Re:We Love GPLv3, but Are Switching License to Apache 2.0
by AnthonyMouse on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @01:24PM
(#25349324)
The way free software is supposed to work is that you buy a device, you want to improve it, so you do. And then you share your improvements with everybody else.
If you buy a TiVo and then can't modify it, you don't. So there is nothing to share with everybody else. The entire system is destroyed. It's an existential threat.
> And if this is something that a sufficiently large segment of the users actually care about, then they will vote with their feet, and purchase hardware where they can update their own code.
But that's the problem. Most of the users aren't (currently) developers, but if the dominant hardware isn't open to developers then there are fewer developers, and the users then can't receive their improvements.
It's not obvious that there are always enough developers to justify a production run of open hardware separate from the hardware everybody else uses, even though everyone benefits from its existence. So we need the dominant hardware to be open.
> Maybe this will even result in a software ecosystem where the company selling an open product will be able to take those improvements from the dedicated power users to improve future releases of their product.
Except that if this becomes popular and the software is open source but can be locked down, proprietary hardware vendors will ship the improvements on locked down hardware. Then anyone who doesn't make modifications themselves, or doesn't anticipate making them even though they might have, buys the locked down hardware and the open hardware has no competitive advantage in the market among non-developers. Even though its existence is a prerequisite to continued community software improvements that everybody wants.
If you buy a TiVo and then can't modify it, you don't. So there is nothing to share with everybody else. The entire system is destroyed. It's an existential threat.
> And if this is something that a sufficiently large segment of the users actually care about, then they will vote with their feet, and purchase hardware where they can update their own code.
But that's the problem. Most of the users aren't (currently) developers, but if the dominant hardware isn't open to developers then there are fewer developers, and the users then can't receive their improvements.
It's not obvious that there are always enough developers to justify a production run of open hardware separate from the hardware everybody else uses, even though everyone benefits from its existence. So we need the dominant hardware to be open.
> Maybe this will even result in a software ecosystem where the company selling an open product will be able to take those improvements from the dedicated power users to improve future releases of their product.
Except that if this becomes popular and the software is open source but can be locked down, proprietary hardware vendors will ship the improvements on locked down hardware. Then anyone who doesn't make modifications themselves, or doesn't anticipate making them even though they might have, buys the locked down hardware and the open hardware has no competitive advantage in the market among non-developers. Even though its existence is a prerequisite to continued community software improvements that everybody wants.