On Jun 19, 2007, "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:
Right. All GPL can say is that you cannot impose further restrictions
on how the user adapts the software, and since the user runs the
software on that computer, that means you must not restrict the user's
ability to upgrade or otherwise replace that software there, when you
gave the user the software along with the computer.
No, it's not. It is intended to ensure that free software remains
free for all its users. When you receive the software, you become a
user. That's when you receive the rights, and that's what creates the
obligation on the distributor to not impose restrictions on the
freedoms, no matter by how means such restrictions could be legally or
technically accomplished.
I agree, to some extent. It's not so much about the rights, but about
the restrictions the vendor can impose on hardware.
It's just that, for this particular hardware, as you say, the
manufacturer has (or had) special rights. This means it can decide
what software runs, whom it gives the hardware to, etc.
However, by distributing software under the GPL, the vendor accepts
the condition to not use any means whatsoever to impose restrictions
on the recipient's exercise of the rights granted by the license by
means of the distribution of the software.
There's no reason to make the hardware special, or the right of
authorization special, as a possible excuse to impose restrictions on
the user. It amounts to just that: an attempt to excuse oneself from
the condition of not imposing restrictions on the enjoyment of the
freedoms.
Yes. And, per the "pass on all rights you have" spirit in the
preamble, that translates into "no further restrictions" in the legal
terms, the user *must* receive this right from the distributor of the
software.
Oh, but what if the distributor doens't have this right in the first
place? Well, let's see...
Either the distributor received the hardware with the software inside
it, which means it should have received this right along with the
software from whoever gave it the software, so it has this right, or
it installed the software itself, which means it does have this
right. In both cases.
This means they already were users there of those computers, just not
necessarily of that software on those computers.
And then, if they choose to copy and run the software on other
computers where they are entitled to install software, they're free to
do so, the vendor of that other piece of hardware must not impose
restrictions on that either.
I agree. That's the bug in GPLv2 that the anti-tivoization provision
is trying to fix.
Exactly. Thank you. It finally sank in, it seems.
--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
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