On Oct 3, 2012, at 2:47 PM, LuKreme wrote: > Chris Murphy squawked out on Wednesday 03-Oct-2012@11:22:46 > >> You said GPLv3 was designed *specifically* to stop companies from including >> x tools. > > Yes, that was said many times during the discussion on GPLv3, and it was > designed to replace GPL2 for that specific reason.
That's a gross distortion of the purpose of v3, but you're welcome to provide a citation. It was not to stop the inclusion of anything let alone tools. It was designed to ensure the freedoms granted by the earlier licenses were not abrogated by either additional more restrictive licenses or by intentional hardware obfuscation. There is a difference. And that is exactly what Apple (and Microsoft) appear to want to hold as a reserve option: the ability to benefit from other people's work, not contribute back, while simultaneously restricting user freedom previously granted under the GPL. The GPLv3 very clearly bitch slaps this notion. Otherwise they, like many other companies, including Red Hat, Oracle, IBM, many other major companies, would agree to v3. That they don't is not nearly as much a reflection on the GPL changes, but that of Apple's intentions. Clearly the GPLv3 is as much of a problem for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, as it is for Microsoft's Surface, as it is for Tivo products. It was largely the Tivo incident with GPLv2 that lead to the part in v3 that says, no you can't take GPL code to make your product, and then prevent users from modifying that code by disallowing them from executing it. But see, Apple's (unsurprising) position in the industry as a hardware provider DEPENDS on restricting user freedom for what code runs on that hardware. Because really, per the license Apple makes you agree to, you don't really fully own that hardware. They assert a residual ownership by virtue of disallowing you from doing whatever you want with it. This doesn't really bother me that much - what bothers me is why they want to assert this ability for Macs, and Mac OS X. They will positively F up the platform as all of these POSIX tools continue to languish. Again, it's not just the GPL stuff that's languishing. If only it were the case that Apple were up to date with the BSD tools, and made it clear they were going to replace all of those GNU utilities with BSD equivalents. But that too does not appear to be the case. > >> It is your burden to explain this. Not mine. Not Apple's lawyers. You didn't >> merely make the claim, you claimed *SPECIFICITY* of purpose. That's not even >> something Apple's lawyers have done, or even would do. > > Apple’s lawyers have never, to my knowledge, said anything at all on the > subject. What we know is that every GPLv3 project has been removed from OS X > and Windows. Then don't make asinine statements as to the purpose of the change between 2 and 3. And it's false to say every GPLv3 project has been removed, they were never there to begin with, largely for unknown but speculative reasons. > >> Beyond punting, you then assert Bombich has no IP stake even though their >> license expressly claimed no CCC source code is to be made available, only >> rsync original and modified source code is made available upon request. On >> what basis do you assert Bombich has no IP claims? > > I never said anything even remotely like that. You said he had no patents! That is very much "remotely like that". > >> No version of the GPL requires Apple to divulge or dissolve their patents, >> unless directly incorporated into GPL code. That's something the BSD license >> does not require: You can take the code, modify it, and not publish the >> modifications, unlike the GPL. But that's the same for any version of the >> GPL. > > Obviously Apple disagrees with the effect of the GPL. Take it up with them. > Microsoft has the exact same position. Again huge cop out. Everyone knows Apple disagrees with the GPLv3, we just don't know why. Me saying "Apple has a vendetta" against it is also hardly controversial. What made this a conversation is when you decided to ascribe a specific purpose behind the GPLv3, without evidence, which was to prevent the inclusion of those tools. Which it doesn't do, obviously because there ARE commercial products that include GPLv3 code, in independent binary form, that NO ONE claims suddenly makes proprietary code subject to the GPL. Except crack pots who don't actually understand licensing. Has Apple filed a single commit against rsync? Against bash? I'm not find a single case were Apple has contributed jack squat to GNU code. Perhaps I've overlooked it, but I don't think I have. So they don't have any obvious reason for withholding newer utilities, at least on Mac OS X. If they've made no modifications to GPL software, neither copyright nor patent IP even applies. And as far as I know, these command line tools by and large don't even appear on iOS. Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ MacOSX-admin mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
