Rapid development vs. preservation of freedom

For what it's worth, I personally think signed software installable only
by a service operator makes sense if a machine is provided as part of a
service, eg. cable TV or a telephone, just like you used to have to get
permission from the BOFH. Clearly you don't have the four freedoms here;
maybe that's okay but maybe *not* if the software is copylefted. On the
other hand if you've bought the box, you own it and your right to tinker
with it should extend to the ability to reflash it if that is technically
possible. And if it's running free software, that means the ability to
modify the source, recompile and reflash that. But that's just *my*
opinion, and has nothing whatever to do with copyright law and licences,
nor with the FSF position on the Four Freedoms.

The "symmetry" that manufacturers should provide the ability to change
the software if they have it themselves is not "essential" to the four
freedoms, but Tivoisation and ROM *both* violate freedoms 1 and 3 in
exactly the same way as not having the source does. You can't change and
improve the software you have.

The difference is that in one case it might as well be a law of nature,
and in the other it's something deliberately imposed by someone who is
supposed to be granting their users the four freedoms they had from
upstream.

I think this point and "symmetry" are logically equivalent, or nearly so.
Tivoisation unquestionably violates the *spirit* of the GPL, if not the
letter of version 2.

I guess that the FSF have considered this similarity between keyed but
reinstallable software and ROM, and decided that a hardware limitation
like ROM is an acceptable exception to the four freedoms (in the same way
as, for instance, distributing free software binaries for computers which
aren't capable of running the compiler is acceptable), but actively using
a technical measure like TPM to restrict the ability of the user to do
what would otherwise be possible is not acceptable.

I see what you're saying, and it would be justifiable on utterly pedantic
grounds to add equivalent restrictions forbidding free software on ROM or
on inadequate computers. But the FSF's goal, in the end, is not to be
utterly pedantic but to expand freedoms. The Tivo and similar devices do
the exact opposite; they actively work against the goal, and so a new
licence which stops them from doing that is called for.

I will be very, very surprised if any of the Tivoisers switch from GPLv2
software to GPLv3 software in ROM; they are vastly more likely simply to
stick with the GPLv2 version. Remember that anything ever released under
GPLv2 will always be usable under those terms. Only when upstream
increments to "version 3, or at your option, any later version" will the
GPLv3 "innovation stream" be closed to the poor deprived Tivoisers.

It is only in the long term that this might impose *any* cost on
Tivoisers, and it's only an opportunity cost. The real pressure is peer
pressure; far more effective. So why you even mention ROM as an
alternative except to question the consistency of Eben Moglen (ha ha!) is
beyond me. You're sooooo pedantic ;-)