Let's be clear. The code *has* been contributed to the Linux Kernel. The code has been rejected. It is always OK for people to have out of tree patches in their products. Sony Televisions, Amazon Kindles, and other Linux using products all of out-of-tree patches. Most of the time, the manufacturers satisfy the terms of the GPL by simply making the sources available in a tarball on an FTP server somewhere.
Google has already gone above and beyond this by submitting the patches to LKML, revising the patches multiple times, and spending literally hundreds of man hours trying to get the Linux Kernel Developers to accept their patches. If after spending all of this time, the answer is still Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!!!, the members of the Android team who have spent a lot of time trying to convince LKML developers that this is a good thing have still made headway, for them to take a step back so they can do other silly things, like say shipping product, is completely understandable.
-- Ted
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