These conversations are always interesting in these type of US-centric forums: You can really see the "patriotism" that emanates from these conversations: China BAD, US Good and exactly what you mention: Free for me but not for thee.

As someone from a third world country it is like watching two bullies fight each other in the school. Well, both of them spy on me, both of them abuse me (I'm Mexican) and both of them think they are always right. For me, both of them are pretty similar.

China has a long and well-documented history of IP theft. So the doubt is legitimate.

And they have to contribute to Linux and other open source projects in order to have an Android-compatible operating system. At some point you need to either fix bugs or add features to support your own hardware. But this shouldn't be seen as altruism.

> I love how the general tone is "information is free!" unless of course when the one benefitting from it is China, in which case everyone suddenly gets out their magnifying glasses and GPL licenses.

I have _never_ gotten the "information is free!" vibe from HN. That was like 80s/90s hacker culture, not 2020s HN. There's a lot of devs and business people here, neither of which are fond of licenses being abused in general.