Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 4th Aug 2006 05:05 UTC
"We've been talking, meeting, and arguing over GPL 3 for nearly two years. Recently, the second draft of the long-awaited rewrite of the popular free-software license arrived. But Linus Torvalds wasn't happy with the first draft, and nothing has been modified in the second draft to make him change his mind."
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Member since:
2006-01-03
"What part of the changes in v3 would you characterize as requiring the surrendering of first born childeren to?"
It isn't so much the wording, but the spirit of the new version. The old version has been criticized for being "communist" in several ocasions, but it is actually very pragmatic and practical. Developers invest time and effort in building software, so they want those who build upon it to give back their changes. Fair enough.
Of course, the FSF has always had a more political view on it, but that doesn't mean the general community (and those outside of the community) shared that view. With v3, there is no way around it, the GPL becomes a clear political tool to push the FSF's political agenda.
The GPLv2 restricts the distribution of modified versions of the code, and mandates that the source code be available for anyone who wants it. The GPLv3 special cases certain *usage* patterns, and that is both minimal in terms of text quantity and major in terms of impact.
It's like socialism... Socialism is a good idea, but push it a bit too far and you have communism, a (real world tested) bad idea. The GPLv3 is crossing the line between what's reasonable and what's just plain fundamentalism.
DRM is generally a bad idea, it's bad for users and especially for people that like to tinker with their hardware. But we cannot fight DRM with the GPL, it is both stupid and bound to fail from the start.
Fighting DRM is in the hands of consumers. If there is demand for non-DRMed hardware, the vendors will build it. If it allows to do extra nifty stuff, the general public will buy it.
People assume that consumers are just a bunch of idiots, but that is false. Put an MP3 player on the market without it being able to play unsigned files and you'll have a guaranteed flop. The same goes for PC hardware unable to run pirated copies of Windows. I can go on all day if you wish, the examples are many and varied.
Now, about Tivo... that's an appliance... who cares if it only runs signed binaries? They could drop that functionality and replace it with flash memory chips programmable only via some weird analog protocol and the result would be the same. Who cares if I can't run a custom firmware on my DVD player, or on my car's ECU?
Let's look at wireless APs... There are people and businesses out there that will buy hardware from Linksys by the truckload just because they can fit it with custom firware. Because of this, Linksys actually *sells* hardware that allows this. These devices have (considering the bundled firmware) overpowered CPUs and extra memory for god's sake!
The GPLv2 is enough. This is a perfect example for "if it isn't broken, DON'T FIX IT."