The fact of the matter is that Android is fully funded and developed by Google and you kinda don't have much standing to control what they do with their project and how - especially if all you can say is that their work is bad.

You can be unhappy about it, but it doesn't change that its their work and their money on the line here with very little relationship to you or your wishes. You're not even a paying customer.

This doesn't apply to "any product or changes" at large.

Not really. Unless you are redistributing it does not affect you at all.

> Something like the GPL is complex and non-standard as far as its interactions with the legal system go

it is widely used, and most people are running some copyleft software anyway, most commonly GPL or a variant such as LGPL. Linux servers, Android phones, routers, web browsers....

> There are legitimate uses for permissive licenses and I still use them for those.

The parent didn't talk about forcing developers to choose copyleft. And you ignored the stated legitimate reasons for choosing copyleft in most cases if you care about the society.

So "to each their own" only goes so far.

One can very well accept that other devs/teams have different ideas and opinions && that they can (by law) have such ideas and opinions, but also think that they have them for the wrong reasons, and that they shouldn't have them, and that we'd all be better off if they didn't.

> There are developers who prefer MIT not because they're a "big player" or "because truth make people uncomfortable", people simply have different preference for what the ideal license is for their project.

Did you miss this part in my comment?:

> There are legitimate uses for permissive licenses and I still use them for those.

Or this part from GP's comment?:

> being able to do this is the reason why companies have brainwashed the Internet into ...

Or this part?:

> ... choosing the MIT license for everything

(emphasis mine) All of these imply that the companies did a mass campaign and not individual brainwashing. They also imply that the MIT license is not suitable for everything and by corollary that there are instances where they do apply. All of it are aimed at the companies that resorted to these underhanded tactics. Where does any of these imply that every single use of the MIT license is due to brainwashing? I can't understand how anyone concludes instead that it's all a personal attack on MIT license users (that includes me too).

> If you cannot deal with that, that sounds like a you problem, but judging by your comments, you're not exactly gonna re-evaluate with a different perspective, since you seem unable to understand others have different ideas and opinions than you.

Not only does one have to deal with people reinterpreting others' comments according to their convenience, they also have to withstand guilt tripping based on it. And the irony is that you cite my complaint about the same issue for it!

Large companies will self-enforce, as they already do with GPL and "open" LLMs that are dual licensed by company size. Small companies don't care either way and are hard to enforce, so that works.

Any pointers to open/closed vendors and projects which use this kind of honor system?

EU CRA has "commercial use" definitions to differentiate OSS contributors and OSS consumers.

In order to build a custom Rom, you need three things: the kernel tree, the device tree, and the binary blobs.

The binary blobs can be extracted from a running phone.

The kernel tree is GPL-licensed, so almost all phones have kernel trees releases, and if they don't you can ask the manufacturer for it.

The device tree on the other hand, is created from scratch for each phone. As such, there is no pre-existing license, and therefore no legal obligation to release device tree sources, so almost no manufacturer does. The only notable exception is Google with their Nexus and Pixel phones. (But this has stopped since with the Android 16 release)

We can safely assume that the manufacturers that don't release the device trees, wouldn't have released kernel trees if they weren't obliged to.

To go into more details:

The device trees are relatively easy to make. So, their absence doesn't represent a big hurdle. See for example https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-how-to-make-a-device-tree-for-...

But adding support for a device to the Linux Kernel requires _huge_ reverse-engineering efforts. This is why there's still no fully functional Android build for iPhones.

Are you arguing that more good things would go upstream if it were licensed non-permissive or are you giving an example were it works well enough?

I would be happy to hear from anyone who knows about this subject if what I'm saying is correct.

That linux uses GPL is entirely irrelevant to the vast majority of uses of it. What hosting services are customizing their kernels with proprietary code?

Because failing to manage their GPL obligations led to a lawsuit for D-Link followed by a compulsion to release a lot more code than they ever planned to share online, to the company's detriment.

You can pretty much look at the stock value before and after they lost the lawsuit. There was, notably, a big value spike immediately after, but the value then settled down to an average of around 15 a share, markedly below their previous 30 a share.

For some companies, the value is in the proprietary content and using GPL would be shooting themselves in the foot.

The tl;dr is that for any GPLv3 software that you ship, you have to also give your users a way to install a modified copy. If you're trying to ship a secured product, that basically means that you have to give code/rootfs signing keys to your customers. This is a non-starter for many kinds of products that need tamper protection (whether for product, legal, or safety reasons).

The Linux kernel remains on GPLv2, and is still used quite heavily. Most GNU software (coreutils, gcc, etc) moved to GPLv3 and then commercial companies abandoned them in favor of permissively-licensed replacements.

It doesn't force you to go after them.

With MIT, you Google would have no obligation at all to provide anything.

The GPL is a statement you're making about the rights that other people are granted when it comes to your code. It's not a personal pledge. Exactly like every other license btw; they aren't oaths. You're also not required to police or sue people who break your license. It's your code.

Very simplified differences:

GPL: you shared the code with others, those others, if they modify your code, must continue to share their changes with others

MIT: you shared the code with others, those others can do as they please, including not sharing any changes they make to the code with anyone

I don't get it. Why not release it now and start the timer now? Shitty OEMs would get in trouble (not Google) and that would be a fantastic outcome. Am I missing something?

Stop blaming the EU. They didn't make security worse. It's Google and the other manufacturers who decided to respond to this law by using a loophole that made security far worse.