3 ms·

> GPLv3 thinly veils DRM What do you mean by this?

zackmorris 3y ago
Hey good question. I was maybe conflating DRM with Tivoization here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization I feel that the original vision of most open source licenses was to allow anyone to sell open source software, with the condition that any changes be fed back to contributors. That self-limits how much profit anyone can make on the backs of others, because any value added eventually goes back into the system. This is how it worked back in the Red Hat Linux days. But today it's impractical to modify the software on locked devices running open source software, like cell phones. And we have video game consoles whose software is notoriously difficult to modify because they run DRM, and their games built on open source software are also copy protected. And most open source software runs on web servers now, walled away from us and unsold, so that changes don't always get fed back into the system. Put all of this together, and I can't help but feel that the GPL protects the DRM status quo. That may not have been intentional, but here we are. I view any restriction or even inconvenience on the user (where jailbreaked devices work better), or dictating what users can do with their software or devices, as DRM. That stuff should never be allowed to use open source software. And even linking to GPL code can infect non-GPL software with the GPL license, forcing users to decide if they want to use the LGPL instead. I find this distinction so exhausting to reason about and unnecessarily open to legal challenge that I usually avoid the (L)GPL altogether. I would have preferred to see a license derived from MIT with a new clause that says if you sell or distribute the software in a locked device, then any changes must be fed back to developers. But maybe GPLv3 is as close as we can get. And it still doesn't solve the problem of open source software locked behind web servers. But maybe it's important to preserve the freedom to do that, as Linus Torvalds said in that video: that it's none of our business what people do with our software (<- as long as they don't sell a modified version without feeding changes back). And admittedly, IANAL so I might be reading this all wrong. Here are the best links I could find: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DRMProhibited https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DRMProhibited https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.en.html https://www.ifross.org/?q=en/what-difference-between-gplv2-and-gplv3 https://www.ifross.org/?q=en/what-difference-between-gplv2-a... https://lwn.net/Articles/200651/ https://lwn.net/Articles/200651/ https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynamic https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynami...

Hey good question. I was maybe conflating DRM with Tivoization here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization I feel that the original vision of most open source licenses was to allow anyone to sell open source software, with the condition that any changes be fed back to contributors. That self-limits how much profit anyone can make on the backs of others, because any value added eventually goes back into the system. This is how it worked back in the Red Hat Linux days. But today it's impractical to modify the software on locked devices running open source software, like cell phones. And we have video game consoles whose software is notoriously difficult to modify because they run DRM, and their games built on open source software are also copy protected. And most open source software runs on web servers now, walled away from us and unsold, so that changes don't always get fed back into the system. Put all of this together, and I can't help but feel that the GPL protects the DRM status quo. That may not have been intentional, but here we are. I view any restriction or even inconvenience on the user (where jailbreaked devices work better), or dictating what users can do with their software or devices, as DRM. That stuff should never be allowed to use open source software. And even linking to GPL code can infect non-GPL software with the GPL license, forcing users to decide if they want to use the LGPL instead. I find this distinction so exhausting to reason about and unnecessarily open to legal challenge that I usually avoid the (L)GPL altogether. I would have preferred to see a license derived from MIT with a new clause that says if you sell or distribute the software in a locked device, then any changes must be fed back to developers. But maybe GPLv3 is as close as we can get. And it still doesn't solve the problem of open source software locked behind web servers. But maybe it's important to preserve the freedom to do that, as Linus Torvalds said in that video: that it's none of our business what people do with our software (<- as long as they don't sell a modified version without feeding changes back). And admittedly, IANAL so I might be reading this all wrong. Here are the best links I could find: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DRMProhibited https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DRMProhibited https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.en.html https://www.ifross.org/?q=en/what-difference-between-gplv2-and-gplv3 https://www.ifross.org/?q=en/what-difference-between-gplv2-a... https://lwn.net/Articles/200651/ https://lwn.net/Articles/200651/ https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynamic https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynami...