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Wired on Apple OSS License Revisions
Doodhwala wrote in to send us a wired story
on the updated Apple License
for Open Source code. Talks about various fixes that have made
an appearance in this revision, following the criticism
they took last time around.
Let me save some people some time and summarize what they will end up typing...
"The APSL wasn't perfect the first time around, so let's persecute them! Oh, it's right now... it isn't exactly like the GPL so it sucks! It's a few hundred words longer than the GPL, I don't have the attention span to read it all! And they're a corporation, therefore no matter what, what they are doing is only for evil reasons! Even if they opened everything up, went out of business and donated every last penny to charities, they're still evil and always will be!"
"What's with those iMacs? Those only appeal to women and gays!! I have proof of this because one gay person at my college has an iMac! And we all know being gay is just WRONG! Why did they make those iMacs!??! (Even though they make non iMac computers, but let's ignore that fact)."
"And how dare Apple advertise and promote their own products! Those evil greedy corporate bastards! And let's hold grudges because they cancelled the Lisa and I once had one! Now I will forever hate them because of some mistakes in their past!"
"Most of all, they're an evil empire! With over 10% of the computer market, they are a force to be feared! They just have sooo much power over standards... Look how many standards they are supporting with Quicktime 4, I bet they plan on ruining them all somehow! Look how proprietery they are!! I mean, come on! They are workers of Satan... the employees probably belong to the Trenchcoat mafia!"
"And that Think Different campaign, pfft. If people really thought different, they'd all be using Linux like the rest of us because it is the REAL rebel OS. "
"And if we can't think of anything to say, we'll bring up political philosophies. Down with corporations and capitalism! What has capitalism ever done for us!?!? They only exist to make money, therefore they do not care AT ALL what their customers want, but only what their shareholders want! (Let's ignore the fact the key thing with surviving as a company is pleasing customers, drawing in new ones, and providing a service(s) people want... in order to stay afloat)."
"But wait! Linux can be used on both sides on this political debate! It helps capitalism thrive! And once all programmers who are now getting paid to program at the anti-capitalist corporations are doing tech support if even that, the world will be a happier, pro capitalistic place!"
We haven't. Not yet, anyway. We're still listening to public comments, such us on the <license-discuss@opensource.org> mailing list.