The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

Posted Mar 23, 2007 4:27 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek) by mmarq
Parent article: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

Well with this sort of DRM there is absolutely no need to give anybody the keys besides the people who own the machine.

That is why things like 'can't use GPLv3 with voting machines' is such a red herring.

(assuming the draft makes it through)
Yes you can use GPLv3 in voting machines and YES you can use DRM to protect those voting machines from tampering.

Same way you can sell machines to people and use DRM to protect those machines from being tampered with.

The deal is is if your customer wants the ability to change the software in there you have to give them, nobody else, a way to modify it. If they don't want to modify it and if they don't want to disable the DRM then they don't have to.

It's the end user that gets put into control of the hardware and the software not the manufacturer.

So with voting machines, since they are owned by the government, nobody but the government needs to be allowed access to it. And they can regulate it how they please since the machines belong to them. Which is exactly how it would be any other way GPLv3 or not.

So it's a pretty spacious arguement that your going to use DRM for end user's own good. If they want trusted computing or other such things to help make their systems more secure then there is absolutely nothing in the GPLv3 that prevents them from taking advantage of TPM or whatever.

Remember that the goal is here is to allow the end user control over the software.

Not the hardware.
Not non-GPL code.
Not DRM'd media.
Or anything like that.

All that is perfectly legal and if you invent a way for DRM to work while having end users being able to understand how the programs work and be able to modify the code, then it would be perfectly fine to use GPLv3 licensed code.

It's not designed to prevent that or limit that stuff in any way.