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Re:Allwinner GPL violations by zdw on Thursday February 26, 2015 @08:32AM (#9112350)
This makes me think of Bunnie's "From Gongkai to Open Source":

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

And the general lack of compatibility between western and eastern models of imaginary property.

In this example allwinner is applying the eastern "share, modify, pass around" model, which isn't compatible with the western model of strict license adherence.

In Bunnie's case they're trying to adapt hardware/software developed with no apparent western-style license to a functional project.

Re:Allwinner GPL violations by neindanke on Thursday February 26, 2015 @10:17AM (#9112900)
> In this example allwinner is applying the eastern "share, modify, pass around" model, which isn't compatible with the western model of strict license adherence.

I don't think your comment matches reality. Eastern "share, modify, pass around"? How does that even remotely match what is discussed in the google group thread? What All Winner did was to take free and open source GPL code paid for by the community (including competitors), modify said code, make binaries, ship defective non-compliant hardware and software BSP to customers and expect everyone to be silent about it. Nope. That's not an "Eastern model" at all. No need to hide their behavior behind shadowy cultural claims. AllWinner knows what they're doing is illegal.

Re:Allwinner GPL violations by rwmj on Thursday February 26, 2015 @08:37AM (#9112381)
(a) They are not sharing the source at all. (b) Don't apologise for a huge company operating worldwide and breaking the law.
Re:Allwinner GPL violations by 4ad on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:46AM (#9112738)
I don't think he was apologising for anything, he was merely drawing a parallel.

As for not sharing the source at all, I agree, this is why I think the analogy doesn't hold, but just for reference, the Chinese companies in Bunnie's case don't officially share share anything either, and yet in practice everything is shared. It's piracy, but no one minds because they all benefit from it.

Re:Allwinner GPL violations by cliffbean on Thursday February 26, 2015 @09:25AM (#9112621)
They appear to be doing "take, modify, distribute as a compiled binary blob that no one else can modify and pass around". It's hard to reconcile that with the word "share".
Re:Allwinner GPL violations by vidarh on Thursday February 26, 2015 @10:15AM (#9112892)
"Share" does not implies they are sharing freely with everyone.

It does mean that if you crack open any product built around Allwinner (or other similar SOC's), you'll find PCB's that are all close variations of each other, and if you look at the code accompanying it, you'll find plenty of "sharing" going on even if they're not sharing the source with us.

Re:Allwinner GPL violations by rdtsc on Thursday February 26, 2015 @10:14AM (#9112882)
> In this example allwinner is applying the eastern "share, modify, pass around" model

How is that different than the gist of the license. And isn't the whole problem here that they didn't share?