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.)
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.)