Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won

Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by riquito on Monday November 11, 2013 @09:55AM (#6711862)

> Given that maps are not a core concern for Apple, I've always been surprised they've not just thrown money at improving open street maps

I'm surprised that you're surprised, It's not really typical for Apple to improve an open source solution instead of build and lock their own. Or am I unaware of Apple contributions here and there?

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by icebraining on Monday November 11, 2013 @09:57AM (#6711874)

CUPS, Webkit, LLVM/Clang?

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by pornel on Monday November 11, 2013 @10:32AM (#6712047)

Isn't that a list of exceptions?

Apple is very sensitive about licenses, e.g. they've stopped updating OS X's GNU tools 6 years ago to avoid GPL v3.

OSM's ODBL is share-alike, so Apple probably didn't like having risk of share-alike apply to their proprietary data.

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by icebraining on Monday November 11, 2013 @10:59AM (#6712186)

Isn't that a list of exceptions?

They are exceptions in the sense that most of their software is proprietary, but they're still important core components. They also distribute a couple hundred open source packages with OS X: http://www.apple.com/opensource/

Apple is very sensitive about licenses, e.g. they've stopped updating OS X's GNU tools 6 years ago to avoid GPL v3.

I only know what's reported here on HN, but they mostly seem sensitive about copyleft, not open source in general.

OSM's ODBL is share-alike, so Apple probably didn't like having risk of share-alike apply to their proprietary data.

But they do use OSM data: https://twitter.com/openstreetmap/statuses/19810151220183449...

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by Doctor_Fegg on Monday November 11, 2013 @12:13PM (#6712631)

Apple's use of OSM data dates from the days when the project was using the CC-BY-SA licence, whose share-alike is basically unenforceable for factual data. ODbL is more enforceable and Apple aren't using any ODbLed data, nor (as someone fairly closely connected with OSM) do I expect them to any time soon.

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by darkarmani on Monday November 11, 2013 @12:01PM (#6712564)

> Apple is very sensitive about licenses, e.g. they've stopped updating OS X's GNU tools 6 years ago to avoid GPL v3.

As they should be. The fact that they stopped updating because of GPL doesn't mean they don't support open source. Lot's of people will support MIT and BSD licenses, but not GPL3.

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by belorn on Tuesday November 12, 2013 @07:22AM (#6717325)

The two only reasons why a company would want to provide source code under MIT/BSD, but not under GPLv3 would be because of the patent grant, or because Apple want to partially maintain proprietary parts for themselves.

I.e either Apple want to sue people for using software technology which Apple themselves would distribute freely under an MIT/BSD license.

Or they do not want support open source projects with all the code related to those projects. I think this is the more likely culprit, which is in line with pornel comments that Apple probably didn't like having risk of share-alike apply to their proprietary data.

(Of course, if you are talking about distributing MIT/BSD software binaries vs GPLv3, all the other parts of GPLv3 need to be considered. This post only address the willingness to support open source projects with source code.)

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by rsynnott on Monday November 11, 2013 @12:14PM (#6712640)

Which companies, precisely, have embraced GPLv3 with open arms? Aside from those who do GPL/commercial dual licensing (where GPLv3 makes the commercial product comparatively more attractive due to the anti-tivoisation and patent clauses), I can't think of any.

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by belorn on Tuesday November 12, 2013 @05:07AM (#6716855)

IBM, HP, and Google all ships products with GPLv3.

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Re:Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won by caycep on Monday November 11, 2013 @01:53PM (#6713200)

AFAIK, GPL v3 is a poor example as it is not very commercial-friendly. Most companies that contribute to open source seem to favor the MIT and BSD licenses instead.

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