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Over the past few years, Microsoft has been increasingly endorsing the Linux Kernel. They allow running a stripped down version of GNU/Linux distros in Windows, and Microsoft Azure uses Linux nowadays.

What if Microsoft decides to make a version of Windows with the Linux Kernel, and continue to release it as a proprietary operating system (and only release their kernel under GPL2)?

Suppose they say, "Our kernel is free and open source (you can look up here for the source), but the rest of the OS is non-free (and we won't allow you to modify or redistribute it)". Can they legally do that?

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    That's basically how macOS works, only with a different open-source kernel.
    – jwodder
    Commented Feb 11, 2021 at 22:37

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Yes, they can.

Firstly, the kernel is licensed under GPLv2 with a syscall exception, which says that the kernel's "copyright does not cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does not fall under the heading of "derived work"". So Microsoft could certainly found a new proprietary OS on the Linux kernel.

Secondly, this is already routinely done on Android phones: the kernel is Linux (or, at the very least, a derivative of the Linux kernel, and thus must also be covered by GPLv2) but user-space is packed with proprietary programs running on a partially-proprietary OS (think of all the Google-specific bits).

I don't think there's chance in a million of this happening, but I can't see any licensing bar to it.

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  • I'd just point out that it's contentious as to whether Android should or shouldn't be GPL v2 -- at least some components.
    – Nicholas Saunders
    Commented Sep 11, 2022 at 5:47
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Apple does something like this arleady. macOS/iOS use XNU Darwnin as kernel (it was developed by Apple using many 3rd party components). As far as I understood, Apple is not required to publish Darwin sources but they still do that that (see https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu ). This even helps with Hackintosh development. Only difference is that Darwin is not under GPL.

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  • With this answer you are comparing apples and oranges. MacOS is a derivative of BSD and BSD is licensed very differently than Linux. Therefore, based on Apple/MacOX, no conclusions can be drawn w.r.t. OP's question.
    – Martin_in_AUT
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 14:13

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