DRM is a bit of a red herring. [LWN.net]

DRM is a bit of a red herring.

Posted Feb 12, 2007 17:19 UTC (Mon) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270)
In reply to: DRM is a bit of a red herring. by Arker
Parent article: Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

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.

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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)