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

Diego Calleja
2007-06-14T18:49:23Z

El Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:49:19 -0300, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> escribió:

> Let me see if I got your position right: when TiVO imposes
> restrictions, that's ok, but when others want to find ways to stop it,
> then it's not. *Now* I'm confused ;-)

Me, I agree that hardware shouldn't lock users. And since I'm one of those
evil european socialdemocrats, I may go as far as to think that there should
be laws that *forbid* selling such hardware.

But I think that all this iss a *hardware* issue. It seems to me that lot of
people at the FSF wants to regulate the hardware industry using the influence
of free/open software in the computing industry and the "V2 or later" phrase
from the GPL.

But the fact is that free/open source runs on _top_ of hardware. You don't
control hardware, you only control the things that are built on top of your
software, not the parts you use to build your software.

And the FSF is trying to control the design and licensing of hardware throught
the influence of their software. And I think it's wrong. I'm all to forbid hardware
that imposes restrictions on hardware, but software licenses are NOT the way
to make it. That's a task for a "Free Hardware Foundation", not the FSF.

What the FSF is trying to do is EVIL. It's not about free software, it's
not about freedom, it's about the FSF trying to have to much control over
things that they shouldn't even try to control. I think that the FSF can do
a terrible damage to free/open source with such stupid ideas. I wouldn't
even be surprised that some jugde rules that a software license that tries
to 'control' hardware is invalid