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I think the truth is that money wins. It doesn't really matter that GPLv3 is stricter than 2. Corporate interests didn't like GPLv2 either. They just dealt with

I think the truth is that money wins. It doesn't really matter that GPLv3 is stricter than 2. Corporate interests didn't like GPLv2 either. They just dealt with it to use Linux. I think the current state of things was basically inevitable. Corporations love open source because it means they can outsource labor to "the community" and use that labor to profit on their actual cash cows. The free software fight has already lost in spirit. It's not even clear that it ever could have really survived with how complex software has become, anyway. Are any of us really able to customize MS Excel to do something new that we want anyway?

CJefferson 6y ago
Various companies, Apple most notably, clearly avoid GPLv3. For years Mac OS X has had the last GPLv2 version of bash.
- Twirrim 6y ago
  Amazon had GPLv3 blacklisted when I worked there. Nothing new by way of legal concerns about GPLv3. No lawyer is going to advise a company to take actions that will likely see the company go to court to explore just how much of a license is legally enforceable, and just what it actually means.
- ragnese 6y ago
  And they also avoided GPLv2. Sure, they had bash, but all of the "coreutils" were the BSD flavors. That an exception was made for one or a couple of things doesn't exactly counter my claim very strongly.
  - dwaite 6y ago
    They accepted the sister LGPLv2 license as the basis of WebKit, and had other tools like Samba integrated. They may have avoided the GPLv2 when easy, but they outright banned GPLv3 (froze bash and gcc on the last version while working to remove them; wrote their own from-scratch CIFS implementation to drop samba).
    - ragnese 6y ago
      They accepted those things because they had nothing else. The forked WebKit from KHTML, which was LGPL. It's not like they chose that license. Same with Samba. It was either take those things or invent something new. Especially at that point in Apple's history, they probably didn't have the resources to NIH everything. Today, that would be a different story, I'm sure. I understand your point about outright banning GPLv3 vs just avoiding GPLv2. But I have to wonder what would have happened in an alternate timeline where KHTML, Samba, and GCC were all GPLv3 at the point in time where this universe's Apple adopted them. Would they have just skipped making their own browser and integrating with SMB?
  - zests 6y ago
    Darwin is a BSD so maybe there is another explanation for that.
  - CountSessine 6y ago
    That’s probably more because of MacOS’s FreeBSD heritage. They used BSD tools where they could get them and used gnu where they must.
    - ragnese 6y ago
      Sure. That's true. But follow the rabbit hole. Why do they have a BSD heritage? Why doesn't BSD use GNU software? It's anti-copyleft all the way down. Long before GPLv3.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Because BSD is older than GNU, and NeXTSTEP was based on BSD.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - toast0 6y ago
    Running GNU coreutils with a highly BSD kernel is a recipe for sadness. If you don't believe me, try Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.
    - ragnese 6y ago
      Like what? I install the GNU coreutils with macports on my work Mac. It seems fine.
      - toast0 6y ago
        Sorry. I forgot coreutils doesn't mean core utilities, like ifconfig and route and netstat and those things.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  And as we all know, FreeBSD has enjoyed plenty of Apple contributions upstream. Without GPL, all commercial UNIXes would be around and Linux would be just another school clone.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"I think the truth is that money wins.. the current state of things was basically inevitable" If corporate money always wins, then why do we have environmental legislation, worker protection laws, 40 hour work weeks, overtime pay, anti-child labor laws, and unions? Sure, in some places and in some cases these have been violated or aren't as strong as they could be, but you can't say they they don't exist and corporations and money always win. Something else we need to keep in mind is that corporations are made of people, and the opinions of these people can and do change. Plenty of things that used to be unthinkable in the past are now commonplace, and plenty of things (like slavery or segregation) that were ubiquitous and seemed inevitable to a lot of people back then came to be rejected by society at large.
- ragnese 6y ago
  I mean... I get what you're saying, but most of the things you listed as victories over corporate money happened 100 years ago. That says something about the current struggle.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    So should we give up because things are currently not going our way?
    - ragnese 6y ago
      Not at all. I was merely arguing against the assertion that GPLv3 was a mistake and that things would be different if GNU left it at GPLv2. I'm an idealist. I do lots of things that are inconvenient and feel like a losing battle.

CJefferson 6y ago

Various companies, Apple most notably, clearly avoid GPLv3. For years Mac OS X has had the last GPLv2 version of bash.

Twirrim 6y ago
Amazon had GPLv3 blacklisted when I worked there. Nothing new by way of legal concerns about GPLv3. No lawyer is going to advise a company to take actions that will likely see the company go to court to explore just how much of a license is legally enforceable, and just what it actually means.
ragnese 6y ago
And they also avoided GPLv2. Sure, they had bash, but all of the "coreutils" were the BSD flavors. That an exception was made for one or a couple of things doesn't exactly counter my claim very strongly.
- dwaite 6y ago
  They accepted the sister LGPLv2 license as the basis of WebKit, and had other tools like Samba integrated. They may have avoided the GPLv2 when easy, but they outright banned GPLv3 (froze bash and gcc on the last version while working to remove them; wrote their own from-scratch CIFS implementation to drop samba).
  - ragnese 6y ago
    They accepted those things because they had nothing else. The forked WebKit from KHTML, which was LGPL. It's not like they chose that license. Same with Samba. It was either take those things or invent something new. Especially at that point in Apple's history, they probably didn't have the resources to NIH everything. Today, that would be a different story, I'm sure. I understand your point about outright banning GPLv3 vs just avoiding GPLv2. But I have to wonder what would have happened in an alternate timeline where KHTML, Samba, and GCC were all GPLv3 at the point in time where this universe's Apple adopted them. Would they have just skipped making their own browser and integrating with SMB?
- zests 6y ago
  Darwin is a BSD so maybe there is another explanation for that.
- CountSessine 6y ago
  That’s probably more because of MacOS’s FreeBSD heritage. They used BSD tools where they could get them and used gnu where they must.
  - ragnese 6y ago
    Sure. That's true. But follow the rabbit hole. Why do they have a BSD heritage? Why doesn't BSD use GNU software? It's anti-copyleft all the way down. Long before GPLv3.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Because BSD is older than GNU, and NeXTSTEP was based on BSD.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- toast0 6y ago
  Running GNU coreutils with a highly BSD kernel is a recipe for sadness. If you don't believe me, try Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.
  - ragnese 6y ago
    Like what? I install the GNU coreutils with macports on my work Mac. It seems fine.
    - toast0 6y ago
      Sorry. I forgot coreutils doesn't mean core utilities, like ifconfig and route and netstat and those things.
pjmlp 6y ago
And as we all know, FreeBSD has enjoyed plenty of Apple contributions upstream. Without GPL, all commercial UNIXes would be around and Linux would be just another school clone.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"I think the truth is that money wins.. the current state of things was basically inevitable" If corporate money always wins, then why do we have environmental legislation, worker protection laws, 40 hour work weeks, overtime pay, anti-child labor laws, and unions? Sure, in some places and in some cases these have been violated or aren't as strong as they could be, but you can't say they they don't exist and corporations and money always win. Something else we need to keep in mind is that corporations are made of people, and the opinions of these people can and do change. Plenty of things that used to be unthinkable in the past are now commonplace, and plenty of things (like slavery or segregation) that were ubiquitous and seemed inevitable to a lot of people back then came to be rejected by society at large.

ragnese 6y ago
I mean... I get what you're saying, but most of the things you listed as victories over corporate money happened 100 years ago. That says something about the current struggle.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  So should we give up because things are currently not going our way?
  - ragnese 6y ago
    Not at all. I was merely arguing against the assertion that GPLv3 was a mistake and that things would be different if GNU left it at GPLv2. I'm an idealist. I do lots of things that are inconvenient and feel like a losing battle.