Tag: FOSS

Open Source Softare has to be better

The thing about open source by Bijan Sabet (bijansabet.com)

I think we need to aim even higher with open source movement. It’s not just about an open source version of Photoshop or Windows or MS Office. It has to be bigger and more ambitious than free and open. It has to be better.

I’m a proponent and critic of man Open Source Projects. Some projects like PHP, Perl, Apache, Linux, MySQL, are very successful and provide very capable solutions to enterprises and small businesses.

Other projects like GIMP and OpenOffice are a disappointment. They are poor alternatives for the products they are meant to replace. They are the “poor mans” software. The poor deserve better.

HTC Willfully Violates the GPL in T-Mobile's New G2 Android Phone

HTC Willfully Violates the GPL in T-Mobile's New G2 Android Phone by Steve Schultze

Perhaps HTC (and T-Mobile, distributor of the phone) should review the actual contents of the GNU Public License (v2), which stipulate the legal requirements for modifying and redistributing Linux. They state that you may only distribute derivative code if you “[a]ccompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code.” Notably, there is no mention of a “grace period” or the like.

Steve Schultze, Associate Director at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, accuses HTC of violating the GPL with the G2.

One of the commenters points out that Android licensing is a bit more complicated.

Google uses Apache license for most of Android, which gives freedom to developers (carriers), including freedom to make product closed for users.

GPL (used for the kernel) has opposite goals and gives full freedom to users by limiting freedom of developers (so carriers are not allowed to make source of distributed kernel secret).