Re:We Love GPLv3, but Are Switching License to Apache 2.0
by na85 on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @01:19PM
(#25349273)
>hardware doesn't matter
>perhaps hardware created by a competitor, or using open hardware
I think as the Purism folks are demonstrating with the Librem phone, we live in a world where the barrier to entry to compete in hardware markets is enormous. The "hardware doesn't matter" argument only holds where the hardware to run software is sufficiently commoditized or where it's easy to develop open-source alternatives.
For phones and select other segments of the hardware sector this simply isn't the case: consider the yawning chasm that separates the Librem phone from the iPhone.
>perhaps hardware created by a competitor, or using open hardware
I think as the Purism folks are demonstrating with the Librem phone, we live in a world where the barrier to entry to compete in hardware markets is enormous. The "hardware doesn't matter" argument only holds where the hardware to run software is sufficiently commoditized or where it's easy to develop open-source alternatives.
For phones and select other segments of the hardware sector this simply isn't the case: consider the yawning chasm that separates the Librem phone from the iPhone.