What's that, you say?

Tired of hearing heated argument and rhetoric about HHS and Obamacare?

Feeling lukewarm and uninterested in Yet Another debate about the economy?

Does the thought of another article about the GOP boy band of Mitt, Rick, Ron and Newt got ya down?

Are you thinking, "Man... I'd like a different sort of flame war tonight"?

We've got you covered!

Here you go - a nice, hot, steaming pile of GPL compliance ranting and counter-ranting for you!

No thanks needed.  You're quite welcome.  It's just part of the services we offer here at The Embedded Theologian.

Disclaimer: I've worked with a couple of the main actors in this debate, which actually makes it quite interesting for me.  If you pressed me, I'd have to come down on the side of Tim Bird and Rob Landley, the folks who are taking most of the heat in this thread.  I honestly don't think that their critics understand their point.  They're not trying to make it possible for companies to more easily violate the GPL - trust me, I know those two, and that's the furthest thing on their minds.  What they are trying to do is eliminate what has become a  disproportionate risk for vendors who use the BusyBox software.  Not "risk of someone finding out we've violated the GPL", but "risk of lawsuit approaching 100% if we use this particular GPL package".  Lawsuits, whether they have any merit or not, have a cost.  That's what companies are trying to avoid, and if ditching BusyBox means ditching other OSS-based projects that rely on it... well, that's what they call "collateral damage".  Collateral damage that is doing more harm than good.  If that damage can be avoided by conning up a BSD licensed replacement for BusyBox, it's hard to fault them - especially when there's a pretty good time honored OSS tradition of solving legal problems by writing new code.

And... if any of that actually makes sense to you, you have my respect, and my sincere sympathies.