Licensing
The Linux source code is licensed under GPL v2, which means that you must make the source code of your kernel available in one of the ways specified in the license.
The actual text of the license for the kernel is in the file COPYING. It begins with an addendum written by Linus that states that code calling the kernel from user space via the system call interface is not considered a derivative work of the kernel and so is not covered by the license. Hence, there is no problem with proprietary applications running on top of Linux.
However, there is one area of Linux licensing that causes endless confusion and debate: kernel modules. A kernel module is simply a piece of code that is dynamically linked with the kernel at runtime, thereby ...
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