[wongmjane]

> The kernel provided for WSL2 will be fully open source! When WSL2 is released in Windows Insider builds, instructions for creating your own WSL kernel will be made available on Github.

The kernel part will be fully open source, which should be sufficient enough to comply with GPL

(IANAL)

[jcelerier]

> which should be sufficient enough to comply with GPL

this is an age-old debate. Some people say that it is e.g. legal to make (redistribute to precise) a GPL device driver for windows, and some argue that it is not, because the whole kernel should then be GPL.

> https://linux.slashdot.org/story/02/11/05/0051225/gpl-issues...

[temac]

The Linux kernel will be isolated by an hypervisor.

[781]

But in Windows drivers are binary files which talk to the kernel through an API. Not much different than a binary user mode application. If binary user mode applications written in GPL are ok, then so should this.

[jcelerier]

> Not much different than a binary user mode application.

well, user-mode applications do syscalls to the kernel, not direct function calls.

[781]

But the actual syscall is made by a Windows user mode library - kernel32.dll/... So your GPL user mode app calls directly into proprietary Windows library.

[temac]

That is specifically allowed by the GNU GPL. See "System Libraries" and adjacent paragraphs.

[nathell]

There is a mention of "System Libraries" in GPLv3, but not GPLv2, which the Linux kernel is licensed under.