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DRM is a bit of a red herring.DRM is a bit of a red herring.Posted Feb 12, 2007 1:43 UTC (Mon) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270)In reply to: DRM is a bit of a red herring. by drag Parent article: Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris
This is in highly speculative territory.
I personally doubt that a court would find that the distribution license could limit the distributor's right to make contracts with its customers, including contracts that bound the customers to NOT do things the license would allow them to do. But IANAL.
Beyond that, even under a broad reading of the license terms, the service presumably IS allowed to authenticate the proprietary software that it works with (in the TiVo-like case, the software that runs on top of Linux). The system may be designed so that software can work with the hardware without relying on (or trusting) the GPLed software. Then the system can allow the GPL software to be replaced without actually opening up the system's interesting functionality.
Also, the license only requires providing keys; there is no basis for figuring out what happens if the means of authenticating the software isn't "a key". If the service or proprietary software calculates a checksum, for instance, that is not a key.
And, of course, virtualization may be the ultimate way to allow using the GPL software for untrusted functions and using only authenticated software for things the system needs to trust (like interaction with remote services).
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DRM is a bit of a red herring. Posted Feb 12, 2007 16:04 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] You may doubt it, but you're wrong.
Under copyright law, they have no right whatsoever to use the code. If they don't like the terms it's offered under, their remedy is not to use it. Simple as that.
DRM is a bit of a red herring. Posted Feb 12, 2007 17:19 UTC (Mon) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] You're oversimplifying.
The distribution of the software is controlled by the software license. Selling you a box with the software in it is subject to the terms of the license. I'm assuming you can buy the device without buying the service.
Buying service (whether for a TiVo, cable box, or cell phone) is a separate arrangement. Assuming you buy the device, and get to keep it regardless of whether you get the service, there's no interaction with the license terms. The contract terms for the service could require using a specific version of the software and that requirement would have nothing to do with the distribution licensing.
A possible refinement of this would be to have the device provider provide only core, GPL software. The service provider could then provide the proprietary client software that enables use of the service. That software could then tie to a specific version of the GPL software. For instance, a DVR vendor could ship boxes with DVR functionality based on Linux and MythTV, and TiVo could ship their proprietary software to run on top of the Linux, replacing the software that shipped with the device.
DRM is a bit of a red herring. Posted Feb 12, 2007 17:47 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Ya.. that could be possible. As long as that propriatory bit of code being sent by Tivo isn't violating the GPL (which I assume is not violating it) when they sent it.
The GPL has absolutely no restrictions on the sort of stuff people do to it themselves, it never has and hopefully never will. If end users want to add propriatory code to impliment some sort of DRM then that would be valid and without conflict with GPLv3.
(although that sort of drm would be almost certainly be trivially easy to crack)
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