[foooorsyth]

They’re not violating the OSM data license. Why would it “not sit well” with you that they keep their client closed source and try to earn a real living?

>you can have a paid product but open source the project

And you’ll instantly create 10 competitors overnight. If you use the GPL, those competitors will just be Chinese or from some non-western jurisdiction that doesn’t care about GPL enforcement.

Man, rms followers are annoying. Stop trying to GPL the entire internet. Magic Earth is a great tool. A big part of why it’s great is probably because its authors were motivated by profit.

[dspillett]

While your main point, that in this case no license or other agreement is being broken and there is no evidence to suggest that the OSM project is unhappy with the situation…

> If you use the GPL, those competitors will just be Chinese or from some non-western jurisdiction that doesn’t care about GPL enforcement.

This is true – some in China will use GPL code and not stick to the license and that may be a competitive advantage over companies that do play ball¹. But other people ignoring the license should not be considered a reason for anyone else not to, and that shouldn't stop people choosing the GPL if that is what they want for their software.

> Man, rms followers are annoying. Stop trying to GPL the entire internet.

Man, anti-GPL people are annoying. Stop trying to have someone else's cake and eat it. :)

--

[1] Onyx and their Boox range² being one example, last I heard the company was trying to play the race card and make it an anti-China-sentiment issue instead of a blatantly-disregarding-a-license-agreement matter.

[2] Not the only issue that puts me off those devices, apparently hidden call home code is present and always active on at least some of them.

[foooorsyth]

I’m not anti-GPL. I’m anti-FSF-fanatics-applying-GPL-dogma-to-non-GPL-projects. OSM doesn’t use the GPL or a GPL-like license for their data.

[edoloughlin]

The post doesn't mention RMS, GPL or the entire internet. Is everything ok?

[foooorsyth]

Yawn. It's classic FSF attitude, and it's a perfect microcosm of GPLv3's goals of preventing things like locked-down hardware in the scope of a software license. In this case, the commenter I replied to thinks it wrong that users of OSM's data product, which has copyleft clauses in the scope of the data only, should be able to sell a closed-source application using that data. Which is of course not the will of the data product creators (the only people that have a real say in this), and is just annoying rms cult dogma cut and paste. For the record, Magic Earth is far and away the best OSM-based non-big-tech mapping product. It absolutely blows away GPLv3 products like OSMAnd. So yeah, it's annoying hearing people clamoring for its source to be opened, or soft-shaming the authors for trying to earn a real living with their great product that's perfectly inline with the data provider's license.