Apple Originally Tried To Give GPL'ed LLVM To GCC

[paulpach]

While ALL corporations are evil, there's more than one shade of black. Please don't even try to compare Red Hat or Novell with Apple. The first is a clever geek lacking moral integrity. The second is a grumpy old man dreaming of the days of glory long since passed. And the third is a sadistic maniac ever on lookout for new victims.

So let me get the conspiracy theory straight: Apple wanted to screw everybody, so they release code that people like under a license that lets anyone do whatever they want with it, and spend tons of money supporting it for several years.

[techzilla]

post-modernist interpretation of corporate interests, how convenient...

What I am trying to say is, stereotypes don't really describe big companies well, unless it is Microsoft I guess, they seem to want war with everybody. In most cases big companies is a complex mixture of individuals with various influence on company policies.

Ok I don't agree with your post-modernist interpretation of corporate interests, but it's way above what I think is off-base enough to warrant my criticism on a quick post. What's completely hypocritical is stereotyping Microsoft, while simultaneously claiming corporations cannot be stereotyped by their interests. It's either all or none, either corporations can't be "stereotyped" for the bogus reasons you described.... OR they can be "stereotyped" and this includes all corporations not just Microsoft.

[techzilla]

While ALL corporations are evil, there's more than one shade of black. Please don't even try to compare Red Hat or Novell with Apple. The first is a clever geek lacking moral integrity. The second is a grumpy old man dreaming of the days of glory long since passed. And the third is a sadistic maniac ever on lookout for new victims.

Love it, love everything about it!

[techzilla]

Clarification on Corporate Interests, in relation to FOSS.

All the interpretations of Corporate interests are completely off base, we don't need to pick between Corporations just being good fellas or illuminati members. The real answer is actually far less conspiratorial, and accounts for real economic corporate interests.

CopyLeft is seen by corporations as a net negative, for the most simple reasons, the model generates less profit than permissive licensing. Corporations are simple creatures, they exist for only one singular purpose above all other purposes, generating profits. The individual considerations do have some limited influence, but never enough to change this original purpose. For example, a CEO who valued his worker above making maximum profit would be swiftly fired, for failing to deliver on his purpose of generating maximum ROI. This is the economic world we live in, and no post-modern diversions account for clear truth. Corporations are single interest entities, not associations of individuals with individual economic interests.

In the drive for this profit, even though many individuals place ideology, morals, ethics, workers, above profit, the corporations never can consider those values. Only when in the case of those values promoting profit are they upheld, and SOMETIMES the profitable concern converges. This is also clearly demonstrated by the ideology of the OSI itself, they believe openness is best for conducting business overall, and this is why corporations work together on permissive software.

If that permissive software benefits overall, is a legitimate opinion. Who it benefits can be backed up with facts, but still can be debated.
Why it happens?? This isn't a matter of debate, and is directly related to why reciprocal doesn't happen in those same contexts. Economic interests are a sloppy business, they are not always lock-step, sometimes individuals and community interests break through... But they will always be on the losing side of concerns, and how often they break through are a reflection of the business structure.

[prodigy_]

In the drive for this profit, even though many individuals place ideology, morals, ethics, workers, above profit, the corporations never can consider those values.

It's people who make decisions. And people can always consider their values. If they have any.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Wrong. Many corporations are highly ideological.

In the drive for this profit, even though many individuals place ideology, morals, ethics, workers, above profit, the corporations never can consider those values.

This is not even remotely true. There are countless corporations out there who place so called "social responsibility" as their highest ideal. Many times, if you ask an internal employee about it you can things out such as promotion hierarchy. It was like this for a friend of mine who used to work at a Verizon Wireless. Its been some number of years now but at the time there was a notorious bias for promotions towards women and gays, and it was very well known at multiple locations in the area.

General Electric is notoriously well known for being in bed with the Obama White House on multiple fronts.

It was only a month ago that Apple openly announced that if you do not believe in global warming, you shouldn't buy their stock. You should sell it off.

You may find it highly inconvenient, but the facts are in. Many corporations are highly ideological - above profits.

Corporations are simple creatures, they exist for only one singular purpose above all other purposes, generating profits.

This is not true either. Many corporations come into existence because they have a political pal placed somewhere in a good position. I can think of two great examples:

Solyndra.

There are a whole host of companies large and small that exist to suck off of the republican party's teet via the Chamber of Crony Capitalism.(Chamber of Commerce) All they want, all that they care about, is that they can get their corporate socialism from big uncle sam.

If that permissive software benefits overall, is a legitimate opinion. Who it benefits can be backed up with facts, but still can be debated.
Why it happens?? This isn't a matter of debate, and is directly related to why reciprocal doesn't happen in those same contexts. Economic interests are a sloppy business, they are not always lock-step, sometimes individuals and community interests break through... But they will always be on the losing side of concerns, and how often they break through are a reflection of the business structure.

I am not convinced you have ever heard of Valve incorporated, nor SteamOS. For that matter Red Hat incorporated. Ditto Google. There are plenty of corporations at various levels that see value here. Not too long ago, IBM openly committed what, another billion to Linux?

There are plenty who engage in Open Source. And there are plenty who are ideology-first, profits-second.

[Del_]

Sorry for late answer on this one, forgot all about the thread..

CopyLeft is seen by corporations as a net negative, for the most simple reasons, the model generates less profit than permissive licensing.

This is wrong in a general context. A correct statement would be "some corporations view copyleft as a net negative". Moreover, there are many examples of copyleft providing more profit than competing proprietary or permissively licensed solutions.

Corporations are simple creatures, they exist for only one singular purpose above all other purposes, generating profits.

You need to educate yourself. The last decade there seem to have developed a consensus that large corporations only driven by profits die. That is why larger corporations of this world has tried to define a set of values for their company.