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The answer is "YES"
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 02 2006 @ 05:25 AM EDT
The fundamental philosophical question is "Should a gadget designer
be allowed to use GPL code and forbid the users of this gadget to run
modified code on their gadgets?"
Your philisophical question could just as easily be framed as "Should a
gadget designer be allowed to use GPL code in a hard soldered ROM
chip?". If you know anything about electronics, you will know that ROM
cannot be rewritten, and a soldered chip can be all but impossible to
"burn and replace". You are all but "forbidden" from altering this GPL
code in situ.
Think about it for a minute...do you really want to start telling gadget
designers what chips and technology they can and cannot use? Or worse,
penalize them for using an EEPROM instead of a ROM? The only certainty
is that you WILL inhibit gadget designer innovation...but for what gain?
I suppose the gadgets that DO make it past your bizarre (from a h/w
designers pov) set of requirements, you WILL be able to futz with...but
is it worth the cost? Are you certain you will have more futzable
devices, and cheaper, if you go this route?
Consider another scenario where I take Linux and Samba and create a
single chip NAS device. Linux and Samba will both be entombed within the
chip, no rewrites possible. Do you really want to forbid this device
from ever seeing the light of day just because it cannot be tweaked by
it's owner?
RMS says "It was my intention to give every owner of a device with
GPL code the freedom to tinker with this code."
Like my mamma always used to tell me, "be careful what you ask for...you
may just get it." RMS may just get his wish, because if zero devices
come with GPL code (because of odious terms), then by definition EVERY
GPL device owner DOES have the right to tinker. Wish granted.
-b
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regards,
alexander.
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