Dann: A lot of the controversy seems to be around the Tivoization clause in there, the DRM issue.Wally Balljacker wrote:Can I get the gist of it?Tsuroerusu wrote:Listen to the interviews with Jeremy Allison he comments on exactly this, and I fully agree with what he says. It makes little sense for me to transcribe what he says when you lazy bastards (Just kidding) can listen to the podcasts!Wally Balljacker wrote:My problem with the GPLv3, is that by supposedly giving users more freedom, it is taking freedom away from hardware vendors. I don't think Linux kernel hackers have any right to tell Tivo what they can or can't do with their hardware. As long as Tivo is playing by the rules and contributing their changes back, I don't see a problem. The average person who even cares about modifying their Tivo is better off building a MythTV box, anyway. If anyone listened to the most recent episode of LaGER, I expressed the same opinion.
Jeremy Allison: Yeah, and I don't understand why, I don't understand why actually, I think that's a completely reasonable and logical clause to add. Essentially what it's saying is that, you know, free software developers, GPL advocates, believe that DRM is bad, and if you want to write, if you want do DRM code, write your own code, don't use ours, essentially. It's not even a restriction on a field of use, you CAN write DRM code with GPLv3, it's just that you can't use it to restrict the user's freedom. So you can write a secure system using DRM, using GPLv3, and let's say you were selling, you know, a medical records system, written using GPLv3 code, and it had to use DRM to protect stuff, you could write that code, and you could sell it perfectly happily! You would have to make sure that the people that you sold it to, had the keys themselves. So in other words, what you can't do with it, is you can't write a software product, give it to people and then say "Oh but we're not giving you the keys, so you can't modify it". The people I find who moan about this either don't understand what it is that's being prevented, or as usual there's a lot of people out there who basically just wanna to be able to use other people's code for free! They wanna use it without any responsibilities. Somebody actually made a great argument on Slashdot today! Somebody said "Oh well, the BSD license is so much freer!!" or whatever, and somebody said "So what's your opinion on the freedom to own slaves?", essentially ... the comment is that the GPL is restricting freedom, well, it's restricting your ability to stop other people from being free, and I think the DRM clause is completely consistant with that.
Dann: Aha.
Jeremy Allison: Yeah I mean, like I say, the things that it restricts are things that are inconsistent with software freedom, and the GPL has always been about software freedom. The DRM clause really is no more controversial than the clause that says you can't sign away individual patent licenses, that's a restriction as well!!
OK, I put a bit of time into transcribing that, so that I could deliver the exact description to you!
Listen to the TLLTS interview from minute 67 and on, more good stuff than the stuff I just mentioned.
