I'm not sure why this was voted down; here's the relevant text:
NOTE! This copyright does not cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does not fall under the heading of "derived work".
I voted it down because it was so ming-bogglingly stupid that I yelled and spun around in my chair! I briefly considered unsubscribing from your blog before I calmed down.
The note in COPYING is just to allay FUD, it's not actually necessary and certainly isn't a GPL exception.
For starters, nearly all programs (by volume) making syscalls don't use any specific to Linux -- there's no way it's derivative if it runs fine on another kernel. Furthermore, responding to syscalls is what Linux is FOR in 'normal use' -- not even the FSF is jackass enough to claim that bash scripts are derivative works, even if they are riddled with bash-isms.
