Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:24:19 -0400 | From | "Dave Neuer" <> | Subject | Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3 |
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On 6/14/07, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote: > Nothing prevents you from taking tivos kernel > changes and building your own hardware to run that code on, and as such > the spirit of the GPL v2 seems fulfilled.
Oh, come on: you're not serious, right? Something indeed prevents me -- the fact that I'm not a hardware manufacturer, I don't have fabs, outsource vendors to provide me w/ designs, ASICs, etc. Nor to I have the money to pay one-off prices for various components if they're even available in batches that small.
This argument seems totally disingenuous to me. The GPLv<3 was written in a time when the majority of sotware to which the license was applied was written for general purpose computers. The "user" was the owner of the computer, and Freedom 0 was about letting that user RUN modified copies of the software.
Things have changed a lot; we're surrounded by embedded computers, and Freedom 0 seems to strongly imply I should have the right to run modified versions of the Free Software I own on the hardware I OWN. Or is the future of Open Source that you'll be able to hack on free software as long as you work for Intel, Red Hat, TiVO, Google or OSDL? Or own many-thousand-$$ fab printer?
Look, I totally respect Linus' and others' position that the license is an inappropriate way to enforce what they feel are hardware design decisions, but can we dispense w/ the silly argument that the intent of the GPL is fullfilled as long as the user is allowed to modify the software where modify means "imagine a world where they'd be able to run" it?
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