I should just be able to have root on the TV that I bought and paid for and own.

Always good to see progress towards people getting to own their own hardware.

MIT for all original code. The kernel excerpt (kernel/mem.c) retains its GPL-2.0 license and copyright notices.

One small tweak needed here.

GPL 2.0? Has this bit:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

"under the terms of [this License]."

It is viral. Copying the code, and distributing it, as done here, means that GPL 2.0 is meant to apply to everything. The only carveout, is if your code didn't depend on the kernel excerpt at all. But... It does.

If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission.

I have a TCL Android TV, and just adb access, not root, allowed me to change the default launcher, which makes the home screen really quite beautiful - mostly a pretty background and just the apps I want; and no fucking ads.

I don't feel the need for root, but I also don't want to brick our main TV.

Once it becomes the secondary, though, and once the lineageOS equivalents for TVs start coming out, I'll be tinkering.

I've been hearing that AI is a security armageddon, it's about time we realized that it's the means for a rebirth of the ancient art of rooting sleazy devices.

I bet AI could help us to keep the updates rooted, too. To lock out the manufacturers and to update some IoT garbage to work locally. And to port some drivers.

When I was a kid, hacking meant breaking into others' systems, I'd not believe if you told me that one day we'd use security vulnerabilities to control products we own and paid for..

If it really is still on "Android 11 / Linux 4.4" as per the document, there's probably tons of root exploits