On Feb 29, 2012, at 6:33 PM, LuKreme wrote: > > On 29 Feb 2012, at 17:25 , Chris Murphy wrote: >> >> Yeah I'm aware of that, and the reasons they ditched SAMBA. I think some >> wanker at Apple severely underestimated the clusterf|ck complexity of >> SMB/CIFS and SAMBA when they said, OK just write our own. > > That’s not at all what happened. Apple was forced to abandon SAMBA because > they switched to GPLv3, which is specifically designed to prevent using > software in any commercial product. The choice was stay with the ancient > SAMBA version, or write something new. > > GPLv3 is a poison pill, intentionally.
You appear to be misinformed. My previous mention of GlusterFS just so happens to be licensed under the GPLv3 by Red Hat. Red Hat sells a downstream version, Red Hat Storage Software Appliance, a commercial product. Much software being sold commercially is licensed under the GPLv3. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and a number of commercialized linux distros, include SAMBA licensed under the GPLv3. Note also that Apple also stopped using and contributing to GCC when it switched to the GPLv3, and yet we have numerous commercialized products compiled using GPLv3 GCC. So it seems to me what you propose cannot be true. Apple was not forced to abandon SAMBA, it was their choice. The GPLv3 is not specifically or implicitly designed to prevent use of licensed code in commercial products. Why might they have chosen to avoid GPLv3 software? One significant change in GPLv3 is patent provisions. As a member of the patent troll collective, encouraging the interpretation and enforcement of some of the worst concepts and problems with software IP, it would not surprise me if this is a reason for Apple's GPLv3 reluctance. Maybe I'm ignorant, but despite their trolling, I'm still not totally convinced they may actually agree with the current craptastic and long term untenable patent paradigm we are in, and instead are trying to prove in an incredibly damaging and expensive way, just how hideous it is. GPLv3 also prohibits code from enforcing the DMCA. Now if you consider Apple putting SAMBA into Apple TV, for example, this might very well present a problem for them, if they can't incorporate code to enforce DMCA. Maybe they don't need to enforce it in the network stream. Maybe they do. I don't know. I'm not an expert in that area. But I think it's rather unsurprising or original to observe Apple becoming more and more consumer product focused, and less computer/computing focused, and that interoperability is not what's important to them unless it grows their market. If anything, it's to be avoided. And it also means playing nice with the big daddy copyright holders who do back DMCA. It's also totally consistent with Apple's philosophy that you don't actually own the hardware you bought, not fully. They assert residual rights to the combined software and hardware product, and that you are merely buying an experience. User modification is not compatible with this philosophy. And we know full well they're opposed to any meaningful user modification of in particular iOS devices. And GPLv3 does more to clearly allow user modification of software, and makes it difficult for companies to use hardware thwarts to in effect make software modification difficult or impossible. So rather that this being about prevention of GPLv3 code in commercialized products, it's drawing a clearer line that proprietary is really not that compatible with open source. So that's probably why you see the proprietary dependent companies shying away from GPLv3. They don't want to share, what they don't want to share. Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ MacOSX-admin mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
