On Jun 16, 2007, Al Viro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How the hell does that improve the situation for users?
Maybe it doesn't. How does it make it worse? Maybe just providing an incentive for the vendor to respect users' freedoms will do the trick, and *some* vendors will do, while those who can't will keep the status quo. And then we're likely to be better off. > I realize that you have accepted the FSF credo, but if you want that > conversation to go anywhere you have to separate the things you > believe in from the things you can rationally explain. I've already explained what the spirit of the GPL is. I've already explained that the anti-Tivoization provision is in line with it. I've already asked in what sense Tivoization makes for a better tit-for-tat, and got no reply whatsoever, rational or otherwise. I have already hinted at why it makes things worse. You don't have to believe what I believe to analyze the arguments rationally, just like I don't have to believe what you believe to analyze your arguments rationally. We may still get to different conclusions as to what is better, if we have different values guiding us. But whatever conclusion you arrive at won't change the plain fact that Tivoization is against the spirit of the GPL, because it is a means to restrict users' freedoms that the GPL is designed to defend. It's really this simple. I'm not trying to convince you of anything other than that the spirit of the GPL is not being changed at all. You don't have to agree with that spirit in order to accept this simple fact. And while people keep on spreading this lie, I'll be inclined to point out that it's false. See, this is not about promoting GPLv3, or "pushing it down your throats", as some have claimed. This feeling is just a symptom of the high rejection for the FSF ideology, that appears to blind so many smart people from rational reasoning on matters that touch the FSF ideology. This is not even about showing that the letter of GPLv2 prohibited Tivoization. My arguments concerning Tivoization were all about the spirit of the license, and unfortunately so many people seem unable to tell the spirit from the letter that they keep on moving the discussion to legal technicalities, and then they shoot straw men and feel happy that they shot an argument. But the argument stands untouched, and the straw man was already dead before. Wasted time. As far as I'm concerned, Linux is released under GPLv2, and that's a good thing. It's unlikely to change. I wish it changed for better, but that's just me, and my contributions to Linux in term of code are really minimal. I have no say on that. But as someone involved in the GPLv3 development, it saddens me when people lie about it. I feel it's my moral obligation to set the record straight. And that's what I've been trying to do. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
