Verily I say unto thee, that chrisv spake thusly:
> Tim Smith wrote:
>> I believe they DO have closed source apps that sit on top of Linux.
>> The problem Stallman and others have (and what they mean by
>> "Tivoization") is that you can't change the *Linux* on Tivo. Tivo
>> uses digital signatures to verify code, and won't run code that
>> doesn't have the correct signature.
>
> And I don't see anything wrong with that. If GPL3 chases Tivo away
> from Linux and into some other OS, what improvement to the world has
> been accomplished? It would seem to me to hurt, not help, the
> Linux/OSS cause.
There certainly *is* something wrong with it.
Tivo have taken something that was designed specifically to be Free (GPL
licensed software) and made it impossible for the users of that software
to exercise their freedom (i.e. actually run modifications).
If Tivo want to impose additional restrictions on the use of their
products, then they should use a wholly proprietary solution to do it,
rather than perverting Free Software for the purpose. That is nothing
more than exploitation.
If that then chases exploiters like Tivo away from Free Software then
... *good*. The goal of Free Software is not "market share at any cost",
especially when that cost is the compromising of it's own principles.
It's not as if Tivo didn't have any choice in the matter either; the IT
world is full of proprietary solutions that Tivo could have opted for,
so why did they choose to exploit and pervert Free Software instead?
If people allow Free Software to be perverted in this way, then it will
become just yet another proprietary solution; effectively defeating its
entire purpose. At that point, we'd all be as well using Windows or OSX.
Meanwhile, other companies like Neuros Technology seem to have no
problem fully understanding and following the principles of Free
Software. Their Neuros OSD is both an Open Software *and* Open Hardware
design, and they explicitly encourage modification and development
through end-user participation. By all accounts, this was one of the
hottest selling products over the Christmas season too, so it's not as
if adhering to these principles is somehow detrimental to a product's
success. Indeed the entire rationale behind Tivoization is little more
than an excuse; the very existence of devices like the Neuros proves it.
--
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
17:10:37 up 34 days, 14:46, 3 users, load average: 0.20, 0.05, 0.02
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