Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris [LWN.net]

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 11, 2007 10:08 UTC (Sun) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285)
In reply to: Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris by mmarq
Parent article: Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Tivoization plus GPLv3 is very possible.

Vendor A provides USB keys containing "GNU OS" plus source code, since keys are so big these days. This "GNU OS" is built for PowerPC and has drivers for a Hardware MPEG Decoder Ring.

*Unrelated* vendor B builds boxes that verify by checksum that the code is Vendor A Release 3.14 of GNU OS.

Yet another vendor C sells to customers by having Vendors A and B ship their respective product to the customer, with a booklet explaining how to put it together with the video cables, satellite receiver and USB key.

There's no one for any GPLv3 copyright holder to sue in that scenario. No one is violating the license.

As you see, GPLv3 really can't accomplish what it wants to do here. It can not remain a distribution license and still affect actions of the end user, and many DRM scenarios can be recast as I did above, so that the end user puts the pieces together, keeping vendor's hands free of violating distribution limitations.

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Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 11, 2007 21:16 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

There's no one for any GPLv3 copyright holder to sue in that scenario. No one is violating the license.

Cartel from Vendors A, B and C is violating the license. If vendor A truly does not know anything about vendors B and C (for example if it's RedHat) then you need to send them letter and ask them to change signature to stop vendor's B and C. If it's not done then you just go to court. End of story.

And Vendor B will have truly hard time trying to explain why he's selling the hardware which is unusable without software from Vendor A: if he does not know about Vendor A - then what he thinks users should do with this hardware, if they know about Vendor A, but have no agreement with Vendor A - then how can they be sure it'll not stop producing "USB keys", if they know about Vendor A and have an agreement with Vendor A - then they together are infringing.

Yes, it's possible to circumvent GPLv3, but it's insanely risky and thus the whole example looks like straw men...