this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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How are phones free-software-hostile? I know IOS is, but Android not really. There's a list of open source Android distributions. Although not very good, they are viable.
It does feel out of place how that isn't in the GPL.
Yeah, I get that. This is why I'm not fully in agreement with Perens that this is an urgent problem.
Because the whole idea of the GPL was to usher in a future that was like the environment RMS grew up in, where you always had the source code to all your stuff and you could examine or modify or build on it. Linux machines are in actual practice that way, which is super cool. Android phones are basically not, from the viewpoint of almost any mortal human. I think the argument is that the efforts that the manufacturers make to close off modifications to the phones, and then put software on them that's sometimes hostile to the best interests of the phone owner, means they shouldn't be able to use all this GPL-licensed software for free in order to build the phones they're selling.