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Torvalds Describes DRM and GPLv3 as 'Hot Air'
An anonymous reader writes "In Sydney this week for the annual Linux conference, Linus Torvalds has described DRM and the GPL as 'hot air' and 'no big deal'. From the interview: 'I suspect — and I may not be right — but when it comes to things like DRM or licensing, people get really very excited about them. People have very strong opinions. I have very strong opinions and they happen to be for different reasons than many other people. It ends up in a situation where people really like to argue — and that very much includes me... I expect this to raise a lot of bad blood but at the same time, at the end of the day, I don't think it really matters that much.'"
Is that just an omission on the part of the reporter or do you really believe you have no moral responsibility to intervene when you see someone doing something wrong?
I think he just means that if someone wants to write code that implements some sort of DRM scheme, he thinks they should be allowed to do that. What he should be saying is that he is OK if they do that with HIS code, because that is his position.
If he is really OK with "letting people do what they want," then why force them to allow further modification of works derived from your code?
Why not just let them take your code, create their own version and use a signed key to make any further modifications unusable on the device? Oh wait. That's what DRM does. He **is** OK with that.
Linus sure is a confusing guy.
Doesn't really matter. The real battle of DRM is going to happen in Congress; if the content industry gets what it wants, people won't have any option as to whether they buy DRM or not, any more than you have a choice of whether or not to buy a MacroVision-enabled VCR. They're just going to get Congress to mandate it, and that will be the end of the discussion.
The technology of DRM is hardly even worth discussing, because it's inherently flawed. There cannot ever be a 'perfect DRM' system, because of the model's fundamental problems. So whatever gets implemented, will be broken -- the discussion is whether the people who break it, and others who subsequently take advantage of the break, will be criminals.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What? You never heard about the TiVo, the device that brought the DRM clause to the GPLv3? The operating system of the TiVo is Linux, probably not only the kernel, but also other GNU utilities. It is supposed to be free to modify for the user. But TiVo signs the software with their private key, and the hardware verifies that the operating system image contains a signature created by their private key. If it doesn't, the system refuses to start.
This is effectively a DRM system that removes the ability to modify the software on the TiVo, even though it is mostly free software, where allowing modification by the user is a crucial part of the license. It barely complies with the GPLv2 by supplying the source code, but requiring that the modified software is used on another hardware device (not a TiVo).