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

Alexandre Oliva
2007-06-16T16:58:38Z

On Jun 16, 2007, Bernd Schmidt <bernds_cb1@t-online.de> wrote:

> Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On Jun 15, 2007, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> What this means for the FSF goals if Tivo get up one morning and switch
>>> their system firmware to ROM however is interesting 8)
>>
>> I'm not the FSF, and I don't speak for it, but it seems to me that
>> this would be "mission accomplished".

> This is insane. You start with a lofty ideal involving "freedom", and
> when you end up with a meaningless technicality (and in technical terms
> a change for the worse) you consider it a victory?

It accomplishes the mission in that everyone is on the same grounds.
Same freedom for everyone. If the vendor tries to keep a privilege
over the software to itself, denying it to its customers, it's failing
to comply with the spirit of the license. It's really this simple.
Is this so hard to understand?

The goal is not to push vendors away from GPLed software. If they
can't permit modification of the software, that's fine, they can still
accomplish this.

What they can't do is deny it to customers while they retain it to
themselves. This is unfair, this is wrong, and this disrespects
users' freedoms. Therefore, the GPL should not permit it.

--
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}