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Android Devices Are Hives of License Violations
inkscapee writes "Android developers are paying little attention to Free/Open Source software licenses and have a 71% violation rate. Come on folks, FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certainly easier than proprietary software licenses, and less punitive. But it seems even the tiny hoops that FOSS requires are too much for devs eager to cash in."
The article doesn't mention Android separately. It has one set of numbers for both Android and iOS. Exact quote:
A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance. OpenLogic scanned 635 apps, including both free and paid on the Apple App store and Google Android Marketplace. Of those 635 scanned apps, 52 apps include Apache licensed code while 16 included GPL/LGPL licensed code.
Who the hell wrote that summary?
It may be 7 digits, but at least it's a semiprime
Wait a minute here, the linked article says "A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance." Yet the headline for this story mentions only Android. I understand it's become fashionable to bash Android lately, but this seems a bit egregious. The problem appears to be endemic across all mobile devices.
How does 52 apps out of 635 add up to 71%??
You flag the app, and Google will remove the apps from the android market. Why are Google to blame here? iOS has violations too. http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/The+Blocks+Cometh/news.asp?c=26696
Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
With commercial software you are often presented with a library or set of tools you can or can't bundle with your product, past that there is no code to deal with most of the time..
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Wouldn't jumping through tiny hoops be harder?
Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
As a commercial software developer myself, I'm glad at least one other person on Slashdot understands this!
For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.
You flag the app, and Google will remove the apps from the android market. Why are Google to blame here? iOS has violations too. http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/The+Blocks+Cometh/news.asp?c=26696
Ok, that's one iOS example down, 177,499 to go to equal Android ( at 71% of the 250,000 current iPhone apps).
I retract my previous post. I didn't RTFA, and didn't realize the Summary was misleading.
Sorry, Androids, I apologize. I guess we're ALL in the license-violation-boat together...
From the press release for the study:
OpenLogic found that among the applications that use the Apache or GPL/LGPL licenses, the compliance rate was only 29%. Android compliance was 27% and iPhone/iOS compliance was 32%. Overall compliance of Android applications using the GPL/LGPL was 0%.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Well, that was the original intent. RMS envisioned a world in which all software was Free (Libre), and then he thought about how this could be brought about. What he came up with was two-pronged. 1) copyleft 2) write lots of really excellent software, so excellent that people will want to use it even though they know they will get sucked into the copyleft. It appears to be working.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
As a commercial software developer myself, I'm glad at least one other person on Slashdot understands this!
For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.
Which was the intent, free to extend, not so free to commercialize. TANSTAAFL
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Not sure why you're modded Funny because your statement pretty much matches my experience.
I've found commercial licenses far easier to deal with than GPL, and that alone is why our company doesn't bother with anything that has GPL attached to it, its just not worth the effort.
Generally, there are BSD licensed equivilents of the major GPL libraries anyway so why screw with it?
Even Apples licensing is far easier to deal with than GPL, its just a minefield.
I realize I'm picking on GPL, but its true of just about all Copy-left licenses, which are most of the time more restrictive than commercial licenses I've dealt with.
Its sad that its far cheaper overall for our company to pay 100k in licensing fees than to use a copy-left license.
I'm sure I'll get marked as a troll but the reality of it is, copy-left is a fucking pain in the ass unless you are also copy-left. More software isn't than is.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The linked article says "A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance." So I guess they ARE saying around 177,500 iOS apps are also offenders.
But I am taking the whole article with some skepticism.
HTC EVO 4G LTE w/ CM 10.2 | NookColor w/ CM 10.2 | Samsung Epic 4G w/ CM 10.1
If you read the article aside from the summary leaving out iOS this is all really an advertisement to sell you a product from OpenLogic called OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX).
http://www.openlogic.com/products/olex.php
This product will certify your source code is compliant after it scans it...
As a computing professional, I find all of this whining about Free Software license complexity rather embarrassing frankly.
Electronic Arts and Oracle can manage navigating this "quagmire". Why can't you?
One really wonders what an SBA audit of you whiners would turn up.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
copy-left is a fucking pain in the ass unless you are also copy-left
That's pretty much the point.
Oops, that's ambigious language.
copy-left is a fucking pain in the ass unless you are also copy-left
That's pretty much the intention.
If you use a piece of Free Software in your software product and then distribute that product and you fail to follow the license then the folks that wrote that particular piece of software have you by the nuts. You might not like whining, but I can guarantee you that you'll like litigation a lot less. Especially because you will lose, and the penalties for copyright violation are ridiculous (at least in the U.S.). Assuming, of course, that the folks that wrote the Free Software that you "borrowed" actually care, which is probably not the case.
In fact, in this particular case the article is basically about a company that scans people's software for them, finds out if they have any licensing issues, and then offers to help you sort the licensing issues out if they find something bad. It's not really the Free Software developers that are whining. Instead it is a third party that wants you to pay them money to help you sort out a licensing issue on the off chance that the Free Software developers *do* decide to complain. You might not think that this is a service, but your legal counsel probably has a different opinion.
Hmm, something's fishy here... oh, wait. I see. It's right there in TFA:
OpenLogic sells a product called the OLEX App Store Edition which provides tooling that can be used by developers to do a self-service scan on their apps prior to submitting to the app store and by app stores to track open source compliance.
How convenient! A one-company study -- using undisclosed methodology -- draws broad and irrational conclusions that suggest that people really need to buy its products and services. Amazing!
2. They offer to sell developers scanning software so devs can make sure their apps are in compliance.
3. PROFIT!?!
Color me skeptical.
Oh really? Can you please tell us what would be the cost of building a product on a proprietary closed-source software program which doesn't grant anyone the right to extend it, let alone commercialize any derivative work?
It appears that you are one of those ignorant FLOSS detractors who tries to bitch that hijacking other people's code is "most expensive" while the alternative is... you investing your own time to fill all the countless man-hours that it took other people to build the software you are trying to sell off as if it was your own? Because you sure can't just pick up, for example, Microsoft Office, tweak it's UI and sell it off as Teckla's Office suite.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.