Re:Mozilla WebThings
by icebraining on Friday April 19, 2019 @02:08AM
(#19697431)
Frankly, that doesn't mean much; the MPL allows one to freely mix open and proprietary files on the same project. Sure, they can't literally close Mozilla's code, but they can still make their forked project mostly proprietary.
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In other words, Android is "open source" too. But I still don't have control over my phone.
Re:Mozilla WebThings
by littlestymaar on Friday April 19, 2019 @06:11AM
(#19698281)
You can install a plain AOSP and have (almost[1]) full control over your phone though.
[1] almost, because every smartphone needs proprietary drivers to run …
> every smartphone needs proprietary drivers
Free phones are slowly popping up https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
Re:Mozilla WebThings
by littlestymaar on Friday April 19, 2019 @09:09AM
(#19699265)
The librem looks nice but if I'm not misunderstanding, it's still pretty much vaporware at this point. I sincerely hope it reaches its goals though.
No, you can't. Not when more and more phones ship with locked bootloaders and a smaller and smaller percentage of phones actually work well with some AOSP spin and none of the apps you use work without an unrooted, closed-source-Google-API-infested phone.
Next version of AOSP will have a smaller userspace.
It means exactly what the license allows. Mostly proprietary seems a lot better than totally proprietary in the absence of open source alternatives.
It’s bizarre to me when people complain about things like “tivoization” or “open core”. These are by design or they are solved problems if the creators care for the trade offs.
That is the Mozilla community’s issue. They chose the licensing. They have revised the strategy a number of times. I remember when code was tri-licensed.
Or it’s also a consumers issue. Money talks.