@Suiseiseki

> Since anyone who isn't a loser uses the best shell.

I do use the best shell, but Inferno's sh(1) isn't available everywhere.

> Unix™ is a trademark that requires payment and certification.

Unix is an operating system and lately a set of interfaces.

If everyone says the emperor's got fabulous new clothes and you see his dong flapping in the breeze, the correct answer is that the emperor is naked (rejection of false reality despite consensus), not that actually his new clothes are terrible (implicit acceptance of the false reality created by consensus with a rejection of one facet of the consensus).

The legal horseshit matters to businesses: in reality, it's a hallucination. It's magical properties ascribed to the bits in the machine: you can't perceive them and the machine doesn't know they exist (and billions of dollars have gone into DRM systems to attempt to make the machine perceive them). So, just like Saint Terry, I sit down at my computer and do whatever I feel like: I dine on nectar of the Gods.

> It is NOT firmware, it is SOFTWARE.

It is a chunk of code that patches firmware. The patching mechanism is software, the static data has a bunch of hex in it, and those numbers represent parts of a firmware blob.

> Whether it works as a software patch against instructions in ROM is irrelevant, as it is software and it is proprietary.

:terryhacker: "I just wake up and turn on my computer and do whatever I feel like."

> That is irrelevant, as the proprietary software is still in Linux, making Linux proprietary software.

:terryhacker: "I dine on nectar of the Gods."

> Not anymore.

The GPL cannot be revoked. If there were active development under the non-GPL'd branch of the code, then that code would not be GPL, but there is not: the only active branches are under the GPL.

> by never enforcing their license

I don't really know or care what they are doing. I do know that if someone hands me binary code, I can demand the source from them. That is sufficient, I think.