Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders

[Karim Yaghmour <karim@opersys.com>]

Filip Brcic wrote:
> I do too, but I don't think that "To stop it, just don't buy any of it." is 
> the solution of the problem. It would be a solution if most of the customers 
> would do so.

Exactly. And this may indeed be a case where the non-techies have decided
for the techies. The tech community (or part of it in this case) cannot
change the world. It can certainly act as a catalyst, and boy has free
software been such a catalyst, but there are other forces at play here,
including consumers who not care about DRM and those that even understand/
accommodate it. Even if licenses prohibited the use of FLOSS in DRM'ed
hardware: where there's a need, there's demand, and where'd demand, there's
supply. IOW, we will continue seeing DRM'ed hardware for the foreseeable
future, and there's nothing any techie (or software license) can do about
it. So, I have to question myself with regards to what use it is to
encumber a successful license with draconian runtime restrictions when
said restrictions will not solve anything anytime in the future --
especially as said restrictions will not effectively block the use of
DRM hardware and corresponding user-space applications as I explained
earlier.

DRM is something worth fighting, but we need something that attacks the
root problem, not its symptoms. In comparison, GPLv2 was indeed
successful in that it attacked the root problem of software distribution
freedom. How it may leverage that by introducing restrictions on symptoms
of another problem still evades me.

Karim
-- 
President  / Opersys Inc.
Embedded Linux Training and Expertise
www.opersys.com  /  1.866.677.4546
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