Andrew Branson Moving to busybox isn't becoming 'more similar to android'. It's using tools that are more suited to embedded devices by default. Doing that has meant that Sailfish could upgrade the really ancient version of bash (the last gplv2) to the latest. If Sailfish were moving in a direction where you would have to 'root' or 'jailbreak' it in order to get full control of your own device, then you could say it was becoming less open and free. Otherwise it's just FUD. Norman So it's a license thing and doesn't have any real technical reason other than avoiding GPLv3? That's bad then. Andrew Branson No. The licensing is a part of it, but it also saves space on the initial install. busybox tools use a single binary that's much smaller than all the separate gnu binaries Norman But GPLv3 is favourable from the user's point of view, so why are they trying to avoid it? Andrew Branson That's quite a broad generalization that I'm not sure is even true. All sfos end users have developer mode available on their devices. This means they can enable the terminal app, gain access to the root account and install anything they want, including the GNU tools. This is completely compliant with the GPLv3, as the Sailfish SDK gives you everything you need to modify, rebuild and replace any GPLv3 package on your device. But, if Sailfish ships with GPLv3 packages in the image, then it would be impossible for any customer to disable developer mode in their image. Many business and corporate customers would want to do this. Norman So there's a huge disparity between what's good for users and what corporate/business customers want. Andrew Branson Hardly a 'huge disparity' is it. Norman Without developer mode, I would see no reason to use SailfishOS over any regular AOSP-based custom ROM. I guess there are quite a number of users who also see it like this. Andrew Branson But if by 'users' you mean open-device enthusiasts such as Sailfish X users, then yes: we want more control over our devices than we'd expect to get on a corporate device we were given by our employers. Would you really expect to have developer mode on a device given to you by your employers as a business phone? Norman No, probably not. But I wouldn't expect my employer to give me a spyware-free phone anyways 😉 Andrew Branson There are two sides to Sailfish - open device on one hand, and independent OS for corporate use with no external ties on the other. Norman (At least the employers I know of seem to have no problem with surveillance capitalism is what I meant to say with that) Andrew Branson If you did, it would only be their spyware, not Google's, or Amazon's And wouldn't require them to pay apple just to install their software on their employees phones I find it absolutely crazy that people are using iphones for appliances like point-of-sale devices, having to go through apple's store for software that has nothing to do with them. they permanently own the device unless it is jailbroken. Norman I think this would only be viable for large corporate employers that can order tens of thousands of phones per batch. For all the others, it's Android or iOS. Andrew Branson Dunno, probably companies that have their own IT departments and manage their desktop software centrally. The whole BYOD thing is a mess right now, and many could do with cheap, secure devices that they can control remotely. MDM is very attractive for that situation, but completely incompatible with GPLv3 Mika I think GPL3 is ok, but in corporate use cases it should consider the corporation itself as the user Andrew Branson I don't think it's explicit enough in that to dismiss so simply. Why would a corporation risk that or set a legal team on it. They'll just use something else. Mika I only say that this is what I wish. I'm sure the gpl3 is targeted to the end user, and this is why there are problems with corporations, sadly Andrew Branson Yeah, I agree. I wish the GPLv3 was more explicit about that, but I'm not sure I can see it changing, as that might be a loophole for abuse. Apple and Google control their customers' devices just like an employer would.