I agree with @StevenR It is exactly the same game when it comes to support or not support the rights of dictators to be completely free in democracy so they can destroy it and change it to a fascists regime. Do not read it as a political statement. I write it as a philosophical one. Freedom does not refer to the freedom of the oppressor. When it does, we have well known fallacies related to self-referral.
I also do not forget how the big companies attacked Linux in 2002 (I think) taking the case of Linux ethernet support to the courts using SCO as a frontman. These guys are surely dangerous. It was Trovalds that testified in the court saying âshow me what part of the kernels code is yours and I will remove itâ. SCO representatives replied that they can not do that because to reveal this code violates non-disclosure agreements and being that stupid they lost the case. If they had won though Linux would be dead without eth support. You do not want to mess with big companies. Better safe than sorry.
Open source software is protected by various different open source licenses that the given software belongs to. Some of them are more free than others. A good business strategy for Purism might be to find a way to subscribe all of Purismâs software going forward, to a license that has terms that are unfavorable to businesses who use certain types of business models, while being favorable to businesses who use other types of business models. Defining the right license is probably just as important as developing the software itself. I decided that despite our reliance on Windows, that after Microsoft killed Netscape (I think that was in the 1990s), that Microsoft is the enemy. They told the anti-trust court that the Internet Explorer web browser was an âintegratedâ part of the operating system that couldnât be removed from the Desktop, while using their monopoly to crush Netscape. That is just one of many examples.
On one hand you want to incentivise innovation. But some companies want to financially kill anything they can to win and dominate, while other companies really innovate while playing nice with others. The most wealthy ones arenât known for sharing any source code. But they will use open software in isolated cases where they can benefit from it.
You canât distribute code âfreelyâ to everyone except with whom you disagree. The very same companies youâre complaining about do that very thing.
Wrong wording I think. Please allow me⌠you mean you canât distribute code âfreelyâ to everyone except with whom they fight your ability to create freely and distribute freely.
I disagree with this. When you want to create freely and distribute freely you must protect your ability to do so. To assume that nobody will stop you from this shows disregard for History. This is why I mentioned the ethernet example.
I donât think that you have thought through the consequences of what you are suggesting.
Letâs imagine what would happen if Purism creates a new license called the Extra Protection License (EPL) based on GPL 3.0, but it adds a new provision that say that the code canât be executed in machines that donât allow the user to unlock the bootloader and donât allow the user to have root access.
First of all, that means that Purism canât sell the Librem 5 to any organization that wants to prevent its employees from unlocking the bootloader and/or prevent root access. Those provisions would kill all corporate and government sales of the Librem 5.
Second, the EPL would not be compatible with the GPL, no EPL code could incorporate GPL code and EPL code couldnât be included in GPL code. This means that the GPL code from Eekboard in Squeekboard has to be rewritten. Iâm not sure how much outside GPL code was used in Phosh, phoc, libhandy, feedbackd, wys, haegtesse, Calls and Chatty, but I suspect that Purism would have to rewrite a lot of code just to license these programs to use the EPL. Everything else in the Librem 5 canât be relicensed because Purism didnât create it and only modified it, so it has to retain the original license.
Third, the FSF would declare the EPL to not be a free software license and the OSI would declare the EPL to not be an open source software license, because it violates the provision that the code can be used for any purpose. The Librem 5 would lose its pending RYF certification and most of the distros which currently include Phosh in their repos (Debian Testing, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Manjaro, postmarketOS, Mobian and NixOS) would drop it, because it is no longer considered FOSS.
What that means is that Purism would get no outside contributions to the programs that have the EPL license and Purism would have to maintain the code alone. That means that Purism would probably have to drop its promise that the Librem 5 will get lifetime software updates, because it will be more expensive to maintain Phosh alone without any help from the community. Phosh is already receiving code contributions from postmarketOS and Mobian developers and half of PinePhone users are now using Phosh, but using the EPL would end most outside collaboration and most external users would drop it. Libhandy, Chats (i.e. Chatty) and Calls have already been accepted as GNOME projects, but they would probably be thrown out of GNOME.
We have been down this path before and we know the consequences of putting restrictions on FOSS licenses and they rarely end well. Look at what happened to XFree86 with its XFree86 License 1.1 that wasnât compatible with the GPL 2.0. Everyone abandoned XFree86 within a year. Look at what happened when Samsung created the Flora License for its Tizen software, which was based on the Apache license, but said that the code could only be used in âTizen certified platformsâ because Samsung didnât want its competitors taking its Tizen code and using it in competing platforms. The result was that everyone refused to use Tizen. The same will happen to Phosh.
Now, letâs take your other suggestion that Purism stops releasing new versions of Phosh under the GPL 3.0+, so that its competitors can only use old versions of the code. Everyone who preordered the Librem 5 because it runs on 100% free software would cancel their orders. The Librem 5 would be a commercial flop and frankly I doubt that Purism would be able to survive as a company because its customer base cares about free software. In addition, producing software which is not free would violate Purismâs Social Purpose Corp. charter, which opens the question whether Purism could be sued by its investors (or maybe even its customers).
As I already told you, Purism has nothing to worry about in terms of competitors.
None of the big phone makers will create a phone like the Librem 5, so Purism has its market niche locked up for the foreseeable future. The only available SoCâs to create a competitor to the Librem 5 are the BMC2711 that canât boot with free software, the A64 which canât support a camera over 5MP, the RK3399 which can now boot with free software but sucks too much power for a phone, the i.MX8MQ which has poor CPU performance and is energy-inefficient, or the i.MX8MP which is energy efficient, but has an underpowered CPU and GPU. With those options, no major phone maker is going to bother producing a phone with hardware kill switches that runs on 100% free software to take market share from Purism.
Maybe if the future RK3588 allows booting with free software and if someone writes a driver for its new âNattâ GPU, then maybe Purism will have to worry about someone bothering to create a competitor to the Librem 5, but it will probably be 3 or more years into the future before there are even FOSS drivers for that. If the Librem 5 gets any competitors, it will be some Chinese company making clones of the Librem 5, and people who care about security simply arenât going to buy it because they donât know that they can trust the company. Maybe PINE64 will make a competitor based on the RK3399, but its battery life would be horrible, so Purism really has nothing to worry about in the foreseeable future.
The fact that Purism tries to upstream all its work and tries to collaborate with the community and is getting every distro to adopt Phosh and uses the GPL are the reasons why I pre-ordered the Librem 5, because I want mobile Linux to become a viable competitor to Android and iOS, and Phosh has the best chance of doing that of all the mobile Linux interfaces.
If we want to actually change the tech industry, then we want every phone maker to adopt Linux/Phosh. Even if some of them are evil like Huawei and they lock the bootloader and prevent root access, it means that millions of Huawei users are getting access to thousands of free software apps that respect their rights and it means that thousands of developers are attracted to a new mobile Linux platform, where FOSS is the standard (as apposed to Android were free as in beer is the standard). Right now Android app developers have no incentive to release their apps as FOSS, but if Linux/Phosh becomes a major platform in the future, app developers will have an incentive to release their code as FOSS, because they know that every phone maker using Linux/Phosh will add it to their repos, whereas their proprietary app will be limited to repos that accept proprietary garbage (like the Huawei Store). At any rate, having freer alternatives on the market that also run Linux/Phosh will put competitive pressure for a phone maker to also unlock its bootloader, because it can see that consumers are switching to its competitors that allow it.
As I already pointed out, the best chance for market success of the Librem 5 is widespread adoption of Phosh, because it means thousands of new apps will be created that run on the Librem 5 and it means that it Purism can rely more on the community to maintain the software, so it can offer lifetime software updates, which gives the Librem 5 a huge competitive advantage over other phones. Nobody else (except PINE64) is using the kind of chips in their phones that would allow a phone maker to promise lifetime software updates, so Purism doesnât have to worry if others use Phosh in their phones.
It was never stated verbatim, thatâs true, but in order to do what is being suggested, the mentality I mentioned has to be adopted. In your case, you actively re-worded what Iâd said and then argued that new point. So while, by my very actions, I accept arguing against an interpretation of a statement or a deduction therefrom, it is in no way acceptable to re-word what someone else says, put those words back in the speakerâs mouth, and then tell the speaker he or she is wrong.
(Not at you Gavaudan just using the bottom reply in the thread.)
So it looks like Librem will be in a niche market (nothing wrong with that), but any profit will have to come off of hardware sales because using free software to boot from will be a nightmare to make money off of. Which means the software dept rides the coattails of the the hardware dept.
Not that I havenât seen that before, the money making part of some places Iâve worked at support the losing side of the biz. It is also easier to do that when the company is private because whoever is in charge always holds on to his/her pet project. Otherwise once public shareholders are in charge theyâll drop losing sectors of any company they hold stock in like a lead brick.
I understand the selfish tendency to prevent companies from abusing open source software but Iâm not in favor of eliminating freedoms. There are reasons why GPL3/LGPL3 licenses are not very popular and the MIT license is. When a company is able to use a piece of open source software then they are inclined to use their resources to help fix issues and everyone benefits.
I think @amosbatto has it right. The focus shouldnât be on preventing other players from using phosh or even PureOS (isnât the point of FOSS to allow everyone to play?), but for Purism to maintain a hardware and/or convenience edge over competitors.
If Purism follows suit and puts in licensing or software tricks to keep players out, then they arenât much better than the competition.
A large part of the change in license use has been the rise of web programming, and people creating web pages just want to take code from anywhere and they donât have to worry about the 4 freedoms of the user, because the user is the owner of the web site.
Another part of the story has been the rise of mobile app programming. Google and Apple are openly hostile to the GPL, because they want the freedom to be able to use the code from the community and not have to give back. Google has made all sorts of modifications to MySQL, Linux and Debian and never shared back its changes. Because these two companies control the mobile world, they have a huge amount of power to discourage the use of copyleft licenses.
One of the reasons why we need mobile Linux with Phosh, Plasma Mobile and/or Ubuntu Touch to be widely adopted is because it will help promote copyleft licenses which are vital to ensuring the freedom of the user in the long term. If Purism used one of the permissive open source licenses (MIT, Apache, BSD or Eclipse) for its code, it would allow the major phone makers to privatize the code, so users would lose their digital rights and the major phone makers would not be obligated to share their improvements to Phosh with Purism.
All the arguments I made about wanting the big phone makers to adopt Phosh go out the window if Phosh doesnât have the GPL 3.0+ to protect it from being privatized.
Itâs true that Apple and Google are hostile to the GPL (Apple just doesnât use any GPL software), but you have to be careful what you wish for. Google is working on a new OS (Fuchsia) that may be used in their future platforms. Of course itâs not under a GPL license (see https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/master/LICENSE), and if that happens they will likely stop contributing improvements to the Linux kernel that other mobile projects benefit from. Given their market share, they will drag along chipset vendors etc.
Blockquote On the other hand, if Purism behaves exactly like others - aggresively protecting intellectual property by closing the source, locking hardware and so on - what would it have better to offer than them?
Did the original poster suggest locking the hardware, or where did you get that from?
This is exactly the point I was trying to make above. Companies use open source software and they contribute to those projects to the benefit of everyone.
The very first version(s) had a different license. Look here:
When Linux was first released, Linus had placed a more restrictive license than the GNU Projectâs GNU General Public License (GPL) and didnât allow for commercial activity to utilize Linux code in their proprietary software. However, Linus began to realize that a kernel wasnât very useful to people on its own. In order to grow his operating system, Linus decided to re-license Linux under the GNU GPLv2 with the 0.12 release.
Wow ! I have learned a lot from this thread. I didnât realize previously, many of the unintended consequences involved, and itâs not so black and white. It looks like you just have to look out for yourself and your own business interests and if you get screwed by one of the larger companies, so be it. Apparently, we canât just kick the big companies out of our game, no matter how hostile and selfish they are.