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The *only* in your sentence betrayed you. If they place the limits such that nobody else can access the sources, they're in violation of the license. If they merely refrain from distributing the sources to others, but still enable the recipients to do so, this is not a violation of the license. Exactly. Not even to the upstream distributor. That's where Linus' theory of tit-for-tat falls apart. -- 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} -
Nope. case 1: Upstream provides source, tivo modifies and distributes it (to their customers). case 2: tivo provides source, end user modifies and distributes it (possibly to their customers, maybe to friends, possibly even to upstream). See? Tit for tat. Chris -
case 2': tivo provides source, end user tries to improve it, realizes the hardware won't let him and gives up Where's the payback, or the payforward? And then, tit-for-tat is about equivalent retaliation, an eye for an eye. Where's the retaliation here? If GPLv2 were tit-for-tat, if someone invents artifices to prevent the user from making the changes the user wants on the software, wouldn't it be "equivalent retaliation" to prevent the perpetrator from making the changes it wants on the software? -- 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} -
Faulty logic. The hardware doesn't *restrict* you from *MODIFYING* any fscking thing. -- Dialup is like pissing through a pipette. Slow and excruciatingly painful. -
Ok, lemme try again: case 2'': tivo provides source, end user tries to improve it, realizes -- 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} -
So you're blaming Tivo for the fact that your end user was a lazy bum and wanted to take advantage of somebody elses hard work without permission? Quite frankly, I know who the bad guy in that scenario is, and it ain't Tivo. It's your lazy bum, that thought he would just take what Tivo did, sign the contract, and then not follow it. And just because the box _contained_ some piece of free software, that lazy bum suddenly has all those rights? Never mind all the *other* effort that went into bringing that box to market? You do realize that Tivo makes all their money on the service, don't you? The actual hardware they basically give away at cost, exactly to get the service contracts. Not exactly a very unusual strategy in the high-tech world, is it? You know what? I respect the pro-FSF opinions less and less, the more you guys argue for it. Michael Poole seems to argue that things like fair use shouldn't exist, and even the cryptographic _signatures_ of the programs should be under total control of the copyright owner. And you seem to argue that it's perfectly fine to ignore the people who design hardware and the services around them, and once you have that piece of hardware in your grubby hands you can do anythign you want to it, and _their_ rights and the contracts you signed don't matter at all. Guys, you should be ashamed of calling yourself "free software" people. You sound more like the RIAA/MPAA ("we own all the rights! We _own_ your sorry asses for even listening to our music") and a bunch of whiners that think that just because you have touched a piece of hardware you automatically can do anythign you want to it, and nobody elses rights matter in the least! Guys, in fighting for "your rights", you should look a bit at *other* peoples rights too. Including the rights of hw manufacturers, and the service providers. Because this is all an eco-system, where in order to actually succeed, you need to make _everybody_ ...
Yes, because the software license that TiVo signed up for says that TiVo must pass on certain rights and not impose any further restrictions. And all that because TiVo wanted to use kernel and userland that were readily available, and at no cost other than respecting others' freedoms, while at that? Just like they seem to think it's perfectly fine to ignore a number of people who design and maintain the software they decided to use in Good. How about thinking of the users, the customers of your dear friends too? The ones who might be contributing much more to your project. Then look how what you said in the paragraph before about RIAA/MPAA applies to what TiVO is doing to the software, and realize that you're accusing us of doing what the party you support does. I'm not trying to impose anything. I'm not pushing anything. I'm defending the GPLv3 from accusations that it's departing from the GPL spirit, and I'm trying to find out in what way Tivoization promotes the goals you perceive as good for Linux, that make GPLv2 advantageous. So far, you haven't given any single reason about this. You talked about tit-for-tat, you said anti-Tivoization in GPLv3 was bad, but you don't connect the dots. Forgive if I get the impression that you're just fooling yourself, and misguiding a *lot* of people out there in the process. -- 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} -
Give. Me. A. Break. Section 6 is inherently broken. It tries to gerrymander the "bad" cases and ends up with a huge mess. Definition of user device is arbitrary and reeks with discrimination against the field of use. Trying to be more explicit about installation instructions walks straight into a minefield: * is it enough to give some installation methods? If so, should they be as cheap as the rest? As efficient as the rest in some sense? Representative in some sense? The same as what manufacturer ever uses? * if all installation methods should be given, where does one stop? Should one describe unsupported ones? All of them? Is that a violation of license to omit some? How does one prove that omission hadn't been malicious violation in face of complaint? Trying to be explicit enough to get a rope on the TiVo neck ends up with not just clumsy rules; it opens a can of worms worse than what we have in matching part of v2. It looks like trying to be tight enough to be sure to catch the cases FSF doesn't like and trying to avoid getting the stuff that really shouldn't be caught. And looks like these requirements conflict. So in the end you get an ugliness that satisfies neither those who think that TiVo case is not a problem nor those who agree that it is a problem and consider v2 sufficient in that area. And BTW, you've been told just that about an hour before you've sent that mail. I don't mind repeating that on l-k, but please don't pretend to be unaware of the problems in that area. I've no idea which problems Linus has with that turd, but there's certainly enough in there. -
You mean the bits against Tivoization in it, right. You point out reasons you dislike the particular wording (good, can you relay them to gplv3.fsf.org, please?), but nowhere do you show where such provisions hamper the tit-for-tat goal that Linus likes about GPLv2 and claims to be the reason he chose v2. In fact, I've shown evidence that anti-Tivoization increases this tit-for-tat. Yup. I got your opinion. Now I got it twice, and others got it once. How about others' opinions? And, more importantly, how does that provision conflict with your personal goals WRT Linux? -- 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} -
It's not about particular wording. It's about disgust at that kind of games in general. Now bugger off and stop deliberately misparsing what I said. Oh, and could you please lose the "Free Software Evangelist" bit in your sig when posting on l-k? Unless you want to get the treatment normally reserved for evangelist pests, that is... Your personal kinks are your personal kinks; kindly keep your religion to consenting partners. -
They don't add any restrictions that don't already exist. As stated in section 0 of the GPLv2 the scope of the license is "copying, distributing and Still the same one that Linus pointed out. No amount of faulty logic can Huh? They have complied with the terms - and, IMHO, the spirit - of the And failing. You say that the intent and spirit of the GPLv2 is clear if you read it. I read it and I feel its pretty clear that the only things that the GPLv2 sought to protect are *EXACTLY* "copying, distribution and modification". DRH -- Dialup is like pissing through a pipette. Slow and excruciatingly painful. -
Yeah. Isn't that great? Isn't this even more contributions "in kind"? -- 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} -
Not unusual - but so what. This strategy may backfire if users find a way to use the cheap box for something without Tivo's service contract. That don't make me feel sorry for Tivo - they can then sell their boxes with some profit - or go bankrupt for doing stupid business. Similiar to how unrealistic cheap printers backed by ink sales fail when third parties undercuts the ridiculously expensive ink. Or give-away cellphones tied to an expensive provider, being unlocked by third parties so a switch to a cheaper provider will work. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against Tivo - and nothing for them either. Them making a locked device is just a fun arms race to see who can reprogram the bootloader key Nothing against a hw manufacturers right - but of course they have no particular right to succeed with give-away hw and expensive service. When that strategy fail due to people operating the hw without buing service then the cure is to charge properly for the hw, not to ask everybody to please stop hacking. Assuming that nobody can change the box after the sale is their risk, and there is nothing unfair about failure here. Helge Hafting -
Yeah, I'm not at all trying to say that Tivo has the "right to make money". They can fail for all I care. But they do have the right to make their own choices, and try their own strategies. And people shouldn't complain about that. If somebody doesn't like the Tivo box, and the Tivo service requirements, just don't *buy* the damn thing, and don't sign up for the service. Whining about Tivo's choices is just stupid. And anybody who thinks others don't have the "right to choice", and then tries to talk about "freedoms" is a damn hypocritical moron. Linus -
One might say the same thing about someone who claims not to have a moral right to force certain choices on others in some circumstances (e.g. when those others have used copyrighted work in a product and ought to understand that for some not insignificant portion of the copyright holders, the terms implicitly included preserving certain "freedoms" for downstream recipients) while reserving a very similar moral right with others (e.g. potential murderers, theives, tresspassers, distributors of proprietary derived works). As I pointed out in a previous message in the thread, that some people want the copyright holders -- who have economic power over the hardware vendors who use Linux in their products -- to force a desireable outcome for those without that power (i.e. the small number of people who buy TiVOs or Linksys routers who actually care about source availability and who get told "don't buy it" as if that will change anything) is understandable. I think that there's a legitimate concern about what types of constraints it's valid for a copyright holder to try to enforce w/ a license -- I think it's immoral for an employer to force an employee to toil at a meaningless, soul-crushing job for the vast majority of one's single, short existence if they could make it more enjoyable, but I'd hate to see someone try to enforce that with a license (I'm happy telling a person in that situation to "just quit" just as you tell people "just don't buy it"). To call people who draw the line in a different place than you hypocrites is BS. Your pragmatic arguments make much more sense than your moralistic ones, IMHO. Dave -
Very poor example. In many parts of the world "Just quit" is "just starve to death". And guess what - brand owners do use the rights to try and stop that kind of abuse with varying degrees of success. The 'fair trade' logo is controlled this way. Many companies do their best not to license production of goods to sweat shops and child slaves. It's considered morally correct and companies get pounded by the public and lose business when they fail to police these restrictions. So please DON'T equate the two. Tivo is a minor control argument about a silly little TV recording box. Employee rights is a matter of life, death and slavery for many many people. Alan -
Well, I consider your eloquent counter-argument to have strengthened my point that such "rights to moral coercion" arguments are inherently subjective and highly context-dependent. Dave -
I don't disagree that "morals" are something very personal, and you can thus never really argue on morals *except*for*your*own*behaviour*. So I claim that for *me* the right choice is GPLv2 (or something similar). I think the GPLv3 is overreaching. There's a very fundamental, and very basic rule that is often a good guideline. It's "Do unto others". So the reason I *personally* like the GPLv2 is that it does unto others exactly what I wish they would do unto me. It allows everybody do make that choice that I consider to be really important: the choice of how something _you_ designed gets used. And it does that exactly by *limiting* the license to only that one work. Not trying to extend it past the work. See? The GPLv3 can never do that. Quite fundamentally, whenever you extend the "reach" of a license past just the derived work, you will *always* get into a situation where people who designed two different things get into a conflict when they meet. The GPLv2 simply avoids the conflict entirely, and has no problem at all with the "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". In a very real sense, the GPLv3 asks people to do things that I personally would refuse to do. I put Linux on my kids computers, and I limit their ability to upgrade it. Do I have that legal right (I sure do, I'm their legal guardian), but the point is that this is not about "legality", this is about "morality". The GPLv3 doesn't match what I think is morally where I want to be. I think it *is* ok to control peoples hardware. I do it myself. So your arguments about "potential murderes", "thieves", "trespassers" and "distributors of proprietary derived works" is totally missing the point. It's missing the point that "morals" are about _personal_ choices. You cannot force others to a certain moral standpoint. Laws (like copyright law) and legal issues, on the other hand, are fundamentally *not* about "personal" things, they are about interactions that ...
Actually, the two paragraphs above are contradictory, and the second is not true in as much as it gives way to the former. Consider an independent file contributed to Linux. It is an independent work. But the moment it gets combined with Linux, the only license you can use is GPLv2. Consider a patch, or any modified version of Linux. It's another work. But the license applies to it as well. Similarly, the GPL affects patents that somehow cover the work: the distributor can no longer enforce them against downstream users of the software. It does it in just the same way that GPLv1 and GPLv2 do: "no further restrictions". That it has to make some of them explicit, such that people understand they apply, or such that this provision can't be trampled on by other laws that by default trample copyright law, is FWIW, I tend to consider morals more of a society issue than an individual issue. Morals encode what the society understands to be the common good, and that's often something evolutionary, even with biological roots. Laws (as you say) try to reflect the morals of the society, but since it's based on morals, it often lags behind. Which is why some laws become forgotten and no longer applied, even if still applicable in theory. And that's also why (as you alluded to in your message), when laws actively diverge from morals, you observe a lot of civil disobedience: think DRM, DMCA, non-benevolent dictatorships and other abusive regimes. I must say that it *is* lovely to watch you talk about morals in ways that I agree so much with, even if I dissent in a some details. This has further increased my admiration for you. Thank you. -- 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} -
No, they overlap in cases where the reason for the law is to enforce some moral edict, and when they're not in sync it's often because some person or group of people casuistically draw a moral distinction which is absent in the law (likely because it conflicts with some other group's moral values). Your example of Robin Hood is instructive. Rich people quite likely don't agree with you that taking from the rich to give to the poor is moral, and they get more say (in a culturally-dependent fashion) when I understand your oft-repeated (in this message alone) preference, which revolves around your personal "bright line" boundary of moral It is no more hypocritical than any other instance of restricting one person's freedom to protect some freedom of some other person. The law restricts your freedom to take things from my house in order to preserve my freedom to own things. That you don't disagree with that law indicates that you agree with the majority of people about where to draw the line between one person's freedom and another in that instance, not that you are a hypocrite or that people who steal are hypocrites (they're hypocrites if they complain about people stealing from them). You have every right to prefer using your copyright to coerce people to provide source but not keys used to make binaries from that source run on hardware with which those binaries are distributed. But people who prefer the GPLv3 in the name of freedom simply favor making explicit what they felt was always implicit in earlier versions, which is their wish that people who want to use what "they designed" do so in ways which comport with freedoms which are more important to them than the freedom of the hardware developer to design their system unconstrained (like the freedom of the end user to make their TiVO work some other way). They are no more hypocrites than you are for apparently feeling that it's OK for Robin Hood to steal from Dave -
Yeah, it is indeed possible to twist it such that it sounds bad. The important point is that one's freedom ends where another's starts. Unlimited freedom would be freedom to trample over others' freedoms too, and that's not right. That's why freedom of choice has to be used with care. Even fundamental human rights sometimes clash with each other. We don't fight for the freedoms as goals in themselves. We fight for them because we understand they're essential for the common good. -- 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} -
And there is nothing in the license that says that this has to be done. Claiming that it is a requirement because of the "spirit" of the license or that such was the "intent" of the license does not make it any less legal than it is. And, as I've taken the time to explain to you, lacking any clear statement, written at the exact same time as the license, a statement of intent or spirit cannot have any real legal weight when the text of a license is finally decided upon. The reason, in case you missed the mail in which I gave it, is that the author *cannot*, no matter the belief anyone may have in their honesty or the oaths they may swear, be trusted to have *not* changed his/her mind as to the intent and/or spirit of the license at any time after the license goes into use. -- Dialup is like pissing through a pipette. Slow and excruciatingly painful. -
So? The user still has the source and is free to use that in other GPLv2 projects, that's the point. The point is not being able to run it on any specific hardware, the point is having the source with the same rights to modify it and distribute it. And no, the right to modify your copy of the source does not also mean you *have to* be able to install it on the hardware it was originally designed for - it only means you have the right to modify it and redistribute it. -- 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 -
This point of yours is a distraction from the argument in this sub-thread. These cases were Chris Friesen's attempt to show that GPLv2 was tit-for-tat, and case 2'' shows it isn't, at least not in the sense he tried to picture it: -- 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} -
Nope. There is *NO* requirement *ANYWHERE* in the GPL, no matter the version, that says you have to *DISTRIBUTE* the source to *ANYONE* except those that Exactly what I said. "only the people that have purchased the hardware have access to the modified sources" That is *EXACTLY* what a number of companies have done - Acer (yes, the laptop company) has done that. They sell laptops running Linux, but unless you have purchased one of them you can't download the sources (or even replacement binaries) for the version of linux they put on their machines. (From Acer, that is) However, as I also said, there is nothing stopping one of those people from making those "modified sources" available to the rest of the world. (I have Yes, it does. However, the practicality is that there is nothing *stopping* the person upstream from getting a copy of the source and incorporating the modifications they contain in a new version. DRH -- Dialup is like pissing through a pipette. Slow and excruciatingly painful. -
I agree. I even said so. But the *only* gave me the impression that you were talking about magic, or any other sufficiently advanced technology ;-), that would enable the recipients to get the source code, but not usefully pass it That's the sort of stuff that breaks the tit-for-tat premise. GPL indeed is not concerned about tit-for-tat. It's concerned about respect for the freedoms. -- 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} -
