Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

On Jun 15, 2007, "Scott Preece" <sepreece@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 6/15/07, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 15, 2007, Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx> wrote:

it irreversibly cuts off certain people from being to distribute
GPLv3-ed software alongside with certain types of hardware that the
FSF's president does not like.

That's not true. They can just as well throw the key away and refrain
from modifying the installed software behind the users' back.

This characterization misses something important. For many product
devices, like cell phones, the modification is never "behind the
user's back"

Okay, take out the "behind the users' back", it makes no difference.
That was just to highlight the frequent evil intentions behind keeping
the keys.

I wonder if giving half the key to the user and keeping the other half
would be enough to satisfy the GPLv3 language while still enabling the
vendor and user to update the software together.

The FSF's approval of this distinction (ROM versus replaceable) places
the FSF's particular principles over users interests, for no
particular reason

Over *users* interest? How so?

if the manufacturer believes that it cannot legally allow software
modification, all the restriction does is force them either to make
the software unmodifiable (which advances freedom not at all) or to
use software under a different license (which advances freedom not
at all).

Right.


But if the manufacturer believes that it can legally allow it, and
wants to be able to install, software modifications, then it must
decide between giving that up and letting the user do it as well. And
this is where the users interests may prevail.

--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
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