Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!

Daniel Callahan
2003-04-24T21:43:59Z

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On 24-Apr-2003 Giuliano Pochini wrote:
Free software is free. You can do anything with it, the only contraint
is it must stay free. But cryptography plays a bad role here. Someone
can make hw that accepts only that peice of signed free software. You
have the hw, you have the binaries, you have the sources. But the
sources are completely useless. GPL allows the user to modify it, but
the hw doesn't run the modified copy. DRM can turns free software into
half-proprietary software. I don't like it at all, but I don't see any
solution.
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The solution lies outside of the GPL. Not that you're guilty of this, but
somehow hackerdom has mixed the GPL in with 'the Right to free binaries' and
'the Right to have compatible hardware'. And those two Rights are as real as
the brontosaurus, (i.e., they ain't, despite what many want to believe).

Free binaries and compatible hardware are privileges. In the case of
hardware, that's a damn shame, but there it is. Apart from mutilating the
GPL to outlaw development on secured hardware, I can't see the solution
coming from that direction. (And even if GPL were modified to cover
"activities other than copying, distribution and modification", all it would
do is fork the license. Linus would use the older license (I'm guessing),
others would use the anti-DRM license, and Bill Gates would be ROTFLHAO.)

So there's no solution except to learn to live with it *unless* someone is
brave and savvy enough to create a General Hardware License and found the
Free Hardware Foundation. And that still wouldn't make the DRM issue vanish
-- GNU didn't wipe out proprietary software; it didn't even prevent the Mac
from using FreeBSD. It would just create the opportunity for a hardware
hacker to do what has been done with Linux.

So, if anyone really is waiting for a sign to start the Free Hardware
Foundation, consider Linus' email to be it.

Daniel.