Hi, Currently mediatek produces chipset for phones (MT65xx for smartphones and MT8xxx for tablets). Many issues where reported for GPL compliance on mediatek phones.
Of course mediatek is currently providing full source of android, hardware and PCB plans to manufacturers (Lenovo, ZTE, Micromax, Acer, Oppo, Faea, etc...). By full source, I mean they provided a way for manufacturers to build android for their platform. Some manufacturers where not able to access kernel sources and they got only binaries from mtk (this is what I heard) and others got kernel source. Actually what's the problem : many manufacturers don't know GPL guidelines and don't comply with it. Micromax is a good example : http://www.xda-developers.com/android/oems-and-gpl-compliance/ Another example is Acer not releasing newer kernel sources when they push OTA update on phones. I asked them to do so but they didn't release it since some weeks (they announced (in private message) they were gonna fix it and release kernel source 2 days after OTA, nothing happened) Why manufacturers have some issues releasing kernel source : Mediatek has a source tree (some were leaked and are warez but still interesting to see how is organized android source tree for them) Example here : https://github.com/aquila-dev/mt6577_FULL_AOSP_SOURCE/ There is a kernel directory which is kernel source BUT this kernel directory has a dependency on mediatek directory which contains all stuff for drivers, config generation and build scripts. Of course, this mediatek directory contains proprietary code (drivers) which should not be used in kernel and proprietary stuff for others part of android (lib, etc...). How this issue can be resolved, I have an example : https://github.com/Dr-Shadow/android_kernel_mt6589 I moved mediatek directory in kernel directory and I removed all stuff which was needed for others part of android Another issue now is licensing on drivers part, some are still licensed as proprietary code with GPL header (example here : https://github.com/Dr-Shadow/android_kernel_mt6589/blob/d6e90fbe0a310750276b4d494e36417a4af07b1b/mediatek/custom/common/kernel/accelerometer/KXTJ2_1009/kxtj2_1009.c)
