On Fri, 2006-10-20 at 20:08 +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: > > Is there a way to effectively prevent Tivoization without the help of > > the Linux developers? > > Option #2 is market pressure, which is a much more difficult. Our job would > be much easier if our kernels were GPLv3'd, but as Alex explained, even > GPLv3'd kernels are not a magic bullet.
I'm not sure it would make much difference. The kernel is currently GPL'd, yet it doesn't encourage people to write free software drivers. Whether or not NVidia/ATI's system for writing non-free drivers is technically legal I don't know, but it seems no-one with affected copyrights cares enough to do much about it. OpenBSD seem to have been measurably more successful in opening up wireless drivers than Linux, and their license doesn't even require copyleft. I also worry that a lot of GPL violation appears to be in the embedded arena. It's unlikely that a new GPL version would increase compliance in and of itself, and I would suspect that un-Tivo-ising something after the fact may or may not be possible. I'm not sure what implications that would have in terms of post-facto compliance, damages, etc. There is a limit to which you can use copyright on a work to govern precisely how it gets used (hence the pro-DRM laws). Cheers, Alex. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
