Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FSF Rattles Tivo Saber At Apple

Posted by kdawson on from the interesting-to-try-and-prove-that dept.

Ohreally_factor takes us back to Friday when both the iPhone and the GPLv3 were released. "This article at Tectonic suggests that Apple's iPhone might run afoul of the GPL. Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF is quoted as saying: 'Today, Steve Jobs and Apple release a product crippled with proprietary software and digital restrictions: crippled, because a device that isn't under the control of its owner works against the interests of its owner. We know that Apple has built its operating system, OS X, and its web browser Safari, using GPL-covered work — it will be interesting to see to what extent the iPhone uses GPLed software.' Might there really be GPLed code in the iPhone? It's well known that OS X built on BSD, which of course uses the BSD license. Webkit is based on KHTML which uses the LGPL."

2 of 571 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How isn't this FUD? by ClaraBow · · Score: 1, Troll

    "You don't want your computer to be an open platform," meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the Internet, says Jobs. "You need it to work when you need it to work. Cox doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."

    Well, the whole network went down
    yesterday without any help.

  2. Re:How isn't this FUD? by mr_matticus · · Score: 1, Troll

    If indeed RMS is a blowhard jackass, what does that say about a company which chooses to use code originally licensed under the GPL which said jackass created, in order to spread software freedom? Nothing at all. RMS created the license, not the software, and it's not about "spreading freedom" in the slightest. It's about spreading software socialism and quid pro quo.

    There's nothing wrong with that, but RMS takes a very "come with us or burn at the stake" approach to it. If he really wanted to spread software freedom, he'd be peddling public domain code. RMS doesn't want to give anything away without strings--he wants to pretend to give it away, and then use that as leverage to demand that he be able to appropriate anything of yours, no matter how small or great the benefit of GPL code provided your project.