GNU's healthy now, and will soon be moreso [LWN.net]

GNU's healthy now, and will soon be moreso

Posted Oct 3, 2013 11:24 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: GNU's healthy now, and will soon be moreso by madhatter
Parent article: 30 years of GNU

I'm sorry, but I think it's disingenuous to suggest that GPLv3 software can't run on Android phones.

Who said anything about random pieces of software? Of course you can do that! But if you are creating software which is supposed to be used by OS (samba or libstdc++) and it's distributed under GPLv3 then no, you can not do that. Either it's distributed separately (libstdc++) or it can not be used at all (samba).

It might be fair to say that you haven't chosen a handset that makes this choice easy, or that you haven't chosen to use your handset in a way that makes this choice easy, but I don't think it's fair to say that it's in some inherent way impossible.

Really? What kind of handset I should have used instead? Note: I've clarified in the very beginning: at least not on stock roms. Of course if you root your phone or install custom firmware then you can use anything you want including samba, but most users don't know how to do that (and don't want to know).

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GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution?

Posted Oct 3, 2013 22:26 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Can you provide a link to an in-depth article or previous thread that gives background and details on "GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution"?

But of course!

And before you'll say “hey, but they could have just opened up their system” you need to read another article.

Actually you need just three lines from said article: Mobile phone sales is not like cameras or cars or clothing. In all those other industries, if you make a good product and offer it at competitive prices, you will have success in the market. In mobile, even if you have the best phone ever made, it is utterly IRRELEVANT if the carriers decide not to support it.

Combine these two articles—and here is your answer. It's as simple as 1-2-3:
1. Mobile phone without carriers support is DOA.
2. Carriers demand control over devices.
2. GPLv3 guarantees that you (and not carrier!) can control the device you've bought.
As you can see items number two and number three are very clearly incompatible and thus GPLv3 have to go.

You can notice that Apple does not cede control over iPhone to carriers (there are no carrier logos, etc). That's true, Apple certainly managed to pressure carriers more then any other handset manufacturer to date. But carriers still have some measure of control: even if technically Apple (and not you!) decides how your phone behaves carriers still decide many things. For example carriers determine if your iPhone will support tethering or not.

P.S. Situation is slowly changing but I think it'll be few more years till anyone will be able to create truly successful phone which will be successful despite carriers opposition.

GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution?

Posted Oct 4, 2013 1:33 UTC (Fri) by kmacleod (guest, #88058) [Link]

Ah, I misunderstood your post. I thought you meant a technical/legal incompatibility.

GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution?

Posted Oct 4, 2013 10:28 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

In mobile, even if you have the best phone ever made, it is utterly IRRELEVANT if the carriers decide not to support it.

This is, of course, not true in most of Europe. It's a US thing, I think.

The thought of not being able to choose my mobile provider and phone independently is baffling. Why on earth would anyone want to cut themselves off from choice like that? Oh yes, because that way they get a 'free' phone (and an increase in contract cost that means they pay much more in the next year or two than they would have done to get the phone). i.e., it's a phone mortgage.

I'm not really sure that phones cost enough to be worth taking out a mortgage for them -- particularly not when a side-effect is to greatly restrict your choice of phone.

GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution?

Posted Oct 4, 2013 11:14 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

In the US, if you try to get phone service without the contract and 'free phone', you really don't save very much. I'm going through this process right now, and you really have to hunt around and _not_ go with the main carriers to save anything. A few years ago I purchased a tablet that could take a SIM card and when I went to get service, most of the phone stores I went to didn't understand what I was talking about. That's getting better now, but still only AT&T and T-Mobile can get you a SIM, The other two major carriers (Sprint and Verizon) require different models of the devices that only work with their networks.

And like it or not, the US is a huge block of customers for phone companies. the EU may or may not have more total phone users, but that market is far more fragmented in terms of the advertizing needed, the different language versions needed etc.

in the US, most phone manufacturers spend exactly zero money on advertizing, it's only in recent years that you would find any phone advertizing from Samsung or HTC (Motorola and Apple have been advertizing for a lot longer). Since the vast majority of users get their phone from their carrier, based strictly on what the carrier has on display in their store, there hasn't been much need.

One good thing about the 'smartphone wars' is that people are seeing that there are a bunch of different options, and so people are getting interested in getting a specific phone rather than just picking whatever is in stock.

as for developing fully open phones, if you were a phone manufacturer and knew that investing a large chunk of money into your own system would anger the carriers that control access to a very large number of customers, would you be eager to do so?

GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution?

Posted Oct 5, 2013 14:56 UTC (Sat) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Actually, in the EU there is a huge market for SIM only plans, I think largely *because* of the fragmentation. Given that your mobile phone plan really only cheap in the country you bought it, it's not uncommon to buy an extra SIM when you go on holiday.

There are even providers that specialise in this: you select a country, a time period and a number of MB/minutes and they'll mail you a SIM card which you pop in when you reach your destination and pop out again when you go home. They don't even really need to advertise either, people who need it will go looking for them. But it does make locked phones somewhat worthless for normal use.

Ofcourse, for europeans going to the US, they can buy one SIM for one large area, which is reasonably attractive. I imagine this market will slowly disappear when the cost of roaming becomes more reasonable, either by competition or government regulation.