd multipurpose busybox binary, all software on the OS immediately becomes GPL. Whoa. Going there is BAD BAD BAD.
That's exactly that silver bullet the MS-FUD department is looking so desperately for.

IANAL, but does GPL provide for this? If so, it's even less attaractive to the business environment than the way MS FUD lawyers described the "viral nature" of GPL to date.