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The Freedom Box gets off the groundThe Freedom Box gets off the groundPosted Feb 24, 2011 18:49 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877)In reply to: The Freedom Box gets off the ground by coriordan Parent article: The Freedom Box gets off the ground
> What would be the point of integrating all the software, only to have some company take it, add some features, and sell a binary blob version - complete with free spying, eavesdropping, backdoors etc.
To be honest, they could still do this even if it's licensed under the GPL. If they release the source to the end-users as required, the end-users may or may not find the back doors (see also the = vs == stuff in the kernel many many moons ago; luckily, this was in the mainline kernel, not some obscure distro's patch).
The difference is that the GPL gives the copyright holders recourse if the other company infringes on the GPL, which is a small layer of protection for the end-users (especially if it's GPLv3, since the Evil Vendor couldn't use tivoizaiton).
Of course, if a company is particularly interested in being evil, they could also silently mod the hardware....
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