On Oct 3, 2012, at 10:41 PM, Chris Murphy wrote: > > On Oct 3, 2012, at 4:10 PM, objectwerks inc wrote: > >> >> On Oct 3, 2012, at 3:53 PM, Chris Murphy wrote: >> >>> 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. >>> >> >> That is really disingenuous. Apple gives back a ton to the open source >> community. Besides the whole webkit thing, FreeBSD has a bunch of code that >> Apple put back as do lots of other projects. This is a GPL issue, not >> Apple's "ability to benefit from other people's work, [and] not contribute >> back". > > You have examples of Apple contributing back to the GPL licensed code they've > benefited from?
Your comment was not limited to the GPL. Especially since Apple is not using GPLv3 stuff anyway and are not TAKING anything new wrt GPL so it wouldn't apply to them if only being about GPL. Your comment was about " the ability to benefit from other people's work, not contribute back". The end comment about GPL was an addition to, not a restriction on your earlier comment. > Or you only have examples of contributions under licenses that don't require > that they share anything, letting them pick and choose which modifications > they share? Apple puts a ton of stuff back into open source projects. They just avoid the GPL since it is not really about freedom, but control, and Apple would like to retain control of their work. > > I'm well aware that they contribute some things to open source, under > licenses that let them sleep at night. It is entirely within their right to > make vertical contributions to particular open source projects, and yet reap > broad benefit from open source projects. Which is how EVERYONE does it. Most people USE a lot more open source stuff than they contribute back to even if they are prolific committers. That is usually constrained to a limited number of projects. > How many tons has the open source community provided that Apple has benefited > from? The world has benefitted more from Apple's contributions to open source than probably ANYONE else's if you look at pure numbers. Based on the numbers for Webkit use alone, that dwarfs Linux use (or any other project -- Linux is probably the most widespread with a few desktops, relatively large number of servers, and Android). Every Android phone using Linux also has Webkit on it, so that cancels out. Then all the Chrome and other use of webkit more than cancels out the limited number of Linux desktops and the server cadre out there. (And for Apple supported open source spread you technically you can add OS X use in as well since it is based on the open source Darwin project but I won't include that since you would just argue about it, fruitlessly btw) The GPL is not about freedom. It is about control. For control freaks like Stallman and his FSF buddies. > > > Chris Murphy > _______________________________________________ > MacOSX-admin mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin _______________________________________________ MacOSX-admin mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
