On 07/09/2015 01:40 AM, hellekin wrote: > On 07/08/2015 08:26 PM, Ed Baskerville wrote: >>> >>> Now would be a good time to ask: GNUnet developers, would you ever be >>> willing to have GNUnet on the iOS App Store, sacrificing a bit of GPL >>> purity for the sake of wider deployment? >>> > *** It would be clearer to ask: GNUnet developers, would you like to > compromise the privacy of your users by default when they connect to > friends willing to run GNUnet on iOS?
To be clear, this is not an isomorphic rephrasing of the question I asked. Compromised privacy is not the reason that Christian's GNUnet code can't go on the App Store. Restricted redistribution of downloaded binaries is the reason, because that's a GPL violation. If compromised privacy--via malicious tampering by Apple, governments, etc.--were the most important thing, GNUnet wouldn't be able to run on Windows or OS X either. But there's nothing in the GPL that stops you from producing and distributing freely distributable binaries for those (potentially backdoored) platforms--or from building GNUnet for iOS, putting it on your own device, and not distributing it. Furthermore, the GNUnet protocols can be reimplemented under a different license by someone else, and you're left with the same problem. On Jul 9, 2015, at 2:25 AM, Christian Grothoff <[email protected]> wrote: > Ed, this will not happen. We cannot let a company destroy the free > software commons for some short-sighted short-term gain. My > contributions to GNUnet are and will remain GPLv3+, you won't convince > me otherwise, so the discussion can end here. If you care so much about > iOS, you should discuss this with Apple, they'll be easier to convince ;-). Good to know where we both stand. I don't like DRM'd binaries either, but, yeah, I am personally willing to compromise on that front if it speeds up progress on building a better infrastructure for networking, something I think is much more quickly doable than converting everyone to a fully free stack. That leaves uncertainty in the non-free parts of the system, but you have to assume those will be present even if only in the form of malicious peers. I don't think dual licensing some otherwise GPL'd software on the iOS App Store will determine the long game of whether the world converges to full hardware/software freedom. And if the GNUnet protocols become a popular network fabric anytime soon, somebody's going to implement them on iOS even if you won't. I like the GPL because it's a clever legal tool for promoting important values, but I don't consider it axiomatically correct in all situations and all contexts. But I do really admire this project, its driving values and goals, and what I understand of the technical approach--and I look forward to learning more. And even if I probably can't be of much help, I wish you all well in pushing it forward. Ed _______________________________________________ GNUnet-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
