On Saturday, 20 December 2014 at 15:48:59 UTC, ketmar via
Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
On Sat, 20 Dec 2014 15:02:57 +0000
Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce
<digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
I'll tell you how. First off, all the external OSS projects
that AOSP builds on, whether the linux kernel or gpsd or gcc,
get much more usage and patches because they're being
commercially used.
can i see some statistics? i hear that argument ("it got more
patches")
almost every time, but nobody can give any proofs. i can't see
how x86
code generator got better due to android, for example.
Why would we collect stats: what difference does it make if an
OSS project is 10% commercially developed or 20%? There are
patches being sent upstream that would not be sent otherwise,
that's all that matters. As for the x86 code generator, Android
has been available on x86 for years now: it's possible there were
some patches sent back for that.
ah, didn't i told you that i don't care about arm at all?
somehow people telling me
about how android boosts something are sure that i do or should
care
about that "something". so i feel that i can do the same and
argue that
i don't care.
Android has had their linux kernel patches merged back
upstream into the mainline linux kernel.
that patches are of no use for me. why should i be excited?
Once companies saw Android taking off, they started a
non-profit called Linaro to develop the linux/ARM OSS stack,
mostly for Android but also for regular desktop distros, and
share resources with each other, employing several dozen paid
developers who only put out OSS work, which benefits everyone,
ie both OSS projects and commercial vendors:
you did understand what i want to say, did you? ;-)
I keep making this point to you, that pure OSS has never and
will never do well, that it can only succeed in a mixed
fashion.
why should i care if "OSS will do well"? i don't even know what
that
means. it is *already* well for me and suit my needs. making
another
proprietary crap "do well" changes nothing. more than that, it
makes
people forget about "F" is FOSS. so i'm not interested in
"success of
OSS projects".
You may not care about any of these patches for your own use,
because you don't use ARM or whatever, but you certainly seem to
care about FOSS doing well. Well, the only reason FOSS "suits"
your needs and has any usage today is precisely because
commercial vendors contributed greatly to its development,
whether IBM and Red Hat's contributions stemming from their
consulting/support model or the Android vendors' support paid for
by their mixed model.
You may resent the fact that it means some non-OSS software still
exists out there and is doing well, but FOSS would be dead
without it. If that were the case, there would be almost no "F,"
just try doing anything with Windows Mobile or Blackberry OS.
Your "F" may be less than a hypothetical pure FOSS world, but
that world will never exist.
> Linux, by the way, is not a real FOSS for me. not until it
> will adopt
> GPLv3, which will never happen.
What will never happen is the GPLv3 ever taking off.
yes, corporate bussiness will fight for it's right to do
tivoisation
and to hide the code till the end. that's why i'm not trying
hard to
help non-GPLv3 projects, only occasional patches here and there
if a
given issue is annoying me.
What you should worry about more is that not only has the GPLv3
not taken off, but the GPLv2 is also in retreat, with more and
more projects choosing permissive licenses these days. The viral
licensing approach of the GPLv2/v3 is increasingly dying off.
