Xiaomi has announced their spectacularly spec’ed Mi Note Pro, which features the latest in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors alongside a big 2K display and 4GB of RAM for a killer price. That being said, there’s something that is not-so-good about Xiaomi’s offerings that is a concern to many developers, especially many found here on XDA: Xiaomi’s repeated violations of the GPLv2 license for the Linux kernel which Android (and thus Xiaomi’s devices), is built on.
Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me.
So they should fix their GPL issues and all that. Sure. No doubt. Absolutely.
But, MAN!!!, that device is awesome.
The fix is simple. Call Linux with the rest of OSS communist and complain to the party that Xiaomi is anti-communist!
Linux has a phone number? Tell me!!?!?!
The good O’ US of A is probably far closer to being Communist than modern China.
There is only kleptocracy
It’s not about who’s more communist, it’s about hypocrisy.
I can’t tell if you’re trolling or you’re just really stupid.
That’s exactly what I thought. I almost down voted it, but I decided to just let it go thinking maybe there was a joke in there I wasn’t getting… At least it wasn’t just me
The irony. I get downvoted for not downvoting someone…
Neither. It’s a joke. (Hint: the joke is about China, not about free software.)
It’s called satire.
For people that are now aware it’s about the clash of communist ideals and privately appropriated rights.
Oh well, patents are ridiculous and irrelevant, and should be done away with. Isn’t that the mantra that has been stated over and over and over on this site? Xiaomi can “copy” all they want, if any company decides to sue because of the copying, it is that company who is in the wrong, not Xiaomi.
The whole concept of copyright is quite a recent invention. Nothing but international trades agreements obliges a country from respecting foreign laws and regulations. And these trade agreements end often as the richest countries imposing their standards over the weakests, asking for open market access while ensuring protectionism inside.
If China decides that GPL do not exist, they can do anything they want for products sold in China.
“La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure” as wrote La Fontaine.
Edited 2015-01-18 21:20 UTC
Juridical security is a staple for any business deal, international or domestic. Albeit patent system is questionable today, copyright is not. Copyright is required to establish the “game rules”. Even the highly permissible BSD license have rules that must be followed.
If China decides that “open-source” is the same as “public domain”, it means that the sole way to grant that you will not be “violated” is by secrecy. It means pretty much the end of OSI/FSF movements as we know, because no sane western company would dare to open a single line of source code from the time being. It would be a massive regression in technological innovation.
This is the single worst thing that could happen. We will go back to the same situation that we had in early 90s, with open source restricted to academies, some research institutions and individual hackers.It will eliminate most of business models evolved around open source software in the last decade.
Companies would go back to using these dreaded DND agreements even for trivial pieces of software. Companies without a branch in one country will refuse to do business with anyone on it. Everything would become bureaucratic and, in some cases, outright inaccessible for individual entrepreneurs and innovators.Most of large open-source projects will die because all companies will withdraw their sponsored developers from these projects.
Any country that does not respect IP will have their IP not respected. None of the Soviet works of art are under copyright anywhere in the western world, as a result.
So what exactly is the status regarding android and GPL, plese? When I buy an android phone, is the manufacturer / reseller obliged to provide me with the source code that was used to build the linux kernel that is used by the device or not? Do the major producers do this? Can you please post some links for samsung, lg, sony, etc source code repositories?
Yes the manufacturer is obliged to provide the kernel source code (only the kernel, not the rest of Android) to every customer.
HTC: http://www.htcdev.com/devcenter/downloads
Samsung: http://opensource.samsung.com/reception.do
Sony: https://github.com/sonyxperiadev/kernel-copyleft