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Comment by feisty0630 | Hacker News Reader

There are F500 companies shipping Ubuntu Core on devices that will only permit signed firmware, so I'm not sure your assessment is correct.

https://buildings.honeywell.com/au/en/products/by-category/b...

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Depending on the product, this might be OK! If you've ever had cause to closely read the GPLv3, the anti-tivoisation clause for some reason is only really aimed at "User products" (defined as "(1) a “consumer product”, which means any tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for incorporation into a dwelling"). This one looks like it's a potential grey area, since it's not obvious if it's intended for buildings that anyone would live in.

I worked on an embedded product that was leased to customers (not sold). The system included GPLv3 portions (e.g. bash 5.x) but they concluded that we did not need to offer source code to their cuatomers.

The reasoning was that the users didn’t own the device. While I personally believe this is not consistent with recent interpretations of the license by the courts, I think they concluded that it was worth the risk of a customer suing to get the source code, as the company could then pull the hardware and leave that customer high and dry. It is unlikely any of their users a would risk that outcome.

Take a look at their customer testimonials [0] and ask yourself if they have recently made anticompetitive or user-hostile moves. Now, ask yourself: do you think they like being beholden to a license that makes it harder for them to keep their monopolies?

[0]: https://ubuntu.com/pro/

Edited to add: it would be cool if, instead of the top-most wealth-concentrators F[500:], there was an index of the top-most wealth-spreaders F[:500]. What would that look like? A list of cooperatives?

As long as nobody sues them everything is fine

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