You only have to serve those requests if you distribute your changes yourself.

So presumably as a hardware company you'd be offering your hardware with your custom linux installed, and then people wanting to audit or hack the product they bought would request the code from you.

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bluGill 2 months ago | parent [-]

This is GPL2 - there is no requirement that you be able to install/use/hack the software, only that you get the same source.

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pabs3 2 months ago | parent [-]

That is incorrect, the GPLv2 requires that you be able to modify the code, build it, reinstall the binary and run the modified binary.

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...

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immibis 2 months ago | parent [-]

This relies on a court's interpretation. GPLv3 made it explicit that the user has to be provided with everything they need to install modified software. GPLv2 just says "scripts used to control installation" which can be easily interpreted to exclude private signing keys. And the LGPLv2 says when an executable statically links to the library the user must be able to produce a modified executable - nothing at all about being able to install that executable.

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adastra22 2 months ago | parent [-]

That is an overly obtuse interpretation. Real law doesn’t work that way. Get in front of a court and the bench judge will shut down that kind of analysis real fast. The intended interpretation is quite clear in context.

	▲	immibis 2 months ago \| parent [-]
		Can you cite when it was interpreted this way please?