[Dnsmasq-discuss] GPL v3

Cristóbal Palmer cristobalpalmer at gmail.com
Wed Sep 12 19:32:47 BST 2007


On 9/12/07, Imre Kaloz <kaloz at openwrt.org> wrote:
> only valid for "user products". So GPLv3 "speaks two tongues", it does
> hurt smaller companies doing TiVoization, but lets the big guys get away.
> This alone makes me sick.

At the risk of derailing this discussion, how exactly is what you describe bad?

What v3 does in section 6 is broadly define "consumer product" and
make restrictions apply to the distribution of object code "in or
embodied in" consumer products. This isn't "letting the big guys get
away," as I see it. Rather, it's acknowledging the major interest of
many of the stakeholders: preserving their software freedoms for stuff
they buy and use. "Stuff they use" == "consumer product" in realistic
cases, so what's the problem?

Perhaps your conception of the goals of v3 is different? You don't
believe that it's ever legitimate to build an appliance and sell that
appliance--to any entity--without the source code? Is that it? My take
is that large businesses are powerful enough to assert that source
code will be provided in a transaction with another business (and
realistically have that demand met), so they don't need protecting.
The individual consumer, on the other hand...

Please note that I *do* believe that source code should always be
available, but I think it's worth being pragmatic about protecting the
people who need protecting *first*. The GPLv3 is a highly pragmatic
document that was negotiated over a long period of time in order to
achieve powerful protections for people--individuals--who didn't have
those protections under the previous version. This is a step forward
that I think we should take, but only when we're all in agreement
about _why_ we're taking the steps we're taking and we're sure that
those steps are having the desired effects (ie. are protecting us like
we thought they would).

Did I miss something?

Cheers,
-- 
Cristóbal M. Palmer
celebrating 15 years of sunsite/metalab/ibiblio:
http://tinyurl.com/2o8hj4


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