[Battlemesh] FCC fw lockdown vs. GPLv3?

Linus Lüssing linus.luessing at c0d3.blue
Tue Sep 29 02:26:16 UTC 2015


On Sun, Sep 27, 2015 at 05:28:36PM +0200, Henning Rogge wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 27, 2015 at 5:14 PM, Benjamin Henrion <zoobab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 27, 2015 at 5:05 PM, Henning Rogge <hrogge at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 10:10 PM, Mitar <mitar at tnode.com> wrote:
> >>> Hi!
> >>>
> >>> Is there other software used by manufacturers beside kernel which could
> >>> get easier to relicense?
> >>
> >> No...
> >>
> >> the whole GPLv3 disaster already pushed a lot of manufacturers away
> >> from GPL solutions to software which is BSD licensed... you see the
> >> effect in Android.
> >
> > Most of the codebase in Android has been rewritten towards BSD-style
> > software, except the Linux kernel, because probably it is too big to
> > rewrite.
> 
> Exactly...
> 
> relicencing to GPLv3 would be a good way to make the industry drop it
> completely.

Being more permissive on our side won't make the industry do the same.
We've seen that with BSD and are now starting to see this again for
GPLv2 with signed binaries. This "the industry will ignore us if
we use GPL, Linux won't survive" argument has been there in the 90ies
already. There it seems to me that the less permissive code was
actually better off on the long run.

Big companies simply think economically. They might keep you on the
hook for the short term so that you throw your code at them but
will drop you once they acquired enough own developers and own code
on their side...

If companies affiliated with Android actually want to lock their
devices then why would I want to write code for that plattform for
free? Screw Android - if they don't want us then this relationship
is doomed anyways.

With manufacturers (still - they seem to become less) focusing on
hardware and young startups we actually have a chance to not drown
completely on the long run if we were using GPLv3. The bigger the
GPLv3 code basis we can build up now is, the more hardware
manufacturers we can cooparate with in the future, while reducing
the risk of being stabbed in the back later.

Cheers, Linus


PS: Have never really cared about whether to use GPLv2 or GPLv3 so
far. But the news about the TP-Link TL-WR841N made things too real
and outrageous for me. Sorry about getting so emotional here :(.


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