The road to freedom in the embedded world [LWN.net]

The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 16, 2007 18:50 UTC (Fri) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
Parent article: The road to freedom in the embedded world

Interesting article.

I think that this seems like a poor analogy:

"Many politicians are concerned that tinkering with these could impair the ability of other people to communicate, including the ability to access emergency services. Their argument is that the potential damage done by tinkering is greater than the damage of not having the freedom to change the code. This is a reincarnation of the old "your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose" argument, and it is not easily discarded. ..."

If this argument were true, then the freedom to modify the code would end at transmitting illegally (wrong frequency...), and it would not prevent tinkering with the entire communication stack. A better analogy would seem to be:

Since we can't trust you to not hit my nose, you will not get the freedom to swing your fist.

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The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 17, 2007 6:30 UTC (Sat) by MKallas (guest, #38539) [Link]

Since we can't trust you to not hit my nose, you will not get the freedom to swing your fist.

I like that one. It really shows how far trusting and allowing freedom goes.

The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 20, 2007 11:44 UTC (Tue) by greve (subscriber, #8385) [Link]

Interesting article.

Thanks. Interesting comment, too.

A better analogy would seem to be:
Since we can't trust you to not hit my nose, you will not get the freedom to swing your fist.

That would be one way to reformulate the thoughts described, yes. But it is very much an issue of perspective. Someone in favor of such regulation might want to describe it more along the lines of:

Since we don't want noses to be hit, we don't want people to swing their fists wildly in crowded rooms.

Some regulation of society is something that is generally accepted and wanted by a majority in population. Think of laws against murder, or rules regulating the traffic. But sometimes regulation goes too far and becomes over-regulation.

Defining that line is done in a dialog with regulators and society, and we'll need to convince them that this is going too far and/or ineffective.

The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 20, 2007 19:23 UTC (Tue) by EldestHanson (guest, #43597) [Link]

You say it is a matter of perspective, but then you leave the land of logic for that of political spin. Sure, not swinging fists in crowded rooms is a sensible idea. This implies it is ok elsewhere. Where do you find even the tiniest such sensible opening in a blanket argument against open source wireless stacks?

So I reject you proposed "perspective". All your argument shows is that an in group can get a majority to be so scared of getting their noses hit that they will vote to outlaw ordinary citizens from swinging arms anywhere.

Proposed Perspective?

Posted Mar 22, 2007 2:15 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]

Woah! Ease up a moment. You're talking to Georg Greve, president of FSFE. I think you'll find he is in favor of free software wireless stacks. He's not articulating that political spin to convince you to oppose his own goals and those of the organization he represents. He's trying to help you understand the perspective of the people who need convincing.

The road to freedom in the embedded world

Posted Mar 22, 2007 10:08 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

A good indication of the flaws in the wireless stack domain would probably start with radio hams, and the fact that (as Alan Cox has pointed out), hardware wireless stacks forbid radio hams from transmitting on frequencies that they're legally allowed to transmit on, because they have no way of being told that the user is a ham. Equally, they have no way of being told that the user has purchased some other region of spectrum and is thus allowed to transmit in it.

i.e., it's not that they restrict the users to doing what the law allows: it's that they restrict the users to doing *less* than the law allows, and have no way of being told that the user has additional rights. This is akin to ditching the presumption of innocence (while in the domain of criminal law, I can see the analogy between `you can't do things because we can't be sure you have the right to do them` and 'you can't be set free because we can't be sure you aren't a criminal`. If the criminal law worked the way these wireless stacks do --- and the way that DRM systems do --- we'd all be locked in jail all the time in case we became serial killers.)