

Bradley Kuhn: Questioning The Original Analysis On The Bionic Debate - biehl
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/03/18/bionic-debate.html

======
FlorianMueller
Brad Kuhn has an interesting take on modifying large codebases: "If someone
actually does all the research to prove that Google did, I'd easily offer a
1,000-to-1 bet to anyone that such a copyright infringement could be cleared
up easily [...]"

I've been in the software industry for more than two decades, and I've worked
with such companies as Blizzard Entertainment (I actually edited a small part
of the C source code of Warcraft II - Tides of Darkness, for an example). I
know and I'm sure pretty much every reader here knows that it's _never_ just a
quick and simple thing to change something in such a large and interwoven
codebase as Android.

Any change can result in unforeseeable run-time issues even in parts of the
codebase where it seems counterintuitive.

I don't deny that it's doable -- in my own blog post on this I advocate
replacing Bionic with glibc. I don't claim it will take five years. But the
idea that this can be done in no time and without any risk of
incompatibilities and other issues flies in the face of everything any
technical decision-maker at any significant software company would say.

It may work in a "release early, release often" world. I doubt that the likes
of Samsung and Motorola plan to "release early, release often" their Android-
based devices.

Such an absurd downplaying of the issue calls into question that Brad Kuhn
seriously wants a solution. It seems he just wants to be an apologist.

------
FlorianMueller
Brad Kuhn says: "Google wasn't seeking to circumvent the GPL at all." That's
wrong. Not only did Google throw out numerous GPL notices from the original
headers, but it explicitly stated in the context of Bionic its goal to "keep
[the] GPL out of user-space" on page 36 of this official presentation:
[http://androidteam.googlecode.com/files/Anatomy-
Physiology-o...](http://androidteam.googlecode.com/files/Anatomy-Physiology-
of-an-Android.pdf)

I already pointed to that from my blog post on the Bionic story
([http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/03/googles-android-
face...](http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/03/googles-android-faces-
serious-linux.html)) but just wanted to show this example of a definitive
error in Kuhn's generally very unconvincing blog post.

~~~
lukeschlather
I think he's saying that the Android developers in question don't have a
proper understanding of the GPL, and rather than trying to circumvent it, they
were trying to circumvent the LGPL.

Which as he said, is pointless, because you can write a proprietary or BSD-
licensed application and interface with the LGPL without any problems. The
only reason to do what they did is if they wanted to distribute a full kernel
that works like Linux, but is BSD-licensed. Obviously they did no such thing,
nor did they even attempt to do so.

~~~
rbanffy
Google is full of very smart people. Wouldn't it be smarter, if they wanted a
BSD-licensed Linux workalike running on ARM, to start from, say, NetBSD?

------
FlorianMueller
Brad Kuhn writes: "But, to deny that it's possible to rewrite a C library for
Linux under a license that isn't GPLv2 would also imply immediately the
(incorrect) conclusion that [...]"

This is pointless and may mislead some readers.

Without a doubt it's _possible_ to do a non-GPL library. In fact, my blog post
on this subject advocated glibc all the way, which is LGPL'd, not GPL'd.

But the fact that it's possible (if done right) doesn't mean that Google's
reprocessing and repurposing of the material in question is in line with
copyright law and the GPL.

------
rbanffy
I never had a second thought on what would LGPL compliance be and why it would
be an advantage to developers have a BSD-style library instead of an LGPL one.

Any license-lawyer wants to elaborate on that?

~~~
billswift
The advantage of a BSD style license over any version of the GPL, even LGPL,
is that the developers _don't_ have to worry about compliance, they can just
focus on their design and code. That is the primary reason I prefer the WTFPL
license; even if what I want to do is permitted by a more restrictive license,
under the WTFPL I don't have to even spend any time or thought trying to
figure out whether or not it is permitted.

