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Linus Speaks Out On GPLv3
Slagged writes to mention the word that Linus Torvalds isn't a fan of the new GPL draft. News.com has the story, and someone purporting to be Linus is causing a ruckus in the Groklaw thread on the subject. From the News.com article: "Say I'm a hardware manufacturer. I decide I love some particular piece of open-source software, but when I sell my hardware, I want to make sure it runs only one particular version of that software, because that's what I've validated. So I make my hardware check the cryptographic signature of the binary before I run it ... The GPLv3 doesn't seem to allow that, and in fact, most of the GPLv3 changes seem to be explicitly designed exactly to not allow the above kind of use, which I don't think it has any business doing."
Linus is becoming less and less relevant as time goes by. He probably thinks that the entire community is contributing to GNU/Linux because they like him personally. What good does free software do us if we cannot modify it and continue to run the modified code? We already don't own many of the things we buy - proprietary software, music, movies and many other things. Now we won't own (control) the hardware we purchase either?
If GNU/Linux had started 20 years later than it did this wouldn't even be an issue. DRM would've killed it before it even got off the ground. Linus would just be the name of a Peanuts character.
Think damn it, think!
MFG: "The system supports both the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and WIMP (Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP) platforms."
If it's controlling some flight systems or some medical device, then it should be very stringent about the environment that it operates in
This is why flight systems and medical devices are maintained by trained engineers who are governed by institutional policies that mandate the software changes that are permitted.
The only thing that Linus' is defending is manufacturer's right to prevent anyone from ever running anything they don't approve of. I personally want to be able to run anything I want on my hardware (that's what "my" means) and if the manufacturer has to tell a bunch of lame customers who've broken stuff that they don't get no support, I'm sure that the manufacturers won't have any trouble at all doing that.
I have managed support teams and had to deal personally with irate customers who were trying to run our product on WinME and the like, which was not supported. I had no trouble explaining to them clearly that they were not on a supported platform and they needed to upgrade their OS. It just isn't that hard, and honestly such users are a minisucle fraction of the total support burden.
Likewise, at this very moment, there is code running on computers in hospitals around the world that is secured only by hospital policy. I'm talking about systems in ORs and imaging suites, most of which...well, you don't want to know about the situtation with regard to passwords on such systems.
So far as I know, not one single accident has ever occured anywhere due to a user loading alternative code onto such a system. But I do know of cases where researchers have used their freedom to run alternative software to repurpose such system for all kinds of interesting and valuable experimental purposes.
Linus is proposing to allow hardware manufacturers to use software validation to prevent the owners of such hardware from being free to use it in novel ways.
There is no risk to the public due from the freedom to run alternate code. There is a very low added support burden from users running alternate code. There is currently a very good mechanism to prevent people from running alternate code in situations where it matters, starting with "voiding the warranty" and moving on up to "opening yourself to a lawsuit". Therefore there is no risk to anyone from hardware owners having the freedom to use their hardware as they see fit, and specious arguments invoking speculative situations with mission-critical hardware simply do not hold water.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
By my point of view a benevolent dictator is still a dictator.
We should thank Torvalds to keep the questioning open, otherwise it would be like Christian Church: the Pope speaks, the lambs obey.
The article also makes a very saddening statement: the GPL3 is basically written by the companies behind the FSF. The article cites that HP is pushing to have their own interests protected. Do you really think that other GPL-oriented companies (like IBM or Novell) will just stay and look or they will also try to drive the boat towards their coasts?
After all, FSF made just a favour to many commercial distributions (another case of uninterested philantrophism?), claryfying that if you have to fork a distro, you have to redistribute every single packet by yourself, instead of shipping only the relevant, modified ones like GPL says. GPL is too generalized and vague. You can't have a license that has hundreds of pages of "clarifications" continuosly swapped and rewritten to praise an actor or to damage another. Most of the clarifications are just more ambiguos or simply idiotic. Do you know that by FSF interpretation, subclassing or implementing an interface is considered a derivative work? That's makes impossible to use any object oriented library released over LGPL by the term of the license, they will be as plain and simple GPL licensed code. There's a lot of OOP libraries wrongly placed in the LGPL domain. Do you really think that their author bothered about the implications? They just followed the leader. For not good reason and without a clue. Why LGPL3 talks only about header files and libraries? Open source licenses should be technlogy neutral and C/C++ is not the only language out there. Sure our benevolent dictator may pretend that the other technologies are not there gut they will not fade away. Today IT rarely uses anything compiled aside core OS programs and it's hard to find a place for the delusional aims of a puppet in the hands of other non-Microsoft corporations.
Sure A guru's life is expensive and big corporations makes hefty donations. Let Stallman explain to us mortals why Microsoft has to be destroyed and IBM or HP are valiant partners whose interests are to be protected.
HP advanced pressures to make the GPL3 more friendly towards their PATENTS! The world got upside down or what?
Matteo Anelli
.brain - http://www.dot-brain.com
I don't see what the big deal is. I mean really, if you have the source code, it is implied that you should be able to tweak how things work. What's the point of having the source code without the ability to tweak things (ie: if the hardware is locked to not accept your tweaks?).
This leads to "trusted computing"---while this discussion is centered around `devices', it might find its way into computers. Imagine all the motherboard manufacturers being forced (by the paid off politicians?) to not allow you to run non-signed operating system. Obviously MS will get a signature, as well as major Linux distributions, but... What's the use of having the entire source for Linux, if you cannot compile and run your own version?
I see GPL3 as an extention and realization that hardware now a days is exactly like software. General purpose microcontrollers running some software is NOT a `device' in the same sense it was a few years back, it's a computer running software. Very few devices are `custom built'---most are just microcontrollers with software determining how the thing works and `what it is'. GPL3 essentially says hardware = software as far as licensing is concerned. You cannot close hardware if you use open software on it. I think it makes sense.
Anyone who disagrees with this isn't a consumer of hardware/software. They're hardware vendors looking to lock out users, while at the same time getting a free ride from open software.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Manufacturers should be able to go out of business in any method they desire.
Yup. GPLv3 is just plain dumb. It "addresses" a non-existent problem. People have a choice between DRM and non-DRM platforms and software. They can and do vote with their wallets.
And for those who are thinking "what about when there are no more non-drm devices, smarty-pants" - a GPLv3 won't address that issue; a swift kick to your political masters' behinds will.
The GPLv2 isn't broken. v3 doesn't pass the "smell test"; it won't "fix" anything, certainly not a situation such as a fully-drm'd, fully closed world.
Funny, the biggest push for DRM is from the so-called "free world." What sort of frigging time-warp alternate universe have we been living in for the last 6 years?