SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It's increasingly hard to see how software freedom is present in cases when there's no realistic community access to source code. The barriers these days can come from complex codebases that no single mind can grasp or use of open-but-closed models.
As a consequence, OSI receives more complaints from community members about "open yet closed" than any other topic. Companies of all sizes who loudly tout their love for open source yet withhold source code from non-customers generate the most enquiries of this type. When approached, OSI contacts these companies on behalf of the community but the response is always that they are "within their rights" under the relevant open source licenses and can do what they please.
[...] Interestingly it's common that the companies involved obtained the source code they are monetising under an open source license, while they themselves own the copyrights to a tiny percentage of the code. They can be considered to have enclosed the commons, enjoying the full benefits of open source themselves — and celebrating it — but excluding others from collaboration on the same terms.
Source: Is Open Yet Closed Still OK?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:23PM
Pretty much this here.
Take a recent one. The Intel ME. Open source right at the root of our pretty much all of our systems. Yet we have 0 access to it. It contains known vulins.
My laptop is 6 years old. I have 0 chance of getting access to my own hardware without a ton of hacks and workarounds. Even then I have a good chance of bricking my box.
Someone recently asked why would they do this? How do you think they are cutting features out of chips? They are using the ME to do it. It is how they differentiate ECC and VM switches so they can upsell you on those. Even though the hardware is right there. Same with FM radios and cell phones. The hardware is there pretty much all of them have it. The phone makers turn it off because VZ and ATT ask them to. That way they can upsell you on something else.