What Karim has and has not shown [LWN.net]

What Karim has and has not shown

Posted Feb 20, 2006 22:17 UTC (Mon) by pimlott (guest, #1535)
In reply to: What Karim has and has not shown by xoddam
Parent article: FSF: GPLv3 Update #2

What Karim has has *not* shown is that a distributor may comply with the GPLv3 whilst rendering modified versions of the covered work useless. The licence text "such that its functioning in all circumstances is identical" explicitly disallows such disabling of a GPL'd work.

Well, this question centers around the interpretation of "useless" and "identical functioning". How far can the device degrade the usefulness of the modified GPLv3 software without triggering the anti-DRM clause? Karim proposed a device that "wouldn't allow much of anything but booting your kernel and xoring bits in RAM with no access to display or networking or anything useful". That makes the kernel (or any other bit of software) useless to me--the only way you know it's even running is it gets warm and the battery eventually dies. :-) But it's hard to see how this violates the "identical functioning" requirement (do you think so?), and if it does, I expect there is a more subtle ploy that doesn't yet has the same effect.

(Log in to post comments)

What Karim has and has not shown

Posted Feb 21, 2006 0:36 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

> Karim proposed a device that "wouldn't allow much of anything but
> booting your kernel and xoring bits in RAM with no access to display
> or networking or anything useful"

IMO that would absolutely violate the licence, if the same program
unmodified would be able to use the I/O devices in question. That's
certainly the intention: Moglen said (in the talk, Ciaran O'Riordan's
transcript is linked below), 'I would translate that for vernacular use,
into "plays all the same movies".' If the legalese doesn't already mean
what Moglen says it does, I'm sure he'll fix it before we reach
GPLv3-rc1.

Karim also suggested, less extremely, a device where GPLv3 software is
present, usable and free, but is prevented from reading the cleartext of
digitally restricted media (regardless of whether, and by what key, it is
signed). That would not violate the licence.

The point I'm trying to make is that the licence is intended to protect
the freedom of the user with respect to the licenced software, not to
prevent the use of DRM altogether.

What Karim has and has not shown

Posted Feb 21, 2006 3:05 UTC (Tue) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link]

IMO that would absolutely violate the licence

So this is what it comes down to: The device maker might argue that the kernel itself is behaving identically, only the other components are declining to talk to it. Or, more subtly, say, the display could continue to talk to the kernel as if operating normally, but actually remain blanked. It is clear here that the device as a whole is functioning differently, but is the kernel? I and I think Karim are afraid that the answer is no, and that this loophole cannot be closed.