In article <seu14eS00j5uAS9XdF@andrew.cmu.edu> sh2v+@andrew.cmu.edu (Stephen Hathorne) writes:
quoted text
>
>Can anyone tell me a little more about the copyright involved with linux? 
>I am working on an application, and wish to use linux as the operating
>system, (this will save my client about 0)
>
>I do not intend to charge for the operating system, but I do intend to
>charge for the application, and support.

This is no problem for the actual kernel: if you use linux you just have
to make the sources available for the kernel - the copyleft doesn't
matter for any programs running under linux (even if that would have
been legal, which I doubt, it's not a restriction I would have wanted to
put anyway).  Money isn't the problem: if you wish, you can even charge
for the operating system as well - as long as the kernel source is free
and available from you once he's bought the binary. 

There might be some problem with the C library, however.  Most of it is
from the GNU libc.a, and as such is under the GLPL - this doesn't mean
you have to give away your sources, but it does mean that you have to
give the client a chance to re-link your binaries against a newer (or
maybe just his own) version of the library.  I think it's actually ok if
you use the shared libraries with jump-tables (as then your binary
doesn't contain any actual copylefted code), but maybe somebody who
knows more about the GLPL should comment (which is why I crossposted to
gnu.misc.discuss - hope this doesn't turn into yet another flamewar). 

Exactly due to these kinds of problems I made the actual linux low-level
library routines totally free (ie the kernel interface hooks).  So
programs using those will not be encumbered, but they include only the
basic unix system calls, and any real program uses many GLPL'd routines. 

                Linus