On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Daniel Hazelton wrote:
Dispute this:
non-tivoized hardware => users can scratch their itches => more
contributions from these users
tivoized hardware => users can't scratch their itches => fewer
contributions from these users
Linus doesn't have to. Statistically the number of people that will even think
of modifying the code running on a "tivoized" device is minute - at most 5%
of the users of such a device. Of those people the ones with the skill to
actually do the work is an even smaller number - figure 2.5 to 3% of them. Of
those with the skill, probably about 10% of them are actually *good* enough
at it for their changes to be useful. Of that number, figure that only 25%,
at most, will contribute the changes back.
Apply that to a sample case:
"tivoized" device total users: 1,000,000
people that think about modifying: 50,000 (5%)
people with skill: 1500 (3%)
people who are good enough for the changes to be useful: 150 (10%)
those who will contribute them back: 38 (25%)
based on my experiance looking at the software released for tivos, I think
you are over-estimating these numbers. if there are more then a dozen
people producing things that are good enough to be useful and releasing
their results as opensource software I would be surprised.
and for all that the FSF is claiming that tivos can't being modified it's
really not that hard to change.
David Lang
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