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

Alexandre Oliva
2007-06-15T19:27:24Z

On Jun 15, 2007, Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> What happens if you're debugging something you think is a bug in the
> Linux kernel and then you run bang into some interactions that make you
> think the bug might be in the BIOS instead.

> have denied your freedom to modify and debug the system they sold you

If the bug is in the non-GPLed BIOS, not in the GPLed code, too bad.
One more reason to dislike non-Free Software.

The freedom the GPL defends is not the freedom to modify and debug the
system, but rather the covered software.

Now, if you find evidence that the "bug" is actually intentionally put
there to stop you from doing what you wanted with the software, then
there's clearly a violation of the spirit of the license, and you
might even have a case of copyright infringement, but IANAL.

--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}