Yes...they're the ones who can't deal with the real world.

Yeah, cause its never happened to anyone else before...

Last fall, Apple released their App Store Approval Guidelines. The relevant guideline—the only place where the word "duplicate" appears in the guidelines—is quoted on Stackoverflow:

Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them, such as fart, burp, flashlight, and Kama Sutra apps.

If you were to write and submit your own app that connected to Dropbox, it might get rejected. Given the number of third-party Facebook apps and Twitter clients still available on the App Store, however, I think that unlikely.

Plus there's no no shortage of web browsers on the App Store.

I feel pretty good about Dropbox never being pulled for "duplicating functionality."

Then it was never any competition to DropBox or Box.net at all, really.

Yes. In very much the same way that the iPad was never trying to compete directly against the featureset of netbooks.

And bets on how long it is before Apple de-lists the DropBox iPhone app because it duplicates functionality?

It's pretty hard to collect on a bet for "never."

Whereas Apple is relying on their lock-in to the "we get a cut of the action, see" iTunes store. It is a tried and true method.

Except iOS devices aren't loss leaders for Apple. Apple makes a negligible amount of profit off of its App Store. The bulk of Apple's profit comes from every device that goes out the door—whether it's paid for by you or by a combination of you and your mobile carrier.

[...] it doesn't seem reasonable to me to expect other companies to delay their work out of respect while Apple keeps on doing their work out of respect.

Who expected other companies to delay their work? Apple clearly didn't.

The only glaringly obvious omission seems to be sticking with 3G instead of adding LTE or HSPA+ support.

Current LTE chipsets are too bulky and use too much power. It also has HSPA+.

If you believe that liberty has no conditions, such as equality, then you might be thinking of the word license.

I actually think you have that backwards--if you think that liberty has conditions, then you might be thinking of the word license.

The GPL grants many things. Perpetual access to the source code of derived works is one of those things. Liberty is not.

That's because it's not liberty for YOU (that's already been granted) but for whomever gets it from you.

If you're restricting how I can use something, you may have granted me a license, but you haven't granted me liberty.

Stop being so greedy and self-centered with your thought process.

Stop redefining words.

Not liberty for you, jackass, liberty for the people you distribute too. The original author is preventing YOU from exploiting downstream users. Your "freedom" to screw people over is not "freedom". You are being saved from yourself, and your shortsightedness.

So it's "free" as in "don't do that," then. Gotcha. That's fine. Just call it what it is instead of calling it freedom.

Let me guess, you're a libertarian? Yeah? That would explain your moral autism on the issue.

Moderate Democrat who wants more regulation in the financial industry, but thanks for trying.

Where all of you GPL-haters keep failing in this argument is that you want to deny rights to software makers

I have no desire whatsoever to infringe on a copyright holder's right to distribute his or her code as he or she sees fit.

My problem stems from the use of the word "liberty" to describe a license as restrictive as the GPL.

So by your definitional of liberty you can do whatever the hell you want to? Like going on a killing spree, because that is your liberty? Moron

I don't, actually, have the liberty to go on a killing spree, because it turns out that we have laws against that.

Apparently you don't.

I do. Create whatever restrictions you like. I don't have to use your code.

So it's "orwellian" to insist that the people who receive my software, via you, have the same rights as you did, and can use altered versions of it freely in place of the versions you gave them?

Not at all; that's not even what I said.

What I said is that it's "Orwellian doublespeak" to use the word "liberty" to describe a scheme where you've set restrictions on how I can use and distribute something.

There is nothing "jacked up" about this.

I fully support your right to put restrictions on how I can modify or distribute something you created. Calling these restrictions "liberty," however, is just Orwellian doublespeak.

The GPL license is free as in liberty. Developers who wish to base products on existing GPL software must agree to maintain the liberty of the derived software's users to use the software with the same liberties that the developer did.

If you associate the words "must agree" with the word "liberty," I think you have pretty jacked up definition of liberty.