Quote Originally Posted by artik
As you see for very practical reasons, its much easier to distribute GPL software.
Unfortunately even GPL isn't allways safe.

Linux Kernel is GPL software, but at least some versions seems to include pieces which are illegal to distribute.
One problem which has been discussed recently in debian-vote is about GPLed sourceless firmwares included in Linux Kernel.

According to GPL you clearly can't distribute these firmwares because you don't have source-code for them. Unfortunately there are people who think that this isn't illegal, and so it can happen that Debian Etch will include such firmwares. (I don't know what the situation is with Knoppix.)

More information about this can be found from http://doolittle.icarus.com/~larry/f...ry/2.6.17.html