iPhone restricts users, GPLv3 frees them

[Anthony Morton]

> 2) The nifty toolbar *is* worth $100 bucks, so everybody buys the 
> Banana Republic version.  Well, fine.  If the toolbar was worth that 
> much, then that's what people are paying for.  If I don't like it, I 
> guess I'd better add my own toolbar, and then we revert to case 1.

Though it's not entirely 'fine' - there's a side effect whereby open 
source software has suddenly become closed source software.

Yes, the original code is still available for free, but in the real 
world it's never as simple as an open-source version versus a 
closed-source version that has one extra feature tacked on.  What will 
happen is the closed-source version will continue to evolve 
independently of the open-source version until it's barely recognisable 
as a variant of the latter.  You can also get the situation where two 
or more incompatible proprietary software standards develop based on 
the same original freely-available source, often creating headaches for 
the users.

Had the original code been licensed differently, the software would 
remain open-source throughout, and there's a greater likelihood of it 
evolving along a single path while at all stages remaining free for 
others to develop further.

That would appear to be the motivation for the GPL: to ensure that an 
open-source software project remains an open-source project, and 
doesn't lose market share to possibly incompatible closed-source 
variants just because of one nifty new feature that was used as a 
Trojan horse to convince people to abandon the open-source version.

Tony M.