|
| Authored by: PJ on Tuesday, May 01 2012 @ 08:14 AM EDT |
Several things. First, Linux is GPLv2 only.
Second, GPLv3 prohibits any new Novell-type
agreements, so MS can't do that again.
Third, my point was that when the Open Source
folks decided to downplay the F in FOSS
and try to get corporations to adopt Open
Source software, they thought they were
doing a great thing when IBM and others
did.
But now some time has elapsed, and while IBM
was a good example, more or less, others have
been more rapacious. The love affair between
corporations and the Apache License is a clear
sign, to me, that they just want to take and
give back nothing, so they can continue to
lock in customers with their proprietary add ons,
like Apple, only worse.
So now, with the advantage of hindsight, what
can we conclude? Was it a good idea to drop the
F in FOSS and focus only on the O?
I say no. It took a while to play out, but
in the end it got us nowhere that matters. With
patents, open source means no protection at all,
while meanwhile these large corporate players
got the community to code for them for free.
That's what they think the F stands for, free
labor. It doesn't. It stands for freedom, 4
of them for users, and freedom for the code.
So by being "nice", and not thinking ahead
as clearly as Stallman did, bad things are
happening, and you can't even say the corporate
players are doing anything "wrong", in that
they were told they could do it by the
licenses.
So, I'm glad that the latest studies show that
while businesses are opting for the Apache
License, the community continues to choose the
GPL overwhelmingly.
THe Oracle API junk, to me, is with the express
goal of making it harder or impossible for
FOSS to be developed and to shut down what
already exists (or alternatively to make a bundle
by taxing it every which way). That's what SCO
wanted too. So the problem turns out to be
much bigger than SCO. It's proprietary trying
to kill the competition or strip mine it.
Barnes & Noble used Android because it was free.
They leveraged that to make a deal with Microsoft
for millions, which the execs will get rewarded
for personally, I would guess, but to me it's
like a condemned man's fabulous last meal. It
doesn't last or solve his real problem.
But that's their problem. The community's problem
is to try, now that we see what's happening,to
come up with a solution so FOSS can survive.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
