this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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If you are using a GPL library that is statically linked to code with a different license the result is one binary that has inside both GPL and other license code, which would not be allowed under the GPL terms, because it requires that the binaries that use the source code must have their source code available in full (including other source and modifications that are part of the same binary).
The only case in which you don't need to provide the source for GPL software is if you don't actually distribute the binary to customers.. private binaries do not have to be published with their source, as long as you never made the binaries public and never gave it to anyone else. Only when you give it to someone you need to provide the code.
This allows for a loophole in which if you are providing a service, then you can run the software privately in your private server without sharing the source code to the clients using the service, since they do not really run the server program although they indirectly benefit from its results. This is why the AGPL was created, since it has a clause to force also those offering services to make the source of the server available to the users of the service.
I don't mind if people use LGPL or some derivative of GPL. All I want is improvements to the source be published, and MIT simply doesn't enforce that. I have no intention to force companies to publish their code that they have worked on for a long time - doing that never really helps. But I do want them to publish changes they make to already FOSS products so the author and the community can benefit.
Yes, but the loophole I was mentioning allows companies to not release the code even when it's GPL, that's why I was mentioning the AGPL (which is different from the LGPL).