On Jun 20, 2007, "David Schwartz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The freedom to "run the program, for any purpose" is just as much > violated by Microsoft when they make the Xbox. That's correct. > You can't run the Linux kernel on that either, for the exact same > reasons you can't run a modified Linux kernel on the Tivo. Technically speaking, yes. Legally speaking, these are completely different situations. First of all, Microsoft is not in any way involved in how you received the copy of the kernel Linux you'd like to run on the Xbox. If it is, you might have a claim that they couldn't impose this restriction on you. IANAL. Second, you're not a user of Linux on the Xbox in the first place, so you don't have an inherent right to run the program there that the hardware manufacturer is denying you. It's not much different than wanting to run the program on on computers you have remote access to, on which you have no permission to install Linux, or on computers you have but with incompatible hardware architectures. The case of incompatible hardware architectures is actually a bit different, since nobody is really stopping you from running the program there, it would just take you porting work to get to run it. While in both the remote-access case and the Xbox case someone *is* indeed stopping you from installing and running the software on those computers, this does not render the software non-free, because you're not a user of the software there in the first place, and stating that, in order for software to be free, you'd have to have the ability to install it on any existing computer in the world would be nonsensical. However, in the case of TiVo, you have received the software from TiVo with the express purpose of running it on the hardware they sold you, and you can't install or run modified versions precisely because they don't want to let you. They're denying you a freedom that you are entitled to have, which renders that binary copy of Linux installed on it non-Free, and at the same time they're imposing further restrictions on your freedoms that the GPL is designed to respect and defend, which violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the GPL. So you see, these are two very different cases, the key difference being the obligation that TiVo accepted towards the copyright holders of Linux, when it distributed the software to you, of respecting your freedoms, by not imposing restrictions on your exercise of the freedoms in addition the restrictions that the license itself imposes. > (And GPL rights were always applicable equally to all hardware in > the universe, not specially to some hardware and not others.) Correct. Whoever distributed you the software entitled you to enjoy the freedoms wherever you manage to run the software. -- 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/
