Who/What is responsible for very low installations of Linux desktops?

[Nate Graham]

Hello Amit,

This may not be the best place for the discussion. You've reached the 
KDE Development mailing list, which has no sway over the Linux kernel or 
its licensing.

I'm also unsure that your premise is likely to be true; device 
manufacturers that don't want to distribute the source code of their 
drivers generally embed the proprietary parts in the on-device firmware, 
and provide only a small open-source interface that the kernel can talk to.

But that's a discussion to be had elsewhere.

Nate



On 5/17/26 7:28 AM, Amit wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> GPLv2 license of Linux kernel is responsible for very low
> installations of Linux desktops (only 4% to 6% of the global desktop
> computer market).
> 
> People in general don’t want to use Linux desktops because it is
> difficult to find device drivers for a majority of devices.
> 
> The device manufacturers don’t want to develop the drivers for Linux
> because then they will have to release the source code (because of
> GPLv2), and they don’t want to release the source code because the
> competitors can then read the source code and figure out their
> hardware innovation/invention.
> 
> So, companies don’t develop device drivers for Linux because they
> don’t want to release the source code, and this results in not many
> people using Linux desktops.
> 
> Amit