Comment by amelius
6 days ago
It could be, if all FOSS developers slapped a new license on their projects saying "not for Android/iOS".
6 days ago
It could be, if all FOSS developers slapped a new license on their projects saying "not for Android/iOS".
This would make it no longer free software as per the FSF's definition. We could turn many more things into GPLv3, which would prevent this, however. Then, Android and iOS can use them if and only if they go under GPLv3 too, which includes provisions against bootloader locking.
GPLv2 requires allowing reinstallation of modified versions too:
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
Actually, how does that work? In my non-lawyer understanding, GPLv3 already says the end user must be allowed to actually run the code, to the point where the iOS app store can't have GPLv3 apps in it. So... does this change mean that GPLv3 apps can't legally be shipped for Android?
You can sideload apps onto your Android device using a developer setup, which is the setup that anyone building free software would use.
I think we need something in between. Permissive for individuals and small companies, but restrictive for mega corporations who impose their will on the populace.
The closest that I know of to this is GPLv3 with sold proprietary licenses. Then, when selling proprietary licenses, you can adjust the price to what you think that the customer can afford. There's debate on how ethical such adjustment is, and many companies (recently Slack and often Cloudflare) are criticized for it.
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sounds like corporations would no longer have a need to open source anything
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The bigger factor is whether or not Linux phones that are reasonably nice to use (everything works, isn’t flaky, battery life is decent-ish) come to market or not. Developers aren’t going to be interested in a platform that for practical purposes is at best a curiosity or something to tinker with, no matter how many idealist checkboxes they tick.
Good North America market availability sure would help too. There’s been stuff like Sailfish that seemed interesting in the past but didn’t have easily purchasable devices available in the US, completely precluding development for the platform for a significant number of devs.
Usage restrictions are not allowed to be considered an OSI-approved Open-Source license. Plenty of people think that the OSI "Open Source Definition" is the only valid definition of "open source", and will thus reject calling such licenses "open source".