Is running software/application in the Linux environment deem it a derivative work? Does Honeywell have to adhere to a GPL if they aren't modifying the Linux kernel?
It's not clear to me that they would need to follow GPL.
They have to provide the source for the kernel and whatnot - but if the interesting stuff is in userspace applications which aren't derivatives of copyleft code, they don't have to provide the source for _those_
> but if the interesting stuff is in userspace applications which aren't derivatives of copyleft code
Of course. Honeywell can run their own proprietary applications on top of a Linux/GNU system. I didn't mean to imply that you could request the source code to every program running on the device.
However they need to provide the source code for any GPL licensed portions. IIRC they should also provide build scripts so you can create a firmware image yourself.
GPL only requires providing build scripts for GPL software. In this case it means they can't strip kernel makefiles from the kernel source to make it harder to build independently.