Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!

Giuliano Pochini
2003-04-24T10:45:15Z

On 24-Apr-2003 Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> I'm not particularly interested in the high-flown moral issues, but
>> this DRM stuff smelled like nothing more than a transparent ploy to
>> prevent anything but bloze from booting on various boxen to me.
>
> Let's be honest - to some people that is _exactly_ what DRM is. No ifs,
> buts and maybes.
>
> And hey, the fact is (at least as far as I'm concerned), that as long as
> you make the hardware, you can control what it runs.
>
> The GPL requires that you make the software available - but it doesn't
> require that the hardware be made so that you can always upgrade it.

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.

Bye.