Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

Alexandre Oliva
2007-06-18T00:45:42Z

On Jun 17, 2007, Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de> wrote:

> Open source licenses shouldn't forbid usages, not even the blatantly
> unethical ones, "evil" is not tangible (I guess everything would be
> easier in life if it was).

Since you mention Open source...

What if I showed you that tivoization discriminates against field of
endeavor?

http://opensource.org/docs/osd

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program
in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict
the program from being used in a business, or from being used for
genetic research.

Wait, TiVo, you're saying I cannot use this modified version of the
program to do $whatever in this computer you sold me, and that's
solely because you don't want to let me?

Is this forceful restriction on how or where the program can be used
not a discrimination against fields of endeavor?

It's not a restriction imposed by the license of the program, but it
is a restriction imposed by the manufacturer of the equipment that
distributes the program, therefore, the conditions under which the
program is distributed are not only non-Free Software, they also fail
to meet the Open Source definition.

Neat, huh?

--
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}