Hi,

I hope this is the proper forum for this discussion. My company has recently decided to begin development of our next generation data-gathering instrument using embedded Linux. One of our requirements is that our software remain proprietary, but after reading the GPL license, we don't see how it's possible for any software written for Linux to be proprietary. Specifically, if I link my code to the Linux libraries (the OS stuff), then aren't I, in effect, creating a derrivative work of Linux, forcing my code to be GPL'd? What am I missing here? If it were not possible to have proprietary software for Linux, what's the point of the LGPL and other licenses?

Hope this makes sense,

Curtis

Write your own libraries for your code, then you don't have to GPL it, etc. Simple enough eh?

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html

You'll find all you need here.

Or, you could use embedded BSD instead:
http://www.nmedia.net/~chris/soekris/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensoekris

IIRC, so long as you link to statically compiled libraries you're OK. But, to use another slashdotism, IANAL.