Re: Apple stealing "Lily"

[David Kastrup]

"H. S. Teoh" <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, May 04, 2017 at 09:52:25AM +0200, Sven Axelsson wrote:
>> On 4 May 2017 at 00:37, Devin Ulibarri <address@hidden> wrote:
>> > At any rate, just watch out, if Apple continually tries to advance
>> > into imitating free/libre branding in an attempt to push it out of
>> > the market completely, then that would be a problem for all of us.
>> 
>> Honestly, I don't understand what Apple has to do with this? The Lily
>> app is developed by a small UK-based company called Pelican 7. It just
>> happens to be available in the iTunes Store - as well as on Google
>> Play and Amazon Appstore.
> [...]
>
> Honestly, I think the idea that Apple is trying to push free/libre
> software out of the market is complete hooey.  There are major free
> software projects contributed by Apple / Apple developers, like
> LLVM/clang

The original LLVM/Clang author is no longer employed by Apple.  And
Apple let the OpenDarwin project collapse quite deliberately by refusing
to hand them the sources to the ostensibly free Darwin in time frames
compatible with any kind of maintenance.

And that's just talking about BSD-licensed software.  Apple hates the
GPL and makes sure that its closed-shop conditions are incompatible with
GPL-licensed software.

> and others.

> Just because they are a profit-making business that has to be
> accountable to their shareholders doesn't automatically make them bad
> or evil or whatever.

No, that is just the same as with RedHat.  Making a profit does not
require the kind of antics Apple engages in.

> Yeah, sometimes their business model may lead them to make decisions
> that are not necessarily aligned with purist open source advocacy,

Uh, that is verbiage suitable for describing RedHat or (firmly closing
both eyes) companies like VMware.  But Apple is really on quite a
different page.

> And none of this is really relevant here on the Lilypond mailing list
> anyway.  Since when did Lilypond hold exclusive trademarks over every
> English word that may or may not have been derived from "lily", and
> what does this even have to do with Apple, since the Lily app isn't
> even made by Apple themselves in the first place?  Sounds like
> uninformed alarmists' kneejerk reaction to me.

<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/27/apple_lawyers/>

Trademark wars have become silly.

-- 
David Kastrup