> But I'm sick of the false idea of "you're just subsidizing big business" being promulgated. That isn't true.
All the permissively licensed code that came with my mac disagrees. This is even more true of iphone software: you can technically look at some of the code that comes with it, but you can't modify it.
> you can technically look at some of the code that comes with it, but you can't modify it.
This is equally true of the GPLv2. The attempt to close this loophole - Tivoisation as Stallman called it - only won him a lot of scorn from Linux land and a refusal to adopt the GPLv3!
Yeah, the idea here seems to be, iPhones would be open hackable devices if only more people would use copyleft licences, but in reality Apple would still lockdown their gadgets and just write the software themself if no permissive licence is avaiable.
> in reality Apple would still lockdown their gadgets and just write the software themself if no permissive licence [were] available
This is a common opinion, but seems uninformed to me. The free code helped them get started. They are Goliath now, but the benefitted from not having to do the R&D earlier.
I don’t know if they could have done the R&D. I definitely imagine it would not have been as good as the product they got from using BSD.
Anyway, I believe this kind of thinking is a shallow dismissal of the value that companies receive from starting from Libre software.
"Anyway, I believe this kind of thinking is a shallow dismissal of the value that companies receive from starting from Libre software."
It is a dismissal of the idea, that using a different licence will magically transform the whole industry.
If the code is open, the profit orientated companies don't need to do R&D from scratch. They just take the copyleft source code and make it closed, either by simply not publishing it, or if they care about whistleblowers by rewriting it. Which is easy if you have sources of something working. Even more so today with LLMs.
That is why I am a fan of permissive licences. It is a working compromise for companies who would never consider copyleft code in critical parts of their product.
Compromise for me is, the concept of open source gets more widewspread. There is no must in giving back.
And if you try to force it with copyleft .. you won't get far. I believe history is on my side here.
Android is based on copyleft code and it is far from an open hackable system. On some devices it possible to install an own build but it requires skills and patience so not an option even for most IT professionals. But for most devices there are locked loaders and closed drivers/firmware. I don’t see a copyleft license helping if a business is not willing to participate in open-source.
All the permissively licensed code that came with my mac disagrees. This is even more true of iphone software: you can technically look at some of the code that comes with it, but you can't modify it.