The kernel developers don't really care about the GPL either, sorry to say. They don't go after violators, nor does the Linux Foundation, it seems. Linus himself has said that going after violators is in bad taste and poisons the well, vs just trying to be buddy-buddy and get them involved. Because obviously they'll just move away from Linux or whatever if you're a dick to them (except in the case where Linux effectively subsidizes their existence, making their product even possible). So, don't be a dick, and they'll come to you when you buy them a beer or whatever.
Which is clearly the reason why there aren't actually 14,000 different Android kernels and 2,000,000 different kernels for your $50 router running around. Because they all get involved, of course, from being so buddy buddy.
Naturally, this attitude costs Linux developers nothing at all for the most part, and keeps their lives easy (no legal shit, no hard times) -- while absolutely hurting users who can't get the source to their devices, and completely eviscerating the social/political capital of a license like the GPL, and all the people who use it.
When literally the biggest GPL success story can't get off their ass and prosecute license violators, who actually will care when you try to use it as a tool, one which actually has teeth to back it up? Why use a license if its major champion treats it like a complete piece of trash, a worthless bargaining chip, a chip which is only possible because of an effectively unique, lighning-in-a-bottle position?
If the kernel developers just don't give a shit about proprietary vendor kernel forks (I really, really don't think they really do, at least nobody with actual meaningful, large scale influence cares at all), and want to force involvement by "getting them in the cycle" and being buddy-buddy and just not-giving-a-fuck about people outside the source tree, making sure constant churn is how people have to keep up -- they should just use the BSD license.
It seems to have worked out pretty OK for LLVM, and this is basically their operating philosophy, too. At least then, maybe another project can arise that actually takes its own license terms halfway seriously...
