If I sell a computer with Linux on it, and I bundle on my own application that's compiled to run on Linux, am I required to make the source code for that application available?
In this case, if they just have an unmodified copy of Linux to provide the run-time environment for their nav system or whatever, and the nav system itself is an application on top of it, I don't know if it follows that they need to release the source for their nav system.
If it's "mere aggregation" then you're not required to provide the source for that application. You would still be required to provide the source for the particular version of Linux you distributed though.
It's funny there's so much debate over the correct answer to this. This is literally Android, Kindle (old e-ink non-Android ones), Chromebook etc. In fact I can't think of a single commercial Linux product that doesn't use this model.
"If I sell a computer with Linux on it, and I bundle on my own application that's compiled to run on Linux, am I required to make the source code for that application available?"
Are you using GPL code in your application? If so, then yes.
If it's an application, no, but if it's a kernel module (e.g. drivers to talk to their devices), then yes. They still have to offer a copy of the kernel source, even if they haven't modified it.
>If it's an application, no, but if it's a kernel module (e.g. drivers to talk to their devices), then yes.
There is debate about this, but there are certainly cases of compliant non-GPL modules. It doesn't strictly follow. (Consider Ndiswrapper, for example.)
> They still have to offer a copy of the kernel source, even if they haven't modified it.
I don't really think the license implies technical minutae like this. The source must simply be made available "on a medium customarily used for software interchange". Whether you point to a tag on kernel.org or host it own your own web servers (both cases including the Kconfig) is irrelevant.
There is debate about this, but there are certainly cases of compliant non-GPL modules. It doesn't strictly follow. (Consider Ndiswrapper, for example.)
Ndiswrapper is GPL-licensed. The resulting modules are probably not, but they are usually not distributed anyway.
I don't really think the license implies technical minutae like this. The source must simply be made available "on a medium customarily used for software interchange". Whether you point to a tag on kernel.org or host it own your own web servers (both cases including the Kconfig) is irrelevant.
In this case, if they just have an unmodified copy of Linux to provide the run-time environment for their nav system or whatever, and the nav system itself is an application on top of it, I don't know if it follows that they need to release the source for their nav system.