Most Android Tablets Fail At GPL Compliance

polar_bear` writes "Red Hat's Matthew Garrett has been checking to see who's naughty and nice. Most Android tablet vendors? Naughty, naughty, naughty, when it comes to GPL compliance. In the current crop of Android tablets, most of the vendors flout the GPL and fail to ship source."

Comments

No great surprise..

[Dogers]

Big name companies provide it (notable exception being Creative, but then they've not always been so hot at this anyway), small unknown Chinese companies don't.

I'm surprised that Viewsonic only provides the source for 1 of its three tablets though.

Re:No great surprise..

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The area that surprises me is the 'devices produced by small unknown Chinese companies; but rebadged and sold by large American/Japanese/etc. ones' niche.

Given the number of obscure OEMs toiling away on designs based on what appear to be the same set of chipsets, you would expect that a large reseller would have its choice of OEMs, and strong ability to dictate terms. Further, you would expect that the respective legal departments of these re-badgers would absolutely flip out at the idea of incurring substantial risk of copyright infringement risk.

The odds that Sylvania actually produced the hardware being marketed under their name are not huge; but Sylvania is a US-market brand of a pretty big Japanese electronics outfit. If anybody were to sue them about it, there could be serious money on the table.

Coby Electronics Corporation, while it isn't exactly a luxury brand(seen by name in places like CVS pharmacy's electronics aisle, does some OEM work for Radio Shack), is a company with nontrivial size and US presence. Were I their lawyer, I'd be turning a cool shade of purple at the amount of liability we were racking up to score some tiny margins on skeezy wannabe android tablets to be sold to suckers at CVS.

While FOSS guys tend to be nice about it, the penalties in the US for copyright infringement are downright draconian, and that niceness is wholly optional.

Re:No great surprise..

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

these re-badgers would absolutely flip out at the idea of incurring substantial risk of copyright infringement risk.

You need money to sue someone. FOSS idealists have none, and big companies with vested interest in FOSS software that could afford the legal costs know better than to hurt their own kind. That's why everybody and their dogs trample on the GPL with zero fear of legal actions.

Re:No great surprise..

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect, percentage wise, it is fairly safe; but more than a few well-known names have been bitten for noncompliance with respect to busybox utilities... It's hardly a certainty, I'm just surprised that, given the likely bargaining power of the re-badger vs. the random throwaway OEM, that legal is signing off on even modest risk.

Re:No great surprise..

[Rakishi]

Hardly bitten, more like they got a mildly dirty look from a random stranger. Have there been any settlements or awards that were more than a slap on the wrist of the company? Any that in any way impacted their bottom line in even the smallest way?

Re:No great surprise..

[icebike]

For most, simply coming into compliance is all they are ever asked to do in court.

Some busybox (etc) providers drag their heels on even that, but most simply hang it on their website in some obscure place and call it a day. Most of these devices are obsolete before anyone notices the missing source code.

Its not hard to comply, its just that Joe Purchasing Agent has no clue he is supposed to do so when he buys a cheesy tablet from an OEM and changes nothing but the label on the back.

Re:No great surprise..

[dido]

Ask Eben Moglen, chief legal counsel for the Free Software Foundation, how the GPL has been enforced all these years.

In approximately a decade of enforcing the GPL, I have never insisted on payment of damages to the Foundation for violation of the license, and I have rarely required public admission of wrongdoing. Our position has always been that compliance with the license, and security for future good behavior, are the most important goals. We have done everything to make it easy for violators to comply, and we have offered oblivion with respect to past faults.

Enforcing the GPL, for the Free Software Foundation anyway, has never been about punishing the violators, as it tends to be with other copyright-related litigation, but more about getting people to comply with the license. In another speech, Moglen explains why there has never been a court test of the GPL, which is what you seem to be looking for:

...In order to defend yourself in a case in which you are infringing the freedom of free software, you have to be prepared to meet a call that I make reasonably often with my colleagues at the Foundation who are here tonight. That telephone call goes like this: "Mr. Potential Defendant, you are distributing my client's copyrighted work without permission. Please stop. And if you want to continue to distribute it, we'll help you to get back your distribution rights, which have terminated by your infringement, but you are going to have to do it the right way."

At the moment that I make that call, the potential defendant's lawyer now has a choice. He can cooperate with us, or he can fight with us. And if he goes to court and fights with us, he will have a second choice before him. We will say to the judge, "Judge, Mr. Defendant has used our copyrighted work, copied it, modified it and distributed it without permission. Please make him stop."

One thing that the defendant can say is, "You're right. I have no license." Defendants do not want to say that, because if they say that they lose. So defendants, when they envision to themselves what they will say in court, realize that what they will say is, "But Judge, I do have a license. It's this here document, the GNU GPL. General Public License," at which point, because I know the license reasonably well, and I'm aware in what respect he is breaking it, I will say, "Well, Judge, he had that license but he violated its terms and under Section 4 of it, when he violated its terms, it stopped working for him."

But notice that in order to survive moment one in a lawsuit over free software, it is the defendant who must wave the GPL. It is his permission, his master key to a lawsuit that lasts longer than a nanosecond. This, quite simply, is the reason...that there has never been a court test of the GPL.

Given this kind of legal bind, most defendants when pressed by competent GPL plaintiffs would rather comply with the license like they are supposed to than fight it out in court under those terms.

Re:No great surprise..

[jonbryce]

There have been tests of the GPL in court. Two I'm aware of are MySQL ab v Progress Software Corp and Busybox v Westinghouse Digital Electronics. In both cases, it was held that the GPL does work as advertised.

Re:No great surprise..

[gnasher719]

You need money to sue someone. FOSS idealists have none, and big companies with vested interest in FOSS software that could afford the legal costs know better than to hurt their own kind. That's why everybody and their dogs trample on the GPL with zero fear of legal actions.

With GPL v.3, if the software used implements any patents and you got a patent license through the GPL, then a GPL violation is now both copyright infringement and patent infringement. So things could get very nasty. And the low fear of legal actions doesn't come from "FOSS idealists having no money", it comes from "FOSS idealists being nice and not pressing for maximum damages".

Re:No great surprise..

[Fnkmaster]

Speaking as one of the Viewsonic G Tablet kernel hackers who helped push for VS to release source and has since identified and helped fix several of the critical kernel bugs, it was a non-trivial business problem to get the code.

Malata, the hardware OEM, is Chinese and thus not subject to US or European IP law regarding things like the GPL. Viewsonic did not develop the software in house, they contracted the whole Android packaging and UI job out to a startup called Tap N Tap based in Cambridge, MA. Tap N Tap was then constrained by the confidentiality agreements they had with Viewsonic. Viewsonic didn't really have any software team on board who understood the legal issues involved and their marketing guys had to help push everything through legal with the help of the Tap N Tap guys. Furthermore, the G Tablet is apparently distributed by a company called US Worldwide under a distribution agreement of some sort with Viewsonic - so not clear that Viewsonic ever even took delivery of a single tablet themselves.

We used Twitter to nag Viewsonic about not having released the kernel source and keep the issue in the public eye. Once they got clearance, they got the source from Tap N Tap, and posted it on the website.

This all just happened on December 24th. So Viewsonic is still most likely working on legal compliance issues for other tablets. I'm sure if people make formal requests for source and send some nagging reminders like we did for the G Tablet, they'll release any GPLed source too - they are making an effort at least, unlike many companies.

But it did take about a month long organized effort from the XDA Developers forums, involving call-ins to customer service, emails to top executives, and twitter posts. Much of that was simply education of people at several layers of the company about their obligations - again, their company never even touched the source code so this probably never went through their own legal people until we pushed it to them.

The result is we were able to merge up a bunch of critical kernel bug fixes from the main NVidia Tegra 2 source tree and we now have custom kernels that support a crap-ton of new features, along with custom ROMs. And we've gotten source for basically all the drivers too and we've started improving some of them.

No, we don't have the full source for the Tap N Tap UI stuff since Android's UI layer is Apache licensed and there's no obligation for Tap N Tap to release that code, but it doesn't affect us too much. We have the full AOSP source, the NVidia source tree, and there are so many custom launchers and stuff to work with out there that we've got several awesome ROMs released now.

I suspect there may be similar legal/logistical issues with the other Viewsonic tablets' source code. I don't know if enough people have even bought those tablets to care enough to request source code though - if you own one, make a request to Viewsonic. Heck, their Marketing VP has an account on the XDA Developer forums now, you can PM him there.

Also - that list is a bit misleading. Since we have the Viewsonic G Tablet kernel source, we basically have all the drivers and kernel code for all the Malata devices now, including the ZPad. In fact, Viewsonic released some of the ZPad drivers that aren't even used in the G Tablet (like the first gen ZPad resistive touchscreen driver).

Additionally, Advent has stated that they are working to release source code for the Vega which is apparently assembled by BYD but as far as we can tell, uses most of the same components and a very similar design to the Malata ZPad. I suspect we have nearly all the drivers and patches for that in our Viewsonic release too, but I'm sure their official kernel source will be out within a few weeks regardless.

So yeah, there are still some legal issues, but at least with the Tegra 2 devices and with most of the mainstream Western vendors, they are working their way to compliance currently.

Re:No great surprise..

[Fnkmaster]

As soon as we made Viewsonic aware of their obligations and got somebody halfway intelligent there involved (i.e. not just first line customer service people, though we got them to write up notes about the number of callers requesting GPL source code too), this went through marketing and legal, and they got source released within a matter of weeks for the G Tablet. You're right, nobody wants to sit on legal risk for products with slim margins in competitive markets.

If you have a Coby or Sylvania device, just find the email addresses of some of their US execs, and send them emails explaining their legal compliance obligation to distribute source code to the kernel and other GPLed components of an Android device, and they'll push it over to legal quickly enough. Once a lawyer gets involved, yeah, the US-based rebadgers have plenty of leverage with Chinese OEMs. You'll have source code soon enough, depending on the complexity of the situation. With the Viewsonic G Tablet there were at least 4 companies involved - Viewsonic, Tap N Tap (the UI developer and guys that did all the Android software packaging for the G Tablet, US Merchants (the master distributor, apparently), and Malata (the hardware OEM in China). So it took a little while to even figure out who was doing what and had what code and what obligations.

Re:No great surprise..

[compro01]

Malata, the hardware OEM, is Chinese and thus not subject to US or European IP law regarding things like the GPL.

The GPL's authority is based in copyright law and China is a signatory of the Berne convention (As well as the Universal Copyright Convention, the TRIPS agreement and the WIPO Copyright Treaty), so yes, they are subject to it. Just no one bothers to go after them about it.

Ship Source?

[icebike]

They are Android. Google makes source available and the tablet vendors do too. There is no requirement to ship the source.

Re:Ship Source?

[icebike]

It is sufficient if they use stock Android.

Making available does not require shipping, nor does it include hosting your own servers. You need merely "make it available". There are no specific requirements as to where it must be a available, and having the Open Handset Alliance perform this service is sufficient.

Samsung and some others are quite responsive in getting the source out there. Others not so much.

My only point in my post above is there is no requirement that the source be "shipped". It merely needs to be available along with any modifications a manufacturer makes to it.

Re:Ship Source?

[hacker]

The source you provide or link to must be the same source used to produce the binaries you're shipping on your device. In other words, if I take Google's source and build binaries with it, and those binaries differ from the ones shipping on your device, it's not the same source code, and does not comply with the license.

Pointing to a source for Android, is not the same thing as providing the source for the modifications to that source that you (as a vendor) have done to the source.

Re:Ship Source?

[mjg59]

The Google reference kernel code doesn't contain the driver code for any of these tablets, and the vast majority of them are based on SoC platforms that don't exist at all in the Google code. The tablet vendors can't simply point at the Google repositories, they're obliged to either ship the source with the devices or provide a written offer to provide the source to any third party on request.

Re:Ship Source?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Even if the device in question is a completely unaltered build of upstream, public-ally available, sources, anything GPL still has to be either made available with the binary or the binary has to be accompanied by a written offer to provide on request for no more than reasonable duplication costs.

Many of these devices probably don't deviate much from upstream; but I'd be surprised if they are 100% identical(not that that is legally relevant; but if you aren't even shipping a binary based on upstream source, you definitely can't just point to that source and claim to be in compliance). Now, in practice, if given the choice between just checking out from upstream or paying reasonable duplication fees to get a CD with some horribly messy .rar of a slapdash build environment on it, most people are probably just going to go with the former. That doesn't absolve the distributor of the binary of their legal obligations, though.

Re:Ship Source?

[icebike]

Drivers are a debatable case.

Some insist anything linked against the kernel libraries (making calls to the kernel) must be make source code available. But I do not believe this is the general consensus.

Re:Ship Source?

[MichaelSmith]

6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.

    You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms
of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the
machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License,
in one of these ways:

        a) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product
        (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by the
        Corresponding Source fixed on a durable physical medium
        customarily used for software interchange.

        b) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product
        (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a
        written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as
        long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product
        model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a
        copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the
        prodwuct that is covered by this License, on a durable physical
        medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no
        more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this
        conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the
        Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.

        c) Convey individual copies of the object code with a copy of the
        written offer to provide the Corresponding Source. This
        alternative is allowed only occasionally and noncommercially, and
        only if you received the object code with such an offer, in accord
        with subsection 6b.

        d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated
        place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the
        Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no
        further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the
        Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to
        copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source
        may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party)
        that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain
        clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the
        Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the
        Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is
        available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.

        e) Convey the object code using peer-to-peer transmission, provided
        you inform other peers where the object code and Corresponding
        Source of the work are being offered to the general public at no
        charge under subsection 6d.

So say windows 8 turns out to be red hat linux with a new label on the box. For source code MSFT points back to red hat. The red hat servers melt from too much traffic and red hat restricts downloads to their own customers.

For MSFT to satisfy the GPL they must have control over the infrastructure which delivers the source code. Otherwise they are not in compliance. They could do this by paying red hat to do it for them. They could do it themselves. Maybe google provides this service for Android. I don't know.

Come on. We have been over this 1000 times.

Re:Ship Source?

[MichaelSmith]

If you have been over it 1000 times, why did you quote the part about object code rather than the part about source code?

Read the bits about providing Corresponding source:

Regardless of what server hosts the
Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is
available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.

Re:Ship Source?

[julesh]

Err... that is the part that requires source code to be distributed. Read it. It specifies 4 ways that you can distribute source code:

- on a disk supplied with the device you're shipping
- with a written offer supplied with the device you're shipping
- forwarding a written offer provided by somebody else (only available for noncommercial distributors)
- providing a download *from the same location the customer downloaded the binaries*.

Re:Ship Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, the GPL isn't the new kid on the block that nobody knows.

From the GNU GPLv2:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
    under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
    Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

        a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
              source code, which must be distributed under the terms of
              Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software
              interchange; or,
        b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years,
              to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of
              physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-
              readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed
              under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily
              used for software interchange; or,
        c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to
              distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
              allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
              received the program in object code or executable form with such
              an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

Re:Ship Source?

[SharpFang]

Must make it available ON REQUEST, to a person who received the binary.
Not ship with the tablet. Not publish on the website. Not mail it to anyone who asks, ever.

If I have purchased the tablet, I am entitled to request the sources from the distributor. And they must make them available to me them in reasonable amount of time.

I did study this bit for a while. We're making a big embedded industrial product that runs on Linux. We don't even have the sources in any form that could be shipped - the repository is a mix of Free and proprietary. But the last page of the manual contains the sacred phrase: "This device uses software and libraries licensed under GNU GPL, GNU LGPL and Apache licenses. According to requirements of these licenses, our company will make source code of this software available to all interested customers. In order to obtain the source code, please contact [email]"

We're pretty well aware where the line goes - what is our modifications of the OS which virally became GPL), which is userspace (proprietary) and which is glue logic to LGPL libraries (and has to be made available). If one of our customers requests the sources, we will have to extract the free ones from the repository, attach the toolchain, pack it up and send. But since our customers are not in the IT industry, and essentially want the devices to sit and do their job without ever being touched, we have a reasonable belief we will never have to act upon this requirement.

And no, we are not under obligation to give our sources to random hackers who did not purchase our specialized $15k piece of equipment (with the firmware) first.

Re:Ship Source?

[jeremyp]

Because he is quoting the part about what gives you the right to distribute the object code. Each of the bullet points gives a method of object code distribution and the methods of source code distribution that allow you to comply with the licence.

Of course, he is quoting the wrong licence. The Linux kernel is distributed under GPL v2.

Re:Ship Source?

[Fiduciary]

So say windows 8 turns out to be red hat linux with a new label on the box. For source code MSFT points back to red hat. The red hat servers melt from too much traffic and red hat restricts downloads to their own customers.

For MSFT to satisfy the GPL they must have control over the infrastructure which delivers the source code. Otherwise they are not in compliance. They could do this by paying red hat to do it for them. They could do it themselves. Maybe google provides this service for Android. I don't know.

Come on. We have been over this 1000 times.

All 12 windows users interested in the source code melt red hat's servers?

Re:Ship Source?

[TheRaven64]

Some insist anything linked against the kernel libraries (making calls to the kernel) must be make source code available. But I do not believe this is the general consensus.

It's more complex than that. Drivers do not have to be GPL'd, unless they are a derived work of the kernel. If they are not (e.g. the nVidia blob drivers), then they may be distributed under any license that you wish.

The kernel, however, requires that anything linked to it be distributed under a GPL-compatible license. Any Linux kernel that links against things under a license that the GPL is incompatible with, is in violation of the GPL. The GPL, however, makes it clear that you do not require any license to use the code, so end users may download the Linux kernel and the nVidia drivers, link them together, and still be allowed to use the code.

What they can't do is distribute the result. If you distribute the Linux kernel along with a GPL-incompatible driver, then you are in violation of the GPL. This means that you have no valid license to distribute the Linux kernel (unless you acquire one from all of the Linux copyright holders), and so every time you copy the kernel you are committing copyright infringement. Shipping a device with binary-only drivers and a Linux kernel is almost certainly wilful infringement, and carries a statutory penalty of up to $150K in the USA. It's probably cheaper to use FreeBSD...

Re:Ship Source?

[TrekkieGod]

It gets complicated. You can ship a kernel and a driver side-by-side ("mere aggregation" - section 2 of GPLv2). A user can then use modprobe to load the driver. At this point, has infringement occurred?

That is not mere aggregation. To get a binary that can be loaded into the kernel with modprobe, you must have already linked with the kernel. It's the reason why nvidia doesn't ship a driver ready to be loaded that way. You must use gcc to compile their little wrapper and link to the kernel yourself.

Either that or get it from your distro, who are most certainly violating the GPL when they ship it. The reason nobody is complaining is because all that this would accomplish is getting the distros to stop compiling drivers for you, and making everybody else's life difficult. Nvidia would still be able to ship their little wrapper with a binary blob, but now you'd have to go through that extra step.

Re:Ship Source?

[Fnkmaster]

Kernel source, specifically drivers and patches to build your own usable kernel is the issue here.

It's a real problem with tablets. Yeah, in terms of the OS itself, AOSP provides everything we need to build our own, and vendors aren't under any obligation to provide UI layer changes they make to Apache-licensed stuff. That's fine, because 90% of those vendor changes suck anyway.

But many of these tablets ship with buggy, binary-only kernels and driver modules with mysterious patch sets used to build them. Kernel source is key, and we've just recently started getting a lot of these companies to provide source.

I personally couldn't care less about whether the source is shipped on a CD with the device or provided on a website by the hardware vendor. I think that applies to most users and developers. That's a technicality that only a lawyer would love. If the source to all GPL-derived components (i.e. kernel, etc.) is freely available, under the GPL license, with instructions to build it that an experienced developer can easily complete, to anybody who has bought the device, whether by shipping, written offer, or download from the web, they are complying with the spirit of the GPL. Some of the old GPL verbiage about written offers and shipping CDs comes from an era prior to the ubiquity of high bandwidth internet connectivity.

please be sure ...

[Osgeld]

to buy from the list of GPL approved items...

not to be a douche on this, but what is my incentive?

If GPL item A is inferior to my needs than non technicality item B, why should I be buying A to enforce a co-alliance's problem, is it not their issue for letting these B items exist without ramifications?

I for one am not going to bother checking a "naughty and nice" list for every single fkin purchase, force them if you want your licence to be inforced, otherwise leave me, the consumer out of it

thanks

Re:please be sure ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming that you personally don't care about the ability to see and modify the source to the whole operating system on your phone, perhaps it would be nice to avoid this scenario:
1) You buy GPL-violating tablet from no-name company.
2) Company gets sued or threatened.
3) Company disappears and your device no longer has any support.

Re:please be sure ...

[Osgeld]

yea companies like Samsung ...

ok BSchinatech.ripoff I can understand, I pay 75 bucks for a tab, 5 years later who gives a crap

but Sylvania is on that list too, are they a no-name company that will vanish from a little GPL lawsuit? what about Zenith or Viewsonic, or Creative Labs?

Re:Not entirely accurate

[mjg59]

By Coby? Telechips released their reference kernel earlier this month, but I've seen no indication that Coby are fulfilling their obligations.

Re:Make Sources Available

[Anonymous Coward]

the distributor must either include their sources or make a clear offer to their customers to provide them on demand. They needn't provide them to the general public.

If they ship the source with the binary, then they do not have to provide the source to anyone else. If they don't ship the source with the binary, then they must make the source available to anyone who has a copy of the binary, not just their direct customers (or really anyone under certain circumstances). The GPLv2 was clearer in that regard: For commercial distribution, either ship with source or make available to "any third party". (The first party is who offers the license, the second party accepts it, so "any third party" is the general public). It is much preferable for distributors to ship with source. It fulfills their obligations under the GPL in an instant. Otherwise they have to keep the matching source available for at least three years, or longer if the product is maintained longer, and they have to give it to anyone who wants it. Distributors, ship the source, it's the easy way.

Source only for customers, not third parties

[perpenso]

The Google reference kernel code doesn't contain the driver code for any of these tablets, and the vast majority of them are based on SoC platforms that don't exist at all in the Google code. The tablet vendors can't simply point at the Google repositories, they're obliged to either ship the source with the devices or provide a written offer to provide the source to any third party on request.

No. they only have to provide source to their customers, not to any third party.

Re:Source only for customers, not third parties

[mjg59]

Quoting from the GPL v2 section 3(b):

"Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange"

You don't have to choose that option - you can use 3(a) instead, but that means that the source has to be with the device when you sell it.

Re:Source only for customers, not third parties

[Arlet]

Technically correct, but it's much more practical to put the source code on a public HTTP or FTP server where anybody can get it. Any extra effort to only allow your own customers is a waste of time and money.

Take take take

[gilesjuk]

That sums up most Android vendors, they develop their own GUIs and improvements and don't give much or anything back to the project.

Hardly in the spirit of open source is it?

Re:Take take take

[obarel]

Even though I have not contributed one line of code, I'm still affected by it as a software developer. I earn my living by writing software for my company. I do not use GPL because I know it's illegal not to publish the code, and my company cannot afford to publish our code, due to competition.

This means that my company invests time and money (which directly affects my livelihood due to competition) into software development, while other, larger companies just take GPL'ed code and use it without fear (and without any intention to release their code). So they have an unfair advantage over my company. It's unfair, because what they do is illegal. Not "mildly" illegal, like taking candy from a baby (= taking code from whining hippy spare-time developers), but very illegal, like stealing code from a competitor. Basically this business practice harms competition, and indirectly it also harms the consumer - big companies destroy their competiton by illegal means, and the consumer is left with less choice.

GPL has a purpose - to make the code, changes and derivatives available to everybody. Using it in other ways gives big companies unfair advantage, which is in many places an illegal practice (like bribing politicians or abusing public resources with impunity). Yes, it's the way of the world, but many people are angry about corrupt politicians even if they are not directly affected.

Re:Android is not GPL

[TeknoHog]

However, Android uses the Linux kernel, which is under GPL v2.