On Thursday 14 June 2007 01:51:13 Alexandre Oliva wrote:
Nope. I've been tempted several times, but decided that the extra bits I'd
thought about wouldn't add anything to the device.
Ah, well... In the case of "Windos" and other proprietary OS's I try to
educate people and get them to switch. I don't, personally, have any
computers that run Windows (and I switched my Palm back to PalmOS because it
wasn't getting the same performance under Linux - which rather surprised me.
And rather than fight with it I just switched it back.
Under the US Copyright law I'm not sure that making a "second copy" like that
is legal. IIRC, "Fair Use" only allows for one copy.
As has been noted in their TOS and the licenses for the hardware from the
start. The FSF itself explicitly reserves the right to change the GPL at any
time - which is no different. (when you remove all the bits explaining the
purpose of the license)
I'm not referring to companies that are embedding GPL'd software in their
products. The companies I'm referring to are the ones that would like to use
GPL'd software internally. A lot of them would probably have private
modifications that would never be distributed - and under the GPLv2 it is
clear that you can keep modifications private as long as you don't distribute
them. "Pushing them away" means that they'd not do that because they would be
concerned that the license will change under them in such a way that even
those private modifications need to be released to the public.
(and don't try to argue that even though those modifications are truly private
(to the company) they should be released anyway to comply with the "spirit"
of the license. It is made clear that it isn't by the text of the license
itself)
But he has. Whether you have accepted that his explanations are valid or not
doesn't change the fact.
The kernel itself is GPLv2 (only). Individual components - even individual
files - have other licenses or retain the "any later version" clause.
(Someone pointed out, earlier in this thread, that there is GPLv1.1 code in
the kernel)
Not really. I've always figured he had reasons similar to mine for not liking
DRM. As to his dislike of "Tivoization", well, that I've always attributed to
the fact that someone at that company managed to outsmart him. (and no, I
wasn't being serious with that last line)
Yet I still find people that insist that the *ENTIRE* system - kernel and
all - is a GNU project. Not just the common idiot you'd find on almost any
street in the US, but also educated people in technical fields. The reason is
the name.
*AND* you cut out the bit where I said "I have no problems with it"
Never claimed otherwise. The problem is that using a composite name like that
*does* confuse a hell of a lot of people. See my statements above about that.
And so is every game console. But until the original XBox was released nobody
tried using one as a "General Purpose" machine. The TiVO wasn't designed as a
general purpose machine - it was designed for a specific purpose. That the
*easiest* design to produce uses a bunch of general purpose components is an
economic choice, nothing else.
I will not, however, argue about this anymore. As with other bits, we've
reached a point where we disagree and no amount of explanation will change
the others viewpoint. (I hope you understand mine as well as (I think) I
understand yours)
Let me quote Linus here:
But I think the whole thing is totally misguided, because the fact is, the
GPLv2 doesn't talk about "in place" or "on the same hardware".
In other words, GPLv3 is breaking with its predecessor - it's adding a
requirement that doesn't exist in previous versions. *AND* it's dictating
terms for *HARDWARE* when it isn't a hardware license. If I release software
under the GPL and somebody modifies it to run on a different hardware
platform I'll be happy, even if they don't send me a patchset for the new
version. If I create a piece of hardware and run Linux on it, but have it
locked to a specific version or versions from a specific source (ie: me) and
release it to the public, I *WILL* release the version of Linux I'm running
on it. What I won't do is release whatever tools and such that are needed to
make the hardware run a different version of the kernel. Why? Because: the
hardware was designed so that a specific version of the kernel runs without
problems, there is hardware that is very picky and running a customized
kernel could cause that hardware to fail, etc... There are more reasons than
the legal protection I previously mentioned. Not a single one of them
is "Because I want to restrict peoples freedoms re: the GPL'd software".
Admittedly the two examples I chose aren't very realistic, but those were the
first two examples that came to mind.
DRH
--
Dialup is like pissing through a pipette. Slow and excruciatingly painful.
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