No, I'm not having trouble understanding what the GPL does. I'm just having trouble getting people to answer the question I asked rather than the question they apparently want to answer.
When talking about freedom in the context of the FSF, the proper usage is to put freedom in quotes (i.e "freedom"). The reason is that their definition of freedom is not the standard one.
I feel like Schroder in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" having to dink-dink-dink on his little piano to get Lucy to recognize "jingle-bells". Another way of asking my question is "Does any version of the GPL allow (technically, not legally) non-signed software to run on a DRM device". The answer to that question is the same as asking if the GPL can circumvent DRM.
That's OK because most of them don't really need GPL'd source code. After all the growth of GPL'd code in devices is a rather a recent development and they can always go back to the in-house development model that served the industry well for 30 years.
"All it takes if for the top 6 hardware manufactures to back DRM and it's over."
If you hold a minority opinion and the minority is so small, weak, or unmotivated that nobody in the group is capable of producing devices that are compatible with the group's philosphy, then it's not likely that changing the terms of the GPL is going to have any effect either.
I don't think you understood my question. Say I'm a hardware vendor and I create a DRM device without any GPLv3 code embedded in it. How will the GPLv3 be able to circumvent the DRM?
In theory that's great, but in practice the available "wheels" often don't fit on the car and after spending a lot of time pounding them into shape you wonder if reinvention might have been a better approach after all.
Despite the debates on these things I (like a majority of Slashdotters I suspect) have no personally created software to license. Most of us work for other people and it's management that determines the license used.
You're right. The GPL is just a license, not the law of the land. Like all licenses the parties that have not agreed to the GPL aren't in any way bound to follow it.
That's an important point because it's often argued that the use of the GPL will mean that improvements will benefit the free software community, but it's not necessarily so.
Sure but the sun doesn't set at the pleasure of the OSS community. If they want to lock their software out of DRM-based hardware, that's their choice.
As for Linus changing his perspective, he decided a long time ago not to blindly follow whatever license the FSF might cook up in the future and it looks like it was a wise move.
"They certainly weren't done on an 8088-based IBM PC, either."
They certainly were. According to your website you were born in 1975 which means you were about 6 years old when the PC came out. It's not surprising that you don't have a lot of insight into the early days of the PC. In any case,
Sure, all the serious work in science, engineering, medicine, business etc has been done on Apple machines, not on those "piece of junk with no practical serious application" PCs.
It was much, much easier to create a powerful and stable OS on a 68000 than on 8088 (which was the original chip Windows ran on). The 68000 could directly address 16MB in a linear fashion while the 8088 could only address 1MB of RAM in 64K chunks. The 68000 had two Privilege levels: User and Supervisor. On the 8088 everything ran at the same level.
What is also often ignored in these comparisons is that a new Windows release that wasn't generally compatible with DOS and previous version of Windows would have been DOA for customers.
As a consumer you don't generally care about the reasons why the OSs ended up the way they are, it only matters which OS is best for you. But if you're going to look at OSs as a professional programmer you have to consider the history and the business issues before you "strongly question whether excellence is really part of the Microsoft vision".
Hey, I'm just responding to posts written here. If the guys I'm responding to don't know what their talking about it's their problem not mine.
Frankly I don't understand why you feel you have the time to call me a dick but you don't have time to "set me straight" on the purpose of the patent clause. Is it that you don't understand it or are you afraid of having to defend the interpretation you post here?
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No, I'm not having trouble understanding what the GPL does. I'm just having trouble getting people to answer the question I asked rather than the question they apparently want to answer.
When talking about freedom in the context of the FSF, the proper usage is to put freedom in quotes (i.e "freedom"). The reason is that their definition of freedom is not the standard one.
"They only have that right if the people and legal system choose to give it to them."
You've got it backwards. They have the right unless people (revolution?) and/or the legal system choose to take it away.
I feel like Schroder in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" having to dink-dink-dink on his little piano to get Lucy to recognize "jingle-bells". Another way of asking my question is "Does any version of the GPL allow (technically, not legally) non-signed software to run on a DRM device". The answer to that question is the same as asking if the GPL can circumvent DRM.
That's OK because most of them don't really need GPL'd source code. After all the growth of GPL'd code in devices is a rather a recent development and they can always go back to the in-house development model that served the industry well for 30 years.
So the correct answer is that the GPL doesn't circumvent DRM.
In other words, GPLv3 doesn't circumvent DRM.
That's intersting, but you didn't answer my question. Note that incentives and motivations have nothing to do with my question.
"All it takes if for the top 6 hardware manufactures to back DRM and it's over."
If you hold a minority opinion and the minority is so small, weak, or unmotivated that nobody in the group is capable of producing devices that are compatible with the group's philosphy, then it's not likely that changing the terms of the GPL is going to have any effect either.
I don't think you understood my question. Say I'm a hardware vendor and I create a DRM device without any GPLv3 code embedded in it. How will the GPLv3 be able to circumvent the DRM?
In theory that's great, but in practice the available "wheels" often don't fit on the car and after spending a lot of time pounding them into shape you wonder if reinvention might have been a better approach after all.
Despite the debates on these things I (like a majority of Slashdotters I suspect) have no personally created software to license. Most of us work for other people and it's management that determines the license used.
"Which is EXACTLY why the GPLv3 is necessary."
OK, so explain how GPLv3 is going to make it possible to circumvent the DRM.
Gee, and I thought their purpose had something to do with writing good software, but I guess it's just about politics after all.
"The key thing is that the hardware vendors are not allowed to violate the license terms chosen by the software author. "
The other way to look at it is that software authors won't be able run their software on DRM-based systems if they use GPLv3.
You're right. The GPL is just a license, not the law of the land. Like all licenses the parties that have not agreed to the GPL aren't in any way bound to follow it.
That's an important point because it's often argued that the use of the GPL will mean that improvements will benefit the free software community, but it's not necessarily so.
Then either you live with it or you vote with your feet and not buy hardware from that company again.
Sure but the sun doesn't set at the pleasure of the OSS community. If they want to lock their software out of DRM-based hardware, that's their choice.
As for Linus changing his perspective, he decided a long time ago not to blindly follow whatever license the FSF might cook up in the future and it looks like it was a wise move.
You may have the right to try, but the company that created the hardware "damn well" has the right to use technology to stop you if they want to.
Please ignore the sentence fragment at the end. I got interrupted and thought I'd deleted it before submitting.
"They certainly weren't done on an 8088-based IBM PC, either."
They certainly were. According to your website you were born in 1975 which means you were about 6 years old when the PC came out. It's not surprising that you don't have a lot of insight into the early days of the PC. In any case,
Sure, all the serious work in science, engineering, medicine, business etc has been done on Apple machines, not on those "piece of junk with no practical serious application" PCs.
It was much, much easier to create a powerful and stable OS on a 68000 than on 8088 (which was the original chip Windows ran on). The 68000 could directly address 16MB in a linear fashion while the 8088 could only address 1MB of RAM in 64K chunks. The 68000 had two Privilege levels: User and Supervisor. On the 8088 everything ran at the same level.
What is also often ignored in these comparisons is that a new Windows release that wasn't generally compatible with DOS and previous version of Windows would have been DOA for customers.
As a consumer you don't generally care about the reasons why the OSs ended up the way they are, it only matters which OS is best for you. But if you're going to look at OSs as a professional programmer you have to consider the history and the business issues before you "strongly question whether excellence is really part of the Microsoft vision".
Hey, I'm just responding to posts written here. If the guys I'm responding to don't know what their talking about it's their problem not mine.
Frankly I don't understand why you feel you have the time to call me a dick but you don't have time to "set me straight" on the purpose of the patent clause. Is it that you don't understand it or are you afraid of having to defend the interpretation you post here?