Re: mea culpa on the meaning of Tivoization (was: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3)

Rob Landley
2007-06-18T20:53:55Z

On Sunday 17 June 2007 19:50:41 Alan Cox wrote:
> That's a nice definition but one I can see being sort of abusable
> depending how you read it. We head ever more into the disposable computer
> era where as a vendor putting the code on ROM is cheap and upgrades don't
> matter (throw it away get a new one).

I'm waiting for cereal boxes in the store to have a display covering the
entire front side which changes every 30 seconds, with all the circuitry to
drive it taking up a few square milimeters and a small watch battery to power
it for six months ala the blinky LEDs of today.

This should be economicaly feasible in what, 10 years? 15? (There are all
sorts of weird problems to solve like coming up with a battery that's not
only cheap enough but which you won't get in trouble putting millions of in
landfills. Fuel cell might be more environmentally friendly depending on
your catalysts...)

We haven't even brushed against the "disposable computer era" compared to
what's coming. Most of us will probably live to see happy meal toys capable
of running Linux, and that's just a _start_.

Rob
--
"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code."
- Ken Thompson.