The Linux Kernel itself may be GPL (which I wasn't debating), however I see no reason why MikroTik's MPLS stack couldn't work in a similar way to the closed source NVidia driers where my understanding is that a GPL stub loads a binary blob. Have you asked MikroTik for a copy of the source? Edward Dore Freethought Internet On 1 Sep 2012, at 09:12, Bjørn Mork wrote:
Edward Dore <edward.dore@freethought-internet.co.uk> writes:
They used to publish the source for their 2.4 kernel on routerboard.com (in fact, it's still available at http://routerboard.com/files/linux-2.4.31.zip), but I've not seen anything for the 2.6 kernel however and the routerboard.com site was redesigned a little while ago, seemingly without the links as far as I can tell.
It might be a case of you need to ask them for it. Would be interesting to see which bits are GPL.
There is no doubt that *all* bits of the Linux kernel are GPL. Whether vendors respect this is another question. But Mikrotik most certainly cannot distribute the Linux kernel, modified or not, without also providing the full source code.
Bjørn