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

David Schwartz
2007-06-19T22:41:38Z

> > You keep smuggling in the same assumption without ever
> > defending it. There
> > is a user. There is a person who gets to decide what software runs on a
> > particular piece of hardware. You keep assuming they must be the same
> > person.

> No, I'm just saying that whoever gets to decide cannot restrict the
> user's freedoms as to the software the user received.

I agree. However, the freedom to run modified software on hardware for which
one is not the person who gets to decide what software runs on that hardware
is not one of those freedoms.

> Consider this:
>
> I get GPLed software.
>
> I make improvements to it.
>
> I give it to you, but I leave out the sources of my changes.
>
> You ask me for sources, because without them you can't enjoy the
> freedom to adapt the software.
>
> I say "No, they're mine. I have the right to keep them and release
> them however I like. Copyright law says so.!
>
> You talk to the copyright holder, and he revokes my license and gets a
> court order such that I can't distribute the software any more.

Right.

> You see? It's not because I had a right that I can use it to impose
> restrictions on your freedoms, after I distribute the software to you.

Right.

> Right to control what software runs on the hardware is no different.
> For any hardware on which I can run the software, I'm a user there,
> and I'm entitled to the rights granted by the license.

Exactly. However, that right does not include the right to run the software
on any particular piece of hardware. It includes the right to get the source
code, redistribute it, modify it, and so on. It includes the right to run
the software on *ANY* hardware, so long as one is authorized to choose what
software runs on that hardware.

> It's really this simple. Don't complicate the issue by trying to make
> hardware special. It's just an illusion to try to convince yourself
> that you can deprive users of freedoms provided by the GPL.

The right to run GPL'd software on some particular piece of hardware was
never a GPL right. That is an *authorization* decision, similar to who has
'root' access on a Linux box and can modify and install the kernel.

You keep conflating things like access to the source code and the legal
right to modify that source code with the authorization right to install
that modified kernel on some particular piece of hardware. The GPL was never
about how such authorization decisions are made.

If I make you a user of my laptop, do I have to let you install a modified
kernel? What if I even let you access the kernel source, so I have
distributed it to you.

The GPL was never, ever about such authorization decisions. They are
completely alien to both the wording and the spirit of the GPL.

DS