@dlang I was not, at least in this specific case, concerned with any userspace programs (although most of those used in Technicolor devices, such as Samba, are GPL'd anyway).
However, by "separate" I meant userspace programs, so I agree with you. Sorry if I was not clear enough, English is not my first language.
About the kernel module licensing, while Linus in fact said that, he also later said:
"Essentially, the kernel module interface is a "library" interface to the kernel, and kernel modules are considered to be under the GNU Library license. In fact, due to the way kernel modules work, you automatically do it according to the LGPL, so this isn't explicitly stated anywhere, but that's the way you should think about this.
Another way to look at this — using the legal rather than the moral viewpoint — is to just see module loading as "use" of the kernel, rather than as linking against it."
While I, too, think that's a questionable interpretation of the GPL, I am just a computer science student and I do not want to argue in any way that I know better than Linus.
Furthermore, if what you said was true, Broadcom, Ralink and others would have been in violation of the GPL for years, since their xDSL driver (that is a loadable kernel module) used in all modems that use their chipsets, is proprietary. Such driver was clearly written with Linux in mind and nobody seems to have questioned these companies about it.
However, even assuming that kernel modules code can be proprietary, that would still be irrelevant to my case, since Technicolor stated that the kernel modules I am looking for (for example, kmod-ripdrv) are under GPLv2