It’s an inevitable consequence of permissive licensing, especially on behalf of a company as heavily invested in walled gardens as Apple. They won’t do anything they’re not forced to do, unless it will somehow benefit them way more than anyone else. It’s as simple as that.
They also do it with Copyleft stuff. But yeah, I am not surprised at all. I am more surprised that there are examples like Valve that do contribute back despite it potentially also benefiting shitty freeloaders like Apple.
Do they do it with copyleft stuff? As far as I know, Apple has taken an aggressive stance against using or distributing GPL software, like refusing to ship modern (>3) versions of Bash, pushing for the adoption of Clang over GCC, and banning GPL software from the App Store.
Yeah, but sometimes they do use (L)GPL software like the example of WINE above. They just make sure not to depend on it in any substancial way and just leech of other’s improvements or as in the case of CUPS hire the main dev just to quarantine him in a cellar or so somewhere until he resigns out of frustration.
LGPL is still permissive as far as I’m concerned! But yeah, I get your point. The reality is that corporations like Apple will never do anything but (being optimistic…) the bare legal minimum, and permissive licensing willingly and knowingly grants everyone the right to take your work, extend it, and then pretend it’s their own with nothing more than a footnote in a Credits text no one reads. It’s leechable by design.
It’s an inevitable consequence of permissive licensing, especially on behalf of a company as heavily invested in walled gardens as Apple. They won’t do anything they’re not forced to do, unless it will somehow benefit them way more than anyone else. It’s as simple as that.
They also do it with Copyleft stuff. But yeah, I am not surprised at all. I am more surprised that there are examples like Valve that do contribute back despite it potentially also benefiting shitty freeloaders like Apple.
Do they do it with copyleft stuff? As far as I know, Apple has taken an aggressive stance against using or distributing GPL software, like refusing to ship modern (>3) versions of Bash, pushing for the adoption of Clang over GCC, and banning GPL software from the App Store.
Yeah, but sometimes they do use (L)GPL software like the example of WINE above. They just make sure not to depend on it in any substancial way and just leech of other’s improvements or as in the case of CUPS hire the main dev just to quarantine him in a cellar or so somewhere until he resigns out of frustration.
LGPL is still permissive as far as I’m concerned! But yeah, I get your point. The reality is that corporations like Apple will never do anything but (being optimistic…) the bare legal minimum, and permissive licensing willingly and knowingly grants everyone the right to take your work, extend it, and then pretend it’s their own with nothing more than a footnote in a Credits text no one reads. It’s leechable by design.
Good god, I despise corporations, but especially Apple.