Stallman's quote in real context
Posted Oct 6, 2006 14:32 UTC (Fri) by
cventers (subscriber, #31465)
In reply to:
Stallman's quote in real context by cventers
Parent article:
Similar in spirit?
Ah, I made a goof. When I said:
> How long before the manufacturers of MP3 players realize they can take
> Rockbox, port it, sprinkle on their _music_ DRM layer and then stamp on
> their _software_ DRM layer to prevent anyone but them from changing the
> license?
I should have said 'changing the software.'
But the goof may raise an interesting counter-argument, 'the GPLv3 cannot
control other (proprietary) software on future MP3 players that might
include a crypto bootloader'. True, but at least in that world the
Rockbox developers still have the option of voting with their code.
Without the provision of "Don't destroy freedom #1 through technological
means" in GPLv3, any greedy manufacturer could freely take Rockbox's code
and use it not only to vote against Rockbox but to incidentally harm the
entire free society in that process.
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