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

Dave Neuer
2007-06-14T20:24:30Z

On 6/14/07, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> Nothing prevents you from taking tivos kernel
> changes and building your own hardware to run that code on, and as such
> the spirit of the GPL v2 seems fulfilled.

Oh, come on: you're not serious, right? Something indeed prevents me
-- the fact that I'm not a hardware manufacturer, I don't have fabs,
outsource vendors to provide me w/ designs, ASICs, etc. Nor to I have
the money to pay one-off prices for various components if they're even
available in batches that small.

This argument seems totally disingenuous to me. The GPLv<3 was written
in a time when the majority of sotware to which the license was
applied was written for general purpose computers. The "user" was the
owner of the computer, and Freedom 0 was about letting that user RUN
modified copies of the software.

Things have changed a lot; we're surrounded by embedded computers, and
Freedom 0 seems to strongly imply I should have the right to run
modified versions of the Free Software I own on the hardware I OWN. Or
is the future of Open Source that you'll be able to hack on free
software as long as you work for Intel, Red Hat, TiVO, Google or OSDL?
Or own many-thousand-$$ fab printer?

Look, I totally respect Linus' and others' position that the license
is an inappropriate way to enforce what they feel are hardware design
decisions, but can we dispense w/ the silly argument that the intent
of the GPL is fullfilled as long as the user is allowed to modify the
software where modify means "imagine a world where they'd be able to
run" it?

Dave