Re: GPLv3 Position Statement

Jan Engelhardt
2006-09-25T11:12:46Z

>
> What is the stance of the developer team / kernel maintainers on
> DRM, Trusted Computing and software patents? Does the refusal to
> adopt GPLv3 as is mean that these two are more likely to emerge as
> supported functionality in the Linux kernel? Are there any moral
> boundaries Linux kernel developers will not cross concerning
> present and new U.S. laws on technology? Are they willing to put
> that in writing? Will Linux support HD-DVD and BluRay by being
> slightly more tolerant to closed source binary blobs? What about
> the already existant problems with the Content Scrambling System
> for DVD's?

I agree with Neil here. Supporting HD-DVD/BluRay/Other will probably
"as simple" as integrating DVD support into the CD-only source code
back when DVDs where introduced was.

I suppose that HD-DVD drives will use the same ATAPI/SATA commands as
DVD drives do (plus/minus the regular extras). In other words: Data
read from the drive arrives as bytes that are ready to be parsed
according to struct toc / whatever. There is no kernel-level
translation required right now (at least it looks that way), and to
watch a CSS-encrypted video, you need some extra userspace software
to do so. I do not see why HD-DVD/BR should suddenly require a
kernel-level CSS/Other decryptor... or did I miss something and
Windows had a kernel-level deCSS all the time?

> Finally, i hope that the wishes of the community of people that have only
> contributed to the kernel a few times but whose combined work may equal that
> of the core developers, are taken into account; as well as the wishes of
> the massive amount of users of the Linux kernel.
>
> How about a public poll?

Jan Engelhardt
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