He's an experienced Android kernel hacker, so he's no amateur. He's saying it won't compile using what they've given. He's also stated it fails under the common Android build setups he's used for other Android kernels. One of the requirements of the GPL is to provide the build/make instructions to allow other developers to build it themselves. It would appear B&N isn't quite doing this.
"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable."
No, he's saying it won't boot. Big, huge, enormous difference. He can clearly get it to compile, since he apparently produced some image that he thought (apparently wrongly) that the Nook would be willing to boot.
