Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 1, 2020 11:38 UTC (Fri) by joib (subscriber, #8541)
In reply to: Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference by NYKevin
Parent article: Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

I have to say I'm feeling sympathetic towards Landley's, and now jra's, arguments.

Though jra goes a bit further and argues for focusing on "documented, interoperable protocols", as an approach more in line with what's relevant today and more likely to be successful than expanding and enforcing copyleft.

But how do we do that in practice? What ultimately caused Microsoft to open up and document the SMB protocol suite? Can that same approach be successful in other areas?

Videos from the 2020 Copyleft Conference

Posted May 1, 2020 12:53 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> But how do we do that in practice? What ultimately caused Microsoft to open up and document the SMB protocol suite? Can that same approach be successful in other areas?

The short version -- it took nine years and an anti-trust lawsuit by the EU commission.

(If they hadn't been so dominant in the market, the EU wouldn't have had grounds to step in. But at the same time, if they hadn't been so dominant, the odds are they'd have been more open in an attempt to gain more market share..)

So, no, I don't think that approach is scalable.