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Android's "Non-Fragmentation Agreement"
superglaze writes "The biggest doubt cast over Android (whose SDK was released yesterday) has been the fact that much of it is licensed under Apache. There have been worries that manufacturers might fork the code road in a non-interoperable kind of way. I.e., they would have no obligation to feed back code to the wider Open Handset Alliance, or even tell the other members what alterations have been made. However, it turns out that Google made all the members sign a 'non-fragmentation agreement' to make sure everything works with everything. In theory at least. 'All of the partners have signed a non-fragmentation agreement saying they won't modify [the code] in non-compatible ways ... That is not to say that a company that is not part of the OHA could not do so.' Google's spokesperson highlighted the historical dangers of working with Java, the programming language that lies at the heart of Android. 'One of the current problems with mobile Java development is that Java has fragmented ... Java virtual machines have fragmented, but all the members of the OHA have agreed to use one virtual machine that can run script in Java'"
If Android had just used the GPL (which prohibits forking), then this problem would have avoided.
The GPL solves the problem by giving you freedom not by taking it away. Forking is not a problem when code is free as you can tell by looking at the hundreds of "forks" in the Debian repository, or if you look at the thousands of distributions that all get along famously. Java has problems because it was not free and two or three companies were able to control it's destiny. Real community developed and owned software does not have this problem because everyone is free to ignore, remove or otherwise fix problems that an antisocial person might add.
For example, if Emacs had used the GPL, instead of the Apache licence, the XEmacs fork would never have occurred.
The XEmacs fork was permitted under the GPL and would not have been a problem if the XEmacs people had been careful about licensing. The problem came when they were unable to verify that all of their code was free. This allowed anti-social contributors to deny distribution of the whole until all of the code was replaced with GPL'd versions.
if Gnome and KDE would both switch to using the GPL licence, then the projects would just magically merge into one, and we wouldn't have the duplication of effort and lack of standards that you currently see on the Linux desktop.
Gnome and KDE are GPL'd, work very well with each other and are good as separate projects. I run Gnome and KDE applications under other window managers without problem. The "Linux Desktop" is far more unified than non free equivalents from M$ and others where you can't be sure the clipboard is going to work across applications or the network. GNOME and KDE have different approaches to the same problems, so the user gets to chose what works best for them. Users can also chose from a dozen other good window managers and frameworks. This is a wonderful thing because one size does not fit all. Once again, this is because the software is free and the community can make things work.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
GP is a troll. The same message gets posted every now and then.
Sent from my desktop computer