Laser & DRM

Laser & DRM

Posted Oct 7, 2006 2:15 UTC (Sat) by mikov (subscriber, #33179)
In reply to: Laser & DRM by nim-nim
Parent article: Similar in spirit?

Even if you are right and the manufacturer is resorting to DRM only because they are dirt-cheap or the device is buggy, it is certainly not the GPL's place to make manufacturers "not cheap" or to force them to sell a high quality product.

Manufacturing is a much more complex, difficult, risky and expensive process than many people realize. It is absolutely nothing like releasing software and I feel that many people in their understandable zeal for software freedom are ignoring this, probably because they don't have first hand experience with manufacturing physical goods as opposed to software.

Pragmatically speaking, I feel that since GPLv3 cannot fully prevent all restrictions to software modification (as many people pointed out a ROM is an easy option), it should not attempt it all. Further on, even if GPLv3 is ultimately the right thing to do, seeing how it is splitting the community in two before our own eyes, it is very likely to do more harm than benefit (again, as many people have pointed out).

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