Amusing article about busybox

Felipe Contreras felipe.contreras at gmail.com
Sat Feb 11 13:00:38 UTC 2012


On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 1:56 AM, Rich Felker <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:16:06PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> We don't care about compliance, compliance is almost useless. What we
>> need is for them to become members of the community, and that can only
>> happen within, by a change in culture, understanding how open source
>> works.
>
> It would work just as well for them to give the competitive advantage
> to companies that are complying. You have to think about global
> effects on the software ecosystem, not just a single company.

The competitive advantage doesn't come from compliance, it comes from
being a good community member.

>> Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that
>> code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's
>> basically useless to developers. I hope I don't have to tell you that
>> many people are angry about this, and have called Android a fork. How
>> are you going to solve this? Suing?
>
> If developers care about its utility to them, they can read and merge
> the code.

Then why hasn't the Android code been merged?

That's not how development works.

> What matters a lot more is utility to users who have
> received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware
> without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that
> the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them.

If their devices are not locked.

And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on
their TVs, or such.

Keep up with enforcement, and eventually you would have only a few
pieces of software with GPL to enforce on consumer devices.

Besides, if you really care about users, why not wait until some user
requests GPL enforcement? I bet many consumer devices would not have a
single user that requests that.

>> Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal)
>> from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much.
>
> Enforcement creates a cost for companies that take advantage of free
> software and refuse to play by the rules. This in turn helps give
> competitive advantage to the ones who do play by the rules, and
> creates an incentive for the ones who are infringing to change their
> behavior.

They already have a competitive advantage. Enforcement is only making
companies that otherwise be good citizens (Sony) walk away,
fragmenting the community, and decreasing the competitive advantage of
compliant companies.

>> > Otherwise, many companies merely ignore the GPL.
>>
>> GPL is not important; it's just a tool. What is important for
>> developers is to get contributions back.
>>
>> In the case of Sony, this tool is doing the opposite; not only is it
>> taking potential contributions from Sony away, but it's encouraging
>> other people to do the same (since toybox is also open source).
>
> Toybox has little to do with Sony. Rob can be abrasive, but I've
> known him a long time, and his main interest in Toybox is frustration
> with all the hideous hacks, obfuscation, ...

That's not what he has been telling the people that are running the
toybox stories.

>> Perhaps it's time to write a special clause that says that the scope
>> of busybox enforcement should be restricted to busybox (not used as a
>> proxy).
>
> Why? I would hope many developers would be against such a policy. The
> most useful part of Busybox enforcement is as a proxy. Nobody actually
> cares about the modifications to Busybox (if any); they care about the
> kernel patches and other stuff that's essential to using the hardware
> Busybox is distributed on.

Exactly. And if you don't see how that's unfair, and abusive, I guess
there's nothing else to discuss.

It seems to me like you are exploiting a legal loophole to play a
political game against companies to use a bigger stick as you can,
regardless from the wishes of the copyright holders, and without users
requesting any of that.

People would walk away from the GPL tanks to this, specially on the
software you use as proxy, in order to diminish your abuse. And this
is just doing a disservice to the open source community.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras


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