TootSweet, 1 year ago

BSD which iOS is based on was always designed to make this a possibility, but the GPL was not.

Can you elaborate on this? I would have said exactly the opposite. That the GPL’s copyleft scheme and requirement of providing source code was very intentionally meant to be a way to prevent big corporations from taking advantage of users via software. I’ll admit that vision hasn’t born the fruit (that I’d’ve said) it was intended to. But wasn’t the intention there?

Meanwhile, BSD doesn’t have any provisions intended to keep some big company from distributing compiled binaries sans source code with lots of antifeatures added.

The terms of the GPL specifically require that you be able to specifically demand all source code of any GPL’d code on your smartphone (or smart TV or toaster or garage door opener or whatever) so that you can build at least the GPL parts of the firmware for your own devices. If the courts would just back that up, you would be able to recompile all the GPL’d parts of your smartphone’s firmware and run that on your phone. That was the intention of the GPL. And the terms of the GPL have been used to bear fruit in that direction. OpenWRT wouldn’t exist if Free Software advocates didn’t threaten legal action if… who was it… Broadcom?.. didn’t comply with the GPL and release its source code.

There is still Tivoization to contend with. (Locked bootloaders, basically.) Some (like Bradley Kuhn) think the GPL’s terms are sufficient to prevent that from being a problem already.