Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:44:01 +0200 | From | "Jesper Juhl" <> | Subject | Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3 |
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On 18/06/07, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> wrote: > On Jun 17, 2007, "Jesper Juhl" <jesper.juhl@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 17/06/07, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> wrote: > > [snip] > > >> Serious, what's so hard to understand about: > > >> no tivoization => more users able to tinker their formerly-tivoized > >> computers => more users make useful modifications => more > >> contributions in kind > > > I have to disagree. > > Your analysis stopped at the downside of prohibiting tivoization. You > didn't analyze the potential upsides,
Maybe that's because I don't really see any up sides.
As I see it, if we prevent tivoization, then the most likely outcome will be that a very few number of vendors will switch to ROM based solutions or similar (everyone lose, both vendor and user), a few vendors that currently tivoize hardware may open up their hardware but I doubt that will be very many, and the vast majority of vendors will move to *BSD or proprietary software since they simply can't or won't open up their hardware.
So no, I don't think there are any upsides. We'll lose a huge number of developers, testers and users inside the business comunity and we'll lose a lot of exposure (like "hey, did you know TiVO actually runs Linux inside? Isn't that cool?)... Gaining a few hobyists at the expense of driving a huge number of businesses away from GPL'ed software does not look like an upside to me.
>so you may indeed come to > different conclusions, and they may very well be wrong. > Just because I come to a different conclusion than you doesn't nessesarily make it wrong.
> It's very human to look only at the potential downside of an action > and conclude it's a bad action. > And you believe yourself to be immune to that - right?
> > Let's say that for some reason I don't want the end users of my > > device to tinker with the software inside my device. > > Ok, keep the *want* in mind. This is very important. > No, it is not. When I wrote that I meant "don't want" as in "really don't want to since it'll destroy our business" or "really really don't want to since we would be breaking the law" etc.
> > Now I think you can agree to these things being positive: > > Yes, even if I'd phrase them slightly differently. > > > The only downside is that the end user purchasing the device can't > > install modified versions of the software on it. > > And therefore you severely limit the number of end users who might > turn into contributors because of self interest in hacking the device > to suit their needs. > Most people don't care about hacking their devices, and of the few who do only a subset have the skill and only a subset of those will actually contribute anything back. This is a *small* set of people and gaining that small set at the expense of losing the large number of contributers from various companies doesn't make sense to me.
> > Now let's try it in a GPLv3 universe. Since I can no longer create my > > device without having to allow the end user to install modified > > software on it > > False assumption. You can create the device using GPLv3 software in > it.
Not as long as I want to prevent the user from tampering with it, no.
>So your acccounting of necessary downsides is only one of the > possibilities. The other possibility would be to have the program in > ROM, of course, which would come with a completely different set of > downsides, but that would retain all of the "these things being > positive" you mentioned above. > But do you really expect a vendor to put a device on the market where they also lock themselves out of upgrading it and releasing new software for it? That's just rediculous.
> And, remember, since you merely don't *want* the end user of the > device to tinker with the software, you have the option to do let them > do that. > See above.
> And, if you do, they may find in themselves reasons and incentives to > change the software in the device, and the improvements are likely to > get back to the community and thus back to you. Everybody wins. > For a few select individuals that may be true. But for the majority of the population it won't mean a thing.
> This is the upside that you left out from your analysis, and from > every other analysis that set out to "prove" that anti-tivoization is > bad that I've seen so far. > I'm sorry, but I don't think it holds water.
> It appears that people are so concerned about whatever little they > might lose from requiring respect for users' freedoms that they don't > even consider what they might win, and that they *would* win if at > least some of the vendors were to make an choice more favorable to > their users and the community.
Contrary to you, I don't believe any significant number of companies will do that. It's simply better for business to just use other software in that case.
-- Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com> Don't top-post http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/top-post.html Plain text mails only, please http://www.expita.com/nomime.html - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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