Avoiding the coming IoT dystopia

Posted Feb 14, 2019 15:33 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510)
In reply to: Avoiding the coming IoT dystopia by felixfix
Parent article: Avoiding the coming IoT dystopia

I knew a components engineer whose entire job consisted of scouring hundreds of data books in different languages for equivalent components which were cheaper; taking even a full week to save a penny per unit paid his salary and more.

One moral to take from that is that per-unit costs really dominate when you're selling a massive number of units.

So if the cost of GPL compliance is a fixed cost (some up-front legal and developer review), and the risks are per-unit (per-unit penalties, or products taken off the market), then that might motivate higher GPL compliance in such cases?

Any manufacturer who tried to do right by the GPL would go out of business from all the price shoppers.

But, point taken that given that extreme price pressure, it could be hard to comply unless the risks of noncompliance are real.

Avoiding the coming IoT dystopia

Posted Feb 15, 2019 14:59 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

"So if the cost of GPL compliance is a fixed cost "

The legal review, download link for the source, etc. is fixed cost. The extra USB port, button, connector, pin, etc. that would tell the device it's OK to download and use a new image from the owner (so the owner can actually install the modified GPL software) - that's a per-unit cost.