WOW! Community soap opera - and then some!

Posted Oct 5, 2006 14:15 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

I make a living from embedded device/software development too, but I'm afraid I can't agree with your or Sombrio's characterisation of the situation. Once I understood the difference I found that I was a 'Free Software' person and not an 'Open Source' person. So there are embedded developers on both side of this argument.

I don't believe the entire embedded industry will stop using Linux even if it can't 'tivoise'. Hackability (aka user feedback, improvements and involvement) is a benefit as well as a potential cost. We live in interesting times, certainly, but calling the FSF names as Sombiro does above and claiming that they are looney zealots and he is the mainstream is certainly simplistic, and probably wrong. There probably _are_ now more 'Open Source' developers than 'Free Software' ones - but it is not a static division, indeed most of the time it is not a division at all. I suppose if GPLv3 retains the anti-DRM clauses then perhaps it will become clearer just how the numbers stack up.

And saying that DRM has 'nothing to do with Digital Restrictions Management' is just bollocks. It _is_ enforcement of restrictions. That's how it's implemented, that's how it works. I'm reasonably confident that it will lose out to free/open content in the long term, but it's going to be an ugly fight. I agree that manufacturers have the right to make DRM-enabled devices, but I don't agree that they can use GPLed code in such a way that end users lose the freedom to modify that code. I'm happy if GPLv3 makes that clearer.