Verily I say unto thee, that Peter Köhlmann spake thusly:
> [H]omer wrote:
>> Verily I say unto thee, that chrisv spake thusly:
>>> How would chasing Tivo away from OSS benefit the world?
>>
>> By ensuring that those who modify and use Free Software can
>> continue to modify and use it as the GPL intended.
>
> Thats fine. You are one Tivo less, but now you are free to tinker
> with it.
>
> Spot the flaw
Well we were free to tinker with it (the software) /before/ Tivo's
interference, so losing their "contribution" would be no loss at all.
Fortunately Tivo do not have a monopoly on Set Top Boxes, but this is a
little late for those who already spent money on a Tivo, only to find
that the software (perhaps even software that the Tivo customer
developed or contributed to) was effectively unmodifiable (insofar as
the modified version will not run on the hardware they paid for). The
fact is that Tivo has no moral right to restrict others' Free Software
in this fashion.
Tivo's loss is Neuros' gain. It is also a gain for those who develop and
use Free Software, and for those who believe in freedom in general.
No doubt this freedom to tinker is what motivated and empowered the
developers of the Neuros OSD, and continues to motivate and empower its
users.
Fortunately we /do/ currently have a choice of Set Top Boxes, and
similar devices, running Free Software that /is/ usable in a modified
form, but the situation might easily be different, and could conceivable
change in the future unless we take steps to prevent it.
What if this situation were to extend to /all/ technology, so that
software was not even modifiable on commodity PCs? This would almost
certainly spell the end for GNU/Linux as a Free OS, reducing it to
little more than a proprietary commodity reserved only for manufacturers
to embed and encrypt into their hardware. Certainly Microsoft, Apple,
the RIAA, the MPAA and others would be overjoyed by such a development,
I'm sure. Where do we draw the line, and say "no ... we demand the
freedom to modify code on the hardware we buy"?
And frankly, even /with/ the choices we /do/ currently have, I take
great exception to Free Software being restricted by Tivoization, just
on principle. Like I said, it is /not/ Tivo's software to restrict. If
they want restrictions, they should /start/ with software that is
already covered by a restricted license, not pervert our Free Software
for their own selfish purposes.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
| make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
| - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
02:40:29 up 35 days, 16 min, 4 users, load average: 0.18, 0.18, 0.09
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