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

Manu Abraham
2007-06-19T15:28:39Z

Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> Well much as I don't like what Tivo did with only allowing signed
> kernels to run, I don't see anything in the above that says they can't

Well, it is not Tivo alone -- look at http://aminocom.com/ for an
example. If you want the kernel sources pay USD 50k and we will provide
the kernel sources, was their attitude.

> do that. They let you have the code and make changes to it, they just
> don't let you put that changed stuff on the device they build. The
> software is free, even though the hardware is locked down. The GPL v3
> really seems to change the spirit to try and cover usage and hardware
> behaviour, while the spirit of the GPL v2 seemed to me at least to
> simply be to allow people to copy and change and use the code, and pass
> that on to people. It didn't have anything to do with what they did
> with it on hardware. 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. It covers freedom of the
> source code and resulting binaries, not of the platform you run it on.
> The GPL v3 has a much broader coverage of what it wants to control,
> which to me means the spirit is different.
>
> I don't have a tivo, I use mythtv on my own PC. Tivo doesn't force you
> to buy their hardware after all.

Well, it is not Tivo alone, a large chunk of the vendors do that. The
vendors who actually do it the clean way are just few and can be counted
very easily.