Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft [LWN.net]

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 27, 2014 14:28 UTC (Mon) by Del- (guest, #72641)
In reply to: Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft by silvas
Parent article: Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

> The people who write our paychecks make those rules.

Well, only partly true. An increasing number of individuals are full-time paid for making copy-left code. It seems you are taking the "nothing I can do about it" approach. Please do not degrade yourself like that. There is a good chance that somebody is willing to pay you the same amount you receive today to work on copy-left software. Maybe even your current employer. GPL is as much about putting the power into the hands of developers (i.e., out of the hands of managers) as anything else.

> In my experience, Stallman's view is extremely myopic because the real impediments to free software are larger societal issues[*].

Not at all sure why you can reach the myopic conclusion here, but I assume what you are saying is that GPL is too restrictive for society to accept it. You may be correct, but then again we are starting to see a rather overwhelmingly evidence of copy-left being a success for everybody, particularly those companies who made it big time the last decade (not thinking of Microsoft here). Let us look a bit closer at the anti-Tivotization expample. Linus repelled GPLv3 over it (which I believe was very unfortunate, because he lost the patent protection part too). One may of course speculate that he was in a tough situation, possibly seeing important backers of linux pull out. The most important of those had to be Google I guess, since they are the ones who took linux to its ultimate success. It may of course be that Google would not use linux had it been GPLv3, but I really struggle to see why. If any, it would help some of the litigation chaos we see now. Heck, even Microsoft puts patent protection into its most popular open license. The lack of any patent protection in BSD has made everybody with knowledge jump on the Apache bandwagon for their permissive license (including Google with Android), so it is clear that Google would prefer GPLv3 over GPLv2 on the patent part. Hence we are down to the Tivo story as the only problematic point. What exactly does it do for Google? Nothing, they make all their devices hacker friendly, even to the point where they are now the most prominent backer of coreboot, and open source bios. HTC provided some shitty tools to circumvent their own Tivo solution based on popular demand. Their market performance went from bad to worse when the pulled the tool back. Samsung and the rest sees their most popular devices getting hacked, so anybody so inclined can install Cyanogenmod on them. It is all a display of human stupidity, creating unnecessary obstacles for your own customers. Does anybody really believe that iphones sell better because they are locked down? I am pretty sure Google would have gone with linux even with GPLv3, and I do believe it would make the world somewhat better for all of us. It is also very clear from the Android example that we do need to use the license to make these things happen (i.e., open devices). I am sorry, but Stallman is not myopic here. Permissive licensing on the other hand is. The real question is, do you want to be part of the solution?

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Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 27, 2014 20:39 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (50 responses)

Hence we are down to the Tivo story as the only problematic point. What exactly does it do for Google?

Makes it non-starter. Google does not mind GPLv3 for the developer tools, but (L)GPLv3 is not something they ever want to consider for the Android (that's why Android comes with no libstdc++.so.* and there are talks about switching to LLVM and libc++: this will make it possible to actually ship shared C++ library).

Nothing, they make all their devices hacker friendly, even to the point where they are now the most prominent backer of coreboot, and open source bios.

This is true, but they also know that they need phones lockable by carriers to be successull in the smarphone market (they only company which gets away without such lock-in is Apple and this partially because it offers it's own lock-in which means that tethering is still not allowed if carriers don't want it to be allowed).

Does anybody really believe that iphones sell better because they are locked down?

Oh yeah. Lock-down is vital for iPhone success. No, not directly, but indirectly: without carrier subsidies iPhones are too expensive in many parts of the world and carriers will not support them if they can not gurantee they'll not work as carriers want. Carriers want to control everything and Apple is adamantly against some changes (e.g. with most phones carrier's logo is placed on the phone case while Apple is ready do abandon particular carrier if this is the price it'll pay for the subsidies) and this is why they talk long and hard about the exact terms which are imposed on user, but fully-user-controllable device is not something they ever want to contemplate. And that's Apple! It drives hordes of most profitable customers to carriers! Android will not get such treatment, that's for sure.

I am pretty sure Google would have gone with linux even with GPLv3, and I do believe it would make the world somewhat better for all of us.

Really? Why are you so sure? We know that Google tries to reduce amount of GPLed code in Android and GPLv3 is banned in principle, why do you think GPLv3 kernel would make a difference? I think they would have just picked GPLv2 fork or even BSD kernel.

It is also very clear from the Android example that we do need to use the license to make these things happen (i.e., open devices).

Really? From Android example we see that all such tries will lead to rejection of software (most GPLed software is already removed from Android except for kernel and GCC is well on it's way to deprecation partially because of the same issue). Is that the result you want to see? Just how it'll help developers or users?

AFAICS GPLv3 gambit was risky and it failed. Failed quite spectacularly. I don't see how you can advocate “more of the same” after such a failure. It a pity. I for one, expected for this gambit to work. But it didn't. It's time to accept new reality and think about it.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 27, 2014 22:34 UTC (Mon) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (30 responses)

khim, I am really struggling with making sense of all your statements. Even with a lot of goodwill and creative interpretation, I have a hard time making sense of your post.

> Google does not mind GPLv3 for the developer tools

OK, but the gambit failed, so I guess it is everybody else that saw GPLv3 as a little too much for GCC then. Exactly who are we talking about? Apple? From all I have found it was the copyright transfer of LLVM to FSF that stopped them from collaboration, before GPLv3 was a reality. AFAIK, Apple going for LLVM outside GCC had nothing to do with version 3. Do you have *any* information to back up your undocumented stream of statements?

> that's why Android comes with no libstdc++.so.*

Care to enlighten me, exactly what legal issues are there related to using libstdc++? AFAIK it is linked in just about any proprietary application out there.

> there are talks about switching to LLVM and libc++

Yes, but that may have many reasons, and may or may not materialize, and if it does, it will be because somebody regards it as technically superior. The license of LLVM is about as primitive as BSD, and lacks any reference to patents. With Google opting for Apache, I am pretty sure any switch to LLVM will be despite its license, not because of it.

> they need phones lockable by carriers to be successull in the smarphone market (they only company which gets away without such lock-in is Apple and this partially because it offers it's own lock-in which means that tethering is still not allowed if carriers don't want it to be allowed).

Please provide documentation that HTC lost carriers over offering tools to root their phones. I don't believe you will find any, and that basically nullifies you theory right there. Next time read my post before answering, I have provided explicit examples documenting my statements, I really appreciate if you counter them in a more scientific manner.

> Oh yeah. Lock-down is vital for iPhone success. No, not directly, but indirectly: without carrier subsidies iPhones are too expensive in many parts of the world and carriers will not support them if they can not gurantee they'll not work as carriers want.

It seems most of the world has the opposite conclusion, that Apple with Iphone demonstrated that they could strip carriers of their demands and make a great commercial success of it. I would actually say that not allowing carriers to control software on Iphones is the main reason why Iphone was a success. I want you to document your claim here, and tethering just doesn't cut it. It is a really minor point in this setting, nothing that anybody seriously believes would cut Iphones out of the market.

> From Android example we see that all such tries will lead to rejection of software (most GPLed software is already removed from Android

Google choosing linux as kernel has been a tremendous success for both Google and linux. Choosing any other kernel would be plain stupid, we have enough driver issues on Android as it is. I think Google would have done the smart thing and gone with linux whether GPL2 or 3. Would be good if somebody from Google could comment on that though, since we seem to be in a dead-lock on this one.

> most GPLed software is already removed from Android except for kernel and GCC is well on it's way to deprecation partially because of the same issue

This is getting very annoying. Have you changed the whole subject from GPLv3 being a mistake, to claiming that copy-left/GPLv2 is a mistake, and that GCC should be permissively licensed? This is starting to look like drivel.

You seem to believe GPLv3 failed, while arguing that GPLv2 also is a failure when it comes to Android, making the whole v2, v3 discussion moot. Make up your mind, do you believe that copy-left makes sense? If not, then your whole gambit comment is just stupid deception. For your information Black duck posts statistics on license usage, here:
http://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-op...
Unfortunately, they do not distinguish between GPLv2 and GPLv2+, but as you see, the GPLv3+ projects are just as popular as Apache 2.0 (which is by far the most popular permissive license). Counting in GPLv2+ projects (which is also available under GPLv3), I believe you are looking at GPLv3 being the most used open license in the world. Chew on that one for a while.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 27, 2014 23:46 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (21 responses)

Basically, FSF said to industry: "F**k you, moochers. Let's see how you'll do without our precious GPL software"

Turns out that industry can do just fine without GPLv3 software. So now we have lots of non-GPL tools that are comparable or better than FSF's ones. Exceptions exists, like Samba, but even that gets worked around.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 9:22 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (19 responses)

> Basically, FSF said to industry: "F**k you, moochers

No they did not, there were several drafts and the industry was consulted. In particular, the anti-Tivo clause was changed to only protect ordinary consumers. As already mentioned, the patent clause is already adopted by the whole industry. The only indication I have seen of GPLv3 being one too many, was Linus refusal and consequently linux and git using a GPL2 only approach. I am sure there are other following that example, but I have yet to see any. Maybe you can provide some examples of GPL2 only projects?

> Turns out that industry can do just fine without GPLv3 software. So now we have lots of non-GPL tools that are comparable or better than FSF's ones. Exceptions exists, like Samba, but even that gets worked around.

Did you just wake up or something? The industry has *always* done fine without GPL software regardless of version. BSD and Apache have been around for quite some time you know. However, it seems GPL has opened the minds of corporations towards open development. They basically want the developers, but not the commitments, hence permissive licensing. Hence, many companies are now investing in open software. Software houses tend to like permissively licensed code or dual licensing, since they want both ends of the deal. Customers and communities are typically best served by copy-left. Both have their place, and there is no drama in it. In fact, you and khim more and more appear to me as astroturfers. Exactly what is your take in this? Are you here just to sabotage copy-left, or do you actually believe that the world is best served by abandoning copy-left altogether?

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 13:12 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (18 responses)

> No they did not, there were several drafts and the industry was consulted. In particular, the anti-Tivo clause was changed to only protect ordinary consumers.
Sure, and the industry said that it's unacceptable.

> Did you just wake up or something? The industry has *always* done fine without GPL software regardless of version. BSD and Apache have been around for quite some time you know.
Not really. GCC, gdb, glibc, busybox and others used to be indispensable. So indispensable that RMS used to call Linux as GNU/Linux.

Well, not anymore. Gcc is being replaced by clang+LLVM, gdb is being replaced by lldb and so on. All of the replacements are under permissive licenses (Apache or BSD).

>However, it seems GPL has opened the minds of corporations towards open development.
Be that as it may, it's not the point of the argument. Large organizations figured out that collaborating on non-essential software is better than reinventing the wheel all the time. They are also absolutely allergic to GPLv3 which denies them ability to keep ESSENTIAL software controlled.

>The only indication I have seen of GPLv3 being one too many, was Linus refusal and consequently linux and git using a GPL2 only approach. I am sure there are other following that example, but I have yet to see any. Maybe you can provide some examples of GPL2 only projects?
Sure. Apple ripped out Samba from Mac OS X - it's replaced by their own SMB implementation. They've also replaced gcc with clang - the last available officially supported gcc on Mac OS X is the last non-GPLv3 version. And Google avoided GPLv3 completely.

BTW, can you name a single GPLv3 project that is used consistently across all the architectures? I can't.

>Exactly what is your take in this? Are you here just to sabotage copy-left, or do you actually believe that the world is best served by abandoning copy-left altogether?
Basically, I think that copy-left is a nice idea in small quantities.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 16:16 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (17 responses)

> Sure, and the industry said that it's unacceptable.

They surely did not, GPLv3 code is used everywhere in all industries. Major contributions are being made by industry to various GPLv3 projects too. BTW, why are you pounding that dead horse, you do not believe copy-left is a good idea in the first place (otherwise you would probably be evangelising usage of GPL2-only or LGPL licensing by now).

> Not really. GCC, gdb, glibc, busybox and others used to be indispensable. So indispensable that RMS used to call Linux as GNU/Linux.

They were always dispensable, there used to be many operating systems around remember? are you so quick to forget the BSDs and the Unix variants? Or windows, or OSK or OSX or IOS or .. This is getting boring. You are a smart guy, stop saying things you know are stupid. Actually, the last years copy-left has conquered HPC world wide, it is about to conquer the web-servers, and the BSDs need to turn to copy-left for the three most popular desktops. How about end-user applications, show me your permissively licensed apps? Don't be naive, without copy-left many of us would not be able to work with open source at all. We all need it. Its usage is growing, and it is fuelling the current growth of permissively licensed projects. Make no mistake though the majority of projects are still copy-left, and they are growing stronger despite Microsoft and Apple doing their best to sabotage it. Stop helping them please.

> Be that as it may, it's not the point of the argument. Large organizations figured out that collaborating on non-essential software is better than reinventing the wheel all the time. They are also absolutely allergic to GPLv3 which denies them ability to keep ESSENTIAL software controlled.

Large organizations are not allergic to GPL regardless of version. To the contrary they gladly pay Red Hat for it. Moreover, many of them are smart enough to see the benefits of copy-left. For some software houses it is different, but I hope and believe that the two most prominent ones (Microsoft and Apple) will pay a hefty price for their hostility towards copy-left and consumer rights in general.

> BTW, can you name a single GPLv3 project that is used consistently across all the architectures?

You mean operating systems not architectures, right? Of course, GCC and Gimp are used across all desktop OS families successfully by many. But you probably want me to name GPLv3 projects distributed by Microsoft and Apple for their operating systems, right? Why limit yourself to that, neither of the are fond of copy-left at all, so simply say GPL instead. Unless you have an invested interest in creating confusion.

> Basically, I think that copy-left is a nice idea in small quantities.

Thanks for showing colours. That basically leaves you with Microsoft and Apple as your goto place for software. Copy-left is very hard to get by without on any other platform if you want any kind of user experience. I suggest you run along to Apple and ask them for a permissively licensed desktop and apps. See how far your ideology takes you. Yes, ideology. I am afraid I am the pragmatic one among the two of us. Right now, it seems Apple's hostility towards copy-left is costing all ios users access to a wave of new apps:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/mobile-development/open-source...
Personally I am finding myself using more and more open apps on android, and yes, with a GPL license.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 16:29 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (16 responses)

> They surely did not, GPLv3 code is used everywhere in all industries.
Wrong. Stop deluding yourself.

iDevices and Androids have no GPLv3 software. Whatsoever. And they outnumber personal computers by now.

> Major contributions are being made by industry to various GPLv3 projects too.
So?

> BTW, why are you pounding that dead horse, you do not believe copy-left is a good idea in the first place (otherwise you would probably be evangelising usage of GPL2-only or LGPL licensing by now).
LGPL with static link exception is fine. GPL for end-user software is also OK-ish.

> They were always dispensable, there used to be many operating systems around remember?
Nope. Even FreeBSD was built using gcc, there literally was no free alternative. Remember?

> Large organizations are not allergic to GPL regardless of version. To the contrary they gladly pay Red Hat for it.
Can you understand what people write to you? It's perfectly OK for large companies to use GPL or even GPLv3 for infrastructure or non-essential services. It can't harm anyone that way. They might even throw a patch or two to tweak something.

But no large company produces devices with GPLv3. And just how many end-user devices with RHEL are being produced?

>You mean operating systems not architectures, right? Of course, GCC and Gimp are used across all desktop OS families successfully by many.
There's no GIMP on iOS. Or Android, for that matter.

>Yes, ideology. I am afraid I am the pragmatic one among the two of us.
LOL.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 18:30 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (15 responses)

> iDevices and Androids have no GPLv3 software. Whatsoever. And they outnumber personal computers by now.

It is one industry, one datapoint. There is more in this world than smartphones. Stop making wide ranging statements when you really mean very specific usage. Android certainly do have GPLv3 licensed software in numbers, but you may refer to the operating system? Well Android is pretty stripped down, with only a custom Java engine to run the apps. The choice of using apache was maded specifically because HTC and the rest wanted to use an open core model from my recollection. It is an interesting dynamics, and shows a natural usage of permissive licensing. This may have nothing to do with version 3.

Let me help you out a bit. First up there is the boot-loader. Recall how lilo was very popular, but now all distros use Grub? Guess what licenses those two have? Does Google use Lilo for Android? Nope, of course not, they don't use Grub either, and mostly because Grub has a ton of functionality Android does not need. Same with SurfaceFlinger, do you think they did it because of the xorg license? Wow, Google really must hate the X11 license, wonder why Apple likes it... Now over to your favourite glibc, well do you remember the ordeal with Ulrich Drepper refusing patches for using glibc in an embedded setting? Debian forking glibc over to eglibc. Do you think maybe that could have somewhat more to do with bionic than the license? You are a smart guy, I am sure you get the drift. Again, somebody from Google speaking up would be nice. Not saying I know the priorities, but your conclusions are not very convincing to me.

> LGPL with static link exception is fine. GPL for end-user software is also OK-ish.

Hm, I cannot make any sense of what you are trying to say here.

> Nope. Even FreeBSD was built using gcc, there literally was no free alternative. Remember?

Let me help your memory. BSD used to have *drums*, a BSD licensed compiler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_C_Compiler
You really need to get your history straight, copy-left ran the pants of anything BSD had to offer. It is your very good friend Apple and its fat wallet you can thank for BSD having another go at compilers. Seems they have a lot of money to spend on astroturfing these days too, I have never seen so many lies about GCC spreading before. Those unfamiliar with history is bound to repeat the mistakes, and it saddens me that so few care about the history.

>But no large company produces devices with GPLv3. And just how many end-user devices with RHEL are being produced?

and you know why, don't you? Does the name Elop ring any bell with you, at all? Did you have the pleasure of using the N9? A part from that GPLv3 has made success in network routers, Linksys (yes that was Cisco, do they count as large you think?) even marketed it. Any NAS box these days come with Samba, does Hewlett Packard count as large in your book by any chance? This is just getting stupid, I think I will stop here.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 20:56 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (14 responses)

> It is one industry, one datapoint. There is more in this world than smartphones.
Actually, there is not. Smartphones this year outnumbered all other computers, except for microcontrollers.

>Well Android is pretty stripped down, with only a custom Java engine to run the apps.
:facepalm:

And gcc is only a translator from C++ to machine code. And Linux is merely a wrapper over hardware-provided services. And Google is simply an indexer.

>The choice of using apache was maded specifically because HTC and the rest wanted to use an open core model from my recollection.
Nope. Android was designed this way to allow carriers to lock down phones, and total avoidance of GPL was a pre-emptive step to avoid being forced to support GPLv2 forks indefinitely.

>Well Android is pretty stripped down, with only a custom Java engine to run the apps. The choice of using apache was maded specifically because HTC and the rest wanted to use an open core model from my recollection.
Google uses Coreboot which is GPLv2 on Chromebooks. JFYI. Lots of Android devices use U-Boot which is, you guessed it, GPLv2.

> Let me help your memory. BSD used to have *drums*, a BSD licensed compiler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_C_Compiler

No they didn't. The first attempts to use PCC to compile FreeBSD were made in 2007 or so. It has never been used in anger, unlike Clang.

> and you know why, don't you? Does the name Elop ring any bell with you, at all? Did you have the pleasure of using the N9?
So there's no phone with GPLv3 software out there. Even the new Jolla phone does NOT have GPLv3 anywhere, though they have quite a lot of GPL and LGPL software on it.

> A part from that GPLv3 has made success in network routers, Linksys (yes that was Cisco, do they count as large you think?) even marketed it. Any NAS box these days come with Samba, does Hewlett Packard count as large in your book by any chance?
Again, it's either isolated or used in non-core parts. Or in situation where GPLv3 has no bite at all.

So yes, it only reinforces my point: GPLv3 failed miserably.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 22:13 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (8 responses)

> And gcc is only a translator from C++ to machine code

GCC is a compiler collection, it can do much more than Java.

> Android was designed this way to allow carriers to lock down phones, and total avoidance of GPL was a pre-emptive step to avoid being forced to support GPLv2 forks indefinitely.

Sloppy again are we. There is plenty of GPL code in Android as I am sure you know. You mean version 3 I guess. You may or may not be right. Like already mentioned, Android avoids GPL in user space due to it's open core model.

> So there's no phone with GPLv3 software out there. Even the new Jolla phone does NOT have GPLv3 anywhere, though they have quite a lot of GPL and LGPL software on it.

Actually I do believe you will find GPLv3 software on N9, basically from the Debian stuff. But you are right when it comes to Jolla not shipping GPLv3 in shipping images, here I found the documentation for you:
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Architecture#GNU_utilities
Nokia on the other hand was big enough to make a difference, and Microsoft made sure that never happened. I would say Microsoft did a bargain when they got Nokia on board with an exclusive deal, worth every billion. However, GPLv3 software is easily available in abundance on Sailfish, Meego and Android. On a related note, Jolla does ship glibc, did you know that?

> Again, it's either isolated or used in non-core parts. Or in situation where GPLv3 has no bite at all.

You were flat out wrong, and are back-paddling desperately. May I suggest that you just admit it, GPLv3 is not that big of a deal on devices. Sure, there are manufacturers that want to lock-down devices, and they will probably avoid Grub. That's no biggie, Uboot serves them fine.

Just listened to Langley's talk, and it makes me depressed.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 22:33 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (6 responses)

> Sloppy again are we. There is plenty of GPL code in Android as I am sure you know. You mean version 3 I guess. You may or may not be right. Like already mentioned, Android avoids GPL in user space due to it's open core model.
There is _no_ GPL (of any version) in Android images and even no LGPL anymore. Android tools certainly use it.

>However, GPLv3 software is easily available in abundance on Sailfish, Meego and Android.
Sure. They don't limit third-party software, so they can't care less.

>On a related note, Jolla does ship glibc, did you know that?
Which is LGPLv2.1

> You were flat out wrong, and are back-paddling desperately.
Nope.

>May I suggest that you just admit it, GPLv3 is not that big of a deal on devices.
It IS a big deal on devices. So big that big vendors essentially forked the entire FSF stack to avoid it.

>Sure, there are manufacturers that want to lock-down devices
Again, another understatement like "the waves were higher than normal during the tsunami in Japan".

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 22:49 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

LGPL is most certainly there: KHTML^H^H^H^HWebkit^H^H^H^HBlink^H^H^H^Hwhat-the-name-if-this-thing-today still includes few LGPL-licensed files. But all the new development there uses BSD (not Apache, BTW, but BSD) thus it's pretty limited and constrained.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 23:12 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (4 responses)

> There is _no_ GPL (of any version) in Android images and even no LGPL anymore. Android tools certainly use it.

I believe linux is still GPL, and it is a part of Android.

> Sure. They don't limit third-party software, so they can't care less.

They provided it in repos themselves I believe.

But now I am afraid I have to call it a day..

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 1:14 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

> I believe linux is still GPL, and it is a part of Android.

Ah yes, apart from Linux itself, of course. But Linux is an exception somewhat - it has a non-existent GPL enforcement and it's also firmly in GPLv2 only camp.

However, there _are_ Android implementations that do not even use Linux - Blackberry runs their own Android simulator atop QNX.

> They provided it in repos themselves I believe.
Links?

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 3:08 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (1 responses)

> But Linux is an exception somewhat - it has a non-existent GPL enforcement

Not true. netfilter is enforced by its copyright holder, and several other kernel copyright holders have thrown their lot in with the SFLC. I'd guess that the only piece of GPLed software with *more* license enforcement than the Linux kernel is busybox.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 3:16 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Yet binary-only drivers exist in basically every Linux mobile device. And that violates even Linus' tit-for-tat requirement.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 6:55 UTC (Wed) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]

> Ah yes, apart from Linux itself, of course. But Linux is an exception somewhat

Down to semantics are we. U-boot not being part of the image you mean? What are you trying to prove, that what Google forked and made themselves in user space on Android was permissively licensed? We agreed on that already. Just forgot, Uboot is GPLv2+ so available under GPLv2, but also available under GPLv3. A tiny fact you jumped over earlier in this thread.

> Links?

Dig yourself, I cannot fathom that detail making any difference for you at all.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 12:04 UTC (Wed) by jani (subscriber, #74547) [Link]

> Actually I do believe you will find GPLv3 software on N9

Nokia did not ship GPLv3 software on the N9.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 20, 2015 17:38 UTC (Tue) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link] (4 responses)

Del- wrote:

>> A part from that GPLv3 has made success in network routers, Linksys (yes that was Cisco, do they count as large you think?) even marketed it. Any NAS box these days come with Samba, does Hewlett Packard count as large in your book by any chance?
> Again, it's either isolated or used in non-core parts. Or in situation where GPLv3 has no bite at all.

So let me get this straight. You're saying that in a NAS box, Samba - the GPLv3+ SMB1/2/3 implementation that ALLOWS THE BOX TO FUNCTION AND IS THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF THE PRODUCT is a 'non-core part'.

Hmmmm. I think you might want to look at the lifeboats. The argument is desperately listing and taking on water at an alarming rate :-).

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 20, 2015 17:41 UTC (Tue) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link]

Oh sorry Del-, I mis-quoted. It was Cyberax (who is well known - at least to me - for such amazing leaps of logic when it comes to disparaging GPLv3 :-) who made that argument, not you.

Please accept my apologies :-).

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 20, 2015 20:56 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

That's exactly what I'm saying.

Your core part is something that you differentiate on from your competitors. For SAN the most interesting part is their core storage management which is far out of reach of GPLv3.

For end-user NAS boxes companies usually have no differentiating features at all (except the components price that you can get from your Chinese suppliers). So the vendors don't mind putting GPLv3 on them.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 21, 2015 16:09 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Looks like you're conflating "core" and "differentiate" there. SMB is a core feature for any kind of NAS storage box. Now, with Samba out there, it may be hard for vendors to differentiate themselves on it, so they have to find some other feature that differentiates them (which may also be a core, required feature for a NAS to have, but also need not be).

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 21, 2015 17:32 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

> Your core part is something that you differentiate on from your competitors.

Nope. That's your code *competency*, which is a business/management term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_competency.

The usual engineering interpretation of the term is very different, and more in line with the FEMA definition: https://www.fema.gov/core-capabilities. Basically a core "part" is something you *require* to achieve a goal, not something that distinguishes you from the rest.

At least that's how I see it.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 20, 2015 17:29 UTC (Tue) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link]

It's *very* expensive to work around Samba :-).

Another one just bit the dust - NetApp just bought HvNAS (hvnas.com now redirects to NetApp), probably to try and shore up their increasingly creaky SMB2 implementation (leaving HvNAS's existing licensees holding a flaming bag of %*$# of course, but them's the breaks when you rent your code :-). Same thing happened to Likewise, but more proprietary companies got burned there.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 27, 2014 23:56 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (7 responses)

> that's why Android comes with no libstdc++.so.*

Care to enlighten me, exactly what legal issues are there related to using libstdc++? AFAIK it is linked in just about any proprietary application out there.

But it's not distributed with these applications, right? Big difference. You see, libstdc++ uses straight GPLv3 (not LGPL!) which means that if libstdc++.so.* is shipped on device one will need to privide some means of installing it.

Now, why can “normal” proprietary programs can ever use libstdc++ if it's under GPL, not LGPL? Because they don't ship libstdc++ by itself and thus are covered by the appropriate exception. Said exception may or may not cover distribution of libstdc++.so.* as part of the Android image (it's not clear which part of exception will play if we are talking about libstdc++.so.* distributed in isolation), but Google is not taking any chances. In fact Google is busy bringing LLVM and Clang to the condition where they could replace GCC. GPLv3 is big part of the reasoning.

With Google opting for Apache, I am pretty sure any switch to LLVM will be despite its license, not because of it.

Not exactly. Google prefers Apache, sure, but if choice is between GPLv3 and BSD then choice is obvious (BIONIC was based on BSD libc, after all).

Please provide documentation that HTC lost carriers over offering tools to root their phones.

Why would it lose carriers if it's all too ready to lock phones again at their request? Yes, HTC made a mistake and issued unlocker which was usable for carrier-subsidized phones. Mistake is rectified so no biggie. I'm pretty sure someone at HTC got pretty good cheving over said mistake, but in the end status quo is restored. It was available in the wild for exactly one day—recall that usually updates take months till they are rolled out in the wild (that's true for HTC at least, some other manufacturers are faster) and this will say everything you need to know about the situation.

Make up your mind, do you believe that copy-left makes sense?

Once upon time it made sense. Not anymore. Landley gave tech talk which explains what happened and why. In nutshell: GPLv2 was kinda-sorta-accepted by industry and it was loved by open-source and free-software folks, too which basicallu put the situation at the uneasy truce. But GPLv3 became a land-grab attempt and this gave clear signal to the industry: you can not trust FSF (and ideally need to drop GPL altogether if possible). The backlash was stricking: not only GPLv3 failed to achieve it's objectives (I know exactly zero devices which were opened up because of GPLv3; the most I've seen are some proprietary programs designed to inject GPLv3 binary in otherwise tightly locked firmware) it made GPLv2 weaker.

Linux is kind of exception: it's developers were pretty vocal about their thought on said land-grab which means that industry don't need to fear Linux because it'll remain where it started WRT licensing. Other projects are not so lucky… well, Blink and WebKit are fine, too (they use BSD license for all new files and only use LGPLv2.1 for old files which may even eventually disappear). Some other projects could be trusted, too, but in general GPL went from “this is the beast we know” to “this is something we need to discuss on case-by-case basis”.

Counting in GPLv2+ projects (which is also available under GPLv3), I believe you are looking at GPLv3 being the most used open license in the world.

Right. <sarcasm>Let's add Apache and BSD liceses to the list, too (because, you know, they are GPLv3-compatible).</sarcasm> When this article was written almost 70% of projects were GPL. Straight GPL! Not GPL+LGPL+BSD+whatever-you-want-to-repaint-as-your-ally. Today… six years after release GPLv3 is still used by many times smaller number of projects than GPLv2 and even if you combine GPLv2 and GPLv3 you still have much smaller number that GPLv2 had ten years ago.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 2:15 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (3 responses)

> But GPLv3 became a land-grab attempt and this gave clear signal to the industry

If the GPLv2 had the GPLv3 terms would it be the same situation we're in now, or was the act of adding the terms to all projects which used '+' the problem?

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 2:55 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think people would be avoiding GPL as much as they are, but I also don't think that it would be nearly as popular as GPLv2 was, and how much of the GPLv3 popularity is holdover from GPLv2 by people who don't know/care about the differences is hard to say.

I think the problem is a combination of both the terms and the change

on the one hand, if GPLv2 had the GPLv3 terms, I don't think it would have been as popular

but the fact that the terms changed in a way that many people consider very significant has also made it so that people don't trust the FSF to not make other changes in the future that could cause them even more problems, so they are much more paranoid about trusting GPLv3/GPLv3+ code than if the terms had been there from the start

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 13:37 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (1 responses)

It's true that a number of people probably didn't know what to think about the eventual result of the rather long and rather democratic GPLv3 drafting process, and as a result of that uncertainty, fuelled by punditry about the supposedly disastrous consequences on adoption by "the industry" by people who should know better, some people adopted the "footprint in wet concrete" approach to licensing and insisted on "GPLv2 only" for their stuff.

It's a shame, though, that these people didn't appreciate that some of the additional measures in GPLv3 - thinking of the strengthening of patent litigation protection - were becoming the norm even in permissive licences, whilst other things - thinking of access to the four freedoms in "consumer devices" - may already be governed by the GPLv2, although bkuhn can probably say more about these things (as I believe he mentioned the latter in particular at one point).

If anything can be said about attitudes towards the GPL, perhaps it can be concluded that the "look the other way" mentality about various edge cases in GPLv2 couldn't be sustained with GPLv3 applied to works, and those benefiting from that mentality were obviously upset as a result. But I hardly think that selective enforcement of licences and discretionary grey areas of licensing are a sustainable way of delivering Free Software to wider society: there's always the risk that someone will get away with something undesirable (making patents a "kill switch" for licensing conditions, for example) and then use some ill-advised discretion by a project to legitimise doing so, without exception and without limit, for all Free Software.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 1:31 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

It wasn't a case of 'misunderstandings by people who should know better', it was a case of fundamental disagreement over what the requirements should be.

The anti-tivo clause is a perfect example. Linus stated that requiring that the code for the device be provided is good, requiring that you be given enough info to modify the software on the device was over the line.

that's not a misunderstanding of terms, that's a different requirement.

If you look at the angst that people have about secure boot and how some features need to be disabled or else the key will be revoked it seems very reasonable for companies who are building devices to be very worried about what the content providers would do to them if they gave out the info that let hackers modify the software on their devices to ignore any restrictions that are built in to the software.

you may not like that, but either it's a reasonable thing to do or this entire secure boot brouhaha is meaningless.

The FSF got a lot of feedback opposing this policy, but they decided that it was important enough to include even with all the opposition from opensource developers. And then they made it very clear that if this didn't end up with the result they wanted, they would make further changes going forward as they thought best.

this is the "I have changed the deal, and I will change it again if I want" attitude that many people saw that pushed them away from GPLv3

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 28, 2014 10:07 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]

> In fact Google is busy bringing LLVM and Clang to the condition where they could replace GCC. GPLv3 is big part of the reasoning.

Please provide documentation. If you are only making this up as you go along, then please be honest about it. LLVM taking over GCC has been talked about for eight years now, and I see no sign of that happening yet. Actually, LLVM taking over GCC does not even make sense. LLVM is not a compiler, it is a project for creating compilers. If it out-competes parts of GCC, there is little preventing GCC from using LLVM as an optimizer tool. What I have seen over these years is GCC out-competing all proprietary compilers, with Intel as the last hold out. Yes GCC, not Clang, it doesn't even have openmp yet, so it will only be a real contender in a year or so.

> it's not clear which part of exception will play if we are talking about libstdc++.so.* distributed in isolation

So you don't know, and I am getting a bit tired of doing all the digging for you. Before you spout more statements, I suggest you dig further and figure out if bundling libstdc++.so with Android is a license violation or not. Maybe the Necessitas guys at Digia can help you out.

Why Google did bionic I don't know, but it can very well be for other reasons than license. Again, I have not seen any issues building proprietary stuff with glibc. After all, all applications on linux does it.

> Why would it lose carriers if it's all too ready to lock phones again at their request? Yes, HTC made a mistake and issued unlocker which was usable for carrier-subsidized phones.

Sorry, but I am starting to feel really grumpy. Let us sum up your findings:
-no carriers lost
-tool reverted for one phone in August 2013 (a weak and struggling HTC caving in)
-tool provided two years earlier (ref. http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader ), with no carriers lost for the entire two years
I call that pretty sound proof that the unlocking thing is a no-brainer. It did not shut anybody out of the market, and it will not shut anybody out of the market as long as somebody stands up. Right now you seem to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Actually this reminds me of when Netflix claimed that they could not make a version for linux because they needed the whole system locked down. Only silverlight could do the trick, and it was a demand from Hollywood. Finally, TI made a chip where they hard-wired DRM into it to satisfy the claimed demands of Hollywood so that the first Android device finally got Netflix. Fast forward a few months later, Netflix was available on all Android phones (apparently they could not withstand the anger of all the customers being left out). Only weeks later they started to provide patches for Netflix on CyanogenMod, at the time a totally DRM free version of Android.

I am sick and tired of intelligent people telling me that it is all hopeless, and that we should just give up. Giving up is not an option.

> Right. <sarcasm>Let's add Apache and BSD liceses to the list, too (because, you know, they are GPLv3-compatible).</sarcasm>

This is beneath you, you should know GPLv2+ provides the code "at the recipients option" under GPLv3. That is very different from blending in GPL compatible code. For all practical purposes you can regard GPLv2+ as providing the same rights as GPLv3+, only differnces is that you can mix it with GPL2-only code, and fork it to GPL2-only code.

> Today… six years after release GPLv3 is still used by many times smaller number of projects than GPLv2 and even if you combine GPLv2 and GPLv3 you still have much smaller number that GPLv2 had ten years ago.

And why do you think this is? I can only see two important factors in keeping GPL2 alive. One is that Linus fought it, and he is pretty influential. The other is that FSF made GPLv2 and GPLv3 incompatible, a terrible mistake that makes me want to cry.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 23:54 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

You see, libstdc++ uses straight GPLv3 (not LGPL!)

This is factually incorrect. If libstdc++ used either license it would be nearly impossible to compile non-GPL C++ programs, because a lot of libstdc++ is implemented in header files.

See any file at all in libstdc++, and the Runtime Library Exception.

A license with this exception is GPL- and LGPL- and for that matter BSD-compatible, but it's not the GPL any more.

Stallman on GCC, LLVM, and copyleft

Posted Jan 29, 2014 23:56 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

And, er, you said as much in the next paragraph. I wish there was a way to delete stupid comments on LWN (or maybe just my own).

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 27, 2014 22:39 UTC (Mon) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (18 responses)

"without carrier subsidies iPhones are too expensive"

Those aren't subsidies. As with similar deals in the used car industry what's happening is that you're paying over the odds for a small unsecured loan, but it "feels" like you got something for free.

Cell service is worth maybe $15-20 per month. If you're paying more (or if your carrier tries to persuade you that shouldn't include say, text messages or Internet access which are clearly just service) then they are making a lot of money off you. If you're paying more to get a "free" phone then the phone wasn't free, was it? If you find you're paying $30 per month over two years for the "free" phone over and above what the actual service is worth, that phone cost you about $700 AND locked you into a deal you might have wished to change.

If you can afford a "subsidised" phone you could have more easily afforded to borrow money to pay for the phone outright.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 28, 2014 0:05 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (17 responses)

This is all well and good if you can actually find a plan which is $15-20 per month. Then you discussing is valid. In countries like US or Japan your choice is service without “free” or “cheap subsidized” phone or the same service for the same price without it (and in both cases it's not $15-20 per month, that's for sure). In such a case phone without “subsidy” is DOA. You may explain that “it's not really a subsidy” till you are blue in face, but phone is still DOA. Just ask Nokia (well, by now you'll need someone from “old Nokia”) which was extremely strong in US at the end of last century yet went to single-digits when it angered carriers (it refused to cripple their phones by disabling tethering: huge crime in their books).

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 28, 2014 0:19 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

there is some sign of hope in the US market, small player have been eliminating the subsidized service, and T-mobile has as well.

Let's hope t-mobile is successful and the other big carriers end up doing the same.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 28, 2014 10:41 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (10 responses)

> Just ask Nokia (well, by now you'll need someone from “old Nokia”) which was extremely strong in US at the end of last century yet went to single-digits when it angered carriers (it refused to cripple their phones by disabling tethering: huge crime in their books).

Please document this.In reality, tethering can be blocked in numerous ways, locking down a device is not necessary.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 29, 2014 7:12 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (9 responses)

> In reality, tethering can be blocked in numerous ways, locking down a device is not necessary.

Not really. If the mobile device doesn't tell the carrier that it's doing tethering, and instead uses the kernel masquerading functionality, the carrier can't tell what data originated from the phone and what originated from the network.

The most they can do is to be a mitm and look for things like user-agent values and block ones that they think are not on the phone (which breaks things for people who need to change their phone's user-agent to deal with a broken website)

David Lang

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 29, 2014 18:32 UTC (Wed) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (8 responses)

> Not really. If the mobile device doesn't tell the carrier that it's doing tethering, and instead uses the kernel masquerading functionality, the carrier can't tell what data originated from the phone and what originated from the network.

It is quite easy to have the phone delivered with various software locks to the consumer. Of course, hackers can circumvent it, especially if it is open source. For instance the carriers over here preloads the phones with their own apps, and you can not remove them in the app manager. How many go through the trouble of circumventing it? I did, but I am willing to bet very few. A hacker easily circumvents just about any lock on an iphone too, and this is fairly well known.

What I am trying to say is that all you need to do is to make it awkward to enable tethering, and the lock will work for 95% of the users. Even make it a breach of the contract, and even fewer will attempt circumventing it. Among those 5% circumventing it at least a couple of them would circumvent it regardless of what you do. In conclusion, I don't see any real issue for vendors/carriers. They get their money typically through two year contracts, and who really needs to lock down anything when you have a two year contract securing all payback.

There is no question that many of the device vendors want the freedom to lock down devices, and hence do not want GPLv3 in parts of the software stack like boot-loader or init-system. Still, from what I have seen (which may or may not be representative), the vendors of network routers and NAS devices have no more issues bundling Samba than they have bundling linux. This leads me to believe that they would bundle linux too even if it was GPLv3. I may of course be wrong, and since nobody called the bluff we will probably never know.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 29, 2014 18:58 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (7 responses)

the statement that I was responding to was that there were lots of ways to prevent tethering without locking down the phone.

I say that without locking down the phone, it's easy to have tethering enabled by loading things on the phone

you reply that if the vender puts things on the phone that the user can't remove, they can prevent tethering. In my book, that's locking down the phone. If it's not locked down, the user can remove those things.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 29, 2014 23:01 UTC (Wed) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (6 responses)

I think we are talking past eachother. I was simply talking about bundled apps and some modified system internals being enough to block most from tethering. With locking down the device I was thinking in the Tivo sense, which is quite different.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 30, 2014 1:51 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

I think we are using similar terms.

I'm saying that unless you do a tivo-type lockdown of the phone, your other bundled apps won't matter (if you decide to cripple the kernel that may be harder to fix)

If users can install their own stuff without a tivo type lockdown, then they can and will override whatever lockdown your bundled apps try to force.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 30, 2014 8:05 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (4 responses)

> I'm saying that unless you do a tivo-type lockdown of the phone, your other bundled apps won't matter

I believe we disagree here. I believe very few people will alter the OS image shipped with a smartphone, even with access to all source code. Therefore, I believe simply disabling stuff in the shipping image is sufficient to block most customers from tethering.

> If users can install their own stuff without a tivo type lockdown, then they can and will override whatever lockdown your bundled apps try to force.

As I said, people do this to iphones today, so even with a tivo type lockdown they can and will override. For a company (be it vendor or carrier), I believe the real issue is how many would do it given a certain level of inconvenience.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 30, 2014 10:20 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

it's funny that you use the iphone, because that is an example of a tivo type locked down device.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 30, 2014 14:43 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (2 responses)

> it's funny that you use the iphone, because that is an example of a tivo type locked down device.

Of course, that was why I used it as example. It is an example showing that in practise it is often impossible to lock down the device. Hence for any practical concerns whether you lock it down Tivo style or just make it inconvenient for the consumer to use it in unintended ways (like removing the tethering possibility from the system, requiring somebody to patch system internals to enable it again), can amount to the same end result for the vendor. They get their money, and they get fine grained control on what functionality the user has access to.

I have one very real life example of how ridiculous the Tivo stuff can be. As already mentioned HTC actually provides tools to unlock their devices, so you could say that those devices are not locked, but there is a level of inconvenience if you want to swap out the image it came with from the carrier. Now my daughter got a HTC Desire, and I wanted to flash a newer version of Android on it because HTC stopped providing newer versions of Android for it. I would say this is a prime example of what we are talking about here. I knew HTC provided tools, went over there downloaded the tools and started looking for documentation. I found the whole thing quite confusing, especially since it seemed geared towards windows users, and I only had linux. I ended up just deleting all of it, headed over to CyanogenMod and used their un-official tools to unlock the boot-loader, just as I did for my Tivotized Galaxy S2 earlier. You see, whether the device is Tivotized or not doesn't necessarily amount to much. Most funny part of the story? When I finally got the boot-loader unlocked, my daughter didn't want me to flash the device anyway. I usually follow the nerd slogan "if it works, fix it!", that may have something to do with it. I didn't even succeed in making my own daughter take advantage of the possibilities provided by an open device, simply because she did not trust anything but the official image from the carrier.

Moral of the story? Tivotization is plain stupid when it comes to consumers. I see no benefits for anybody. Even worse, as long as there is no software license pushing it away, I am afraid the madness will just continue for decades.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 31, 2014 0:04 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

I have several tivos that have been hacked for a _long_ time.

I am very aware that it's impossible to stop someone who's really determined.

However, lawsuits (or threats of lawsuits) against manufacturers are frequently based on how easy they make it to get at the data

and with the DMCA making it illegal to bypass even the most inept protections, there really is a point to them from a legal point of view.

Do not get me wrong, I think that these sorts of lockdowns, along with DRM are bad for customers, they don't stop the real bad guys and hurt legitimate users.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Feb 3, 2014 11:34 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

>When I finally got the boot-loader unlocked, my daughter didn't want me to flash the device anyway. I usually follow the nerd slogan "if it works, fix it!", that may have something to do with it. I didn't even succeed in making my own daughter take advantage of the possibilities provided by an open device, simply because she did not trust anything but the official image from the carrier.

To be fair, HTC's version of Android 2.2 is far better than any stock Android I've ever used. Compared to the 4.x on my N7, it's faster, slimmer, easier to use, and less buggy. Plus all the features added in later versions are either completely worthless to me, or outright antifeatures.

Also, reflashing always comes with some degree of risk, especially if you hope to do so without resetting the device to factory defaults. Case in point: an OTA update to the aforementioned N7 a couple of months back rendered it unbootable, and I've not yet found the time to work out how to fix it without wiping it completely.

If you actually want to *use* a device for its intended purpose, rather than just having it as a toy, it's perfectly reasonable to want to keep to the path.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 30, 2014 22:44 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (4 responses)

You're wrong about the "same price". The US carriers of course offer a far lower price for someone who doesn't want the carrier to supply a phone - but they call this a "discount" because that sounds better than admitting the phones cost money. $15-20 "discount" per month is not unusual although the terms vary, that's $360 to $480 over the course of the typical 24 month contract you'd be signing to get your "free" phone.

In the EU probably a regulator would have told them to stop the "discount" bullshit years ago, but this is the US we're talking about.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 30, 2014 22:58 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

>You're wrong about the "same price".
Not really. A couple of years ago AT&T was not offering any discount for bring-your-own devices. Has the situation changed?

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 31, 2014 0:05 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

not at AT&T

but at T-mobile and smaller companies it has.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 31, 2014 11:30 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (1 responses)

I am not a US resident, so it's not easy for me to actually walk through all the steps to buy service. But AT&T certainly advertises a $15 "discount".

It's hard to tell when this actually began, their "pay-for-the-phone separately" approach copying T-mobile was launched late last year, and the discount applies to people doing that too (because again, it's not really a "discount" it's just the real price without the cost of your "subsidised" phone) but it may have existed for a lot longer, that's just when they last announced a change to it.

It is (inevitably for the US carriers) more complicated than a straight $15, that's just the simple case where you have a phone and want service and keep saying "No" as they offer to pile on a tablet, a wireless dongle, international calling packages, a landline, streaming music, a sheepdog, the concept of marital fidelity, and whatever else they're selling today.

carrier "subsidy"

Posted Jan 31, 2014 20:55 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

they may have just changed this, but in October the local stores I spoke to would not offer any discount for me bringing my own phone.