google open phone platform

Tue Nov 6 13:42:24 CET 2007

On Tue, 6 Nov 2007 12:29:32 +0100 Attila Csipa <plists at prometheus.org.yu>
babbled:
> On Monday 05 November 2007 22:16:03 Jeffrey Thomas wrote:
> > >Why did you pick the Apache v2 open source license?
> >
> > Correct, its a developer-friendly licenses, as they put it. I prefer the
> > GPL because its a USER-friendly license.
>> Let's not forget the group of users who were pretty vocal of the advantages
> of OpenMoko NOT being completely GPL (i.e. having commercial apps on/linking
> to it or it's toolkit). These folks said that they prefer OpenMoko to Qtopia 
> BECAUSE it did not require them to put their own software under the GPL. 
> These will be the users who want skin-deep freedom (=freedom for me, not 
> freedom all users), and that are likely to jump ship. The tough question is 
> how big this group actually is in the OpenMoko camp. OTOH, OpenMoko might 
> actually benefit from this, as this also means more OSS exposure to the 
> general public (even if somewhat skewed by large companies). There are two 
> reasons a company goes the apache/BSD license way - they don't want to give 
> back anything to the OSS community OR they do not want to be bothered with 
> license issues, Google being in the latter group in my impression.

the problem is - if we DIDNT have full freedom (i disagree - license like GPL
forcing you to GPL your app because it uses a public published API are not
free. they are just someone else's idea of freedom. mine is that i can license
my app freely as i please and make decisions on GPL vs BSD or whatever as fits
me), then ALL these users would go for something like OHA. you alienated a set
of users and developers by being so hard-line. :(
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-- 
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster at openmoko.org>