iPhone restricts users, GPLv3 frees them

[Chad Leigh -- ObjectWerks Inc]

On Jul 1, 2007, at 10:52 PM, Anthony Morton wrote:

>
>> 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.

No it hasn't.  Patricks original stock market fashion program is  
still open.

>
> 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.

So?

> 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.

The market has all sorts of "proprietary" standards that cause  
headaches.  Things eventually clear up.

>
> 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.

There are plenty of examples of forks of open source software  
diverging along two different paths.

And in the "remain open source throughout" path you lose all the  
creative genius of people building on the software to do amazing  
things.  People like Apple.  You get stuck with a Linux desktop  
instead of OS X.

>
> 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.

Which is an anti free market economy outlook.  It is planned economy  
and all the attendant problems.

Chad