Devices that phone home
Palm is not alone in this kind of activity. More recent Android phones put up a disconcerting confirmation dialog when asked to calculate location information from the cellular network:
If the user withholds consent, the location service will not function at all. Android devices also upload a great deal of other personal information - the phone book, for example - to Google's servers. Amazon's Linux-based Kindle uses its built-in cellular modem to send back log files, information about what books are on the device, bookmark locations, notes, and more. There is no way to turn this reporting off short of disabling the wireless connection.
One of the key advantages of free software was supposed to be freedom from this kind of surveillance. With control over the software on our systems, we can remove feature which were put there for somebody else's benefit. We don't have to create systems which will report our location, application choices, reading preferences, and more to some remote mothership. When we control our systems, we can ensure that those systems don't sell us out to others.
But the three examples listed above are all Linux-based systems. We may be running free software, but we are not getting all of the benefits that freedom is supposed to bring to us. Just because a system is running free software does not mean that it is your friend.
Ensuring our freedom to control devices like these is part of the motivation behind the anti-DRM provisions added to version 3 of the GNU General Public License. Devices running GPLv3-licensed software must make it possible for users to rebuild and replace that software; said users can, in the process, omit any misfeatures that they feel they can do without. But it must be said: GPLv3 appears to have failed in this regard, so far; vendors of closed devices have generally just chosen to avoid software with that license. Your editor is unaware of a single device which was left open because GPLv3 required it.
In any case, many platforms are sufficiently open to enable other solutions to the worst problems. Joey posted a workaround (delete /usr/bin/contextupload) for Palm devices. Fully-open Android devices are available, and those which are not open by design can generally be liberated after the fact. It also appears to be possible to make significant changes to how Kindle devices work - a subject your editor intends to look into in the near future. There are still benefits to having these systems run Linux, even if they are locked down; we understand well how they work and are well equipped to make changes.
That said, the number of users actually making such changes has got to be quite small. It would seem that, as a general rule, we are little concerned about the loss of our privacy. Perhaps views will change after, as seems inevitable, some company is caught badly abusing data collected in this manner. Or, perhaps, life will replicate John Varley's Steel Beach, where Lunar residents restore full power to their Central Computer even after it tried to kill them all because having access to its services is so convenient. It is often the case that having our information available to others is most convenient.
Regardless of how things go, we can only hope to make informed choices if
we know what our devices are actually doing. And we'll only know that if
we can see what those devices are up to. Knowing that they run
something based on Linux is far from enough. That's why attempts to use
laws like the US DMCA to shut down investigation and liberation of devices
are so scary. It's bad enough to be unable to run the software we want on
our devices; being unable to see what those devices are doing behind our
backs is even worse.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 2:34 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (3 responses)
If the Linux kernel developers won't adopt a licence that protects users from DRM and Tivoisation, then there's nothing GPLv3 can do.
Hopefully with time GPLv3 will prove itself to the Linux devs to be a good licence. Then we'll start having less DRM'd devices sending our personal info to all and sundry.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 17:17 UTC (Thu)
by jeff@uclinux.org (guest, #8024)
[Link] (1 responses)
You can say "great, we didn't want them anyway", but I'm not sure you've really won in that case.
Posted Aug 21, 2009 9:18 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link]
Perhaps this is a good opportunity for the FSF: a "GPLv3" sticker would be a great way to show that the device is really open, and to revitalize the "GNU/" part of "GNU/Linux".
Posted Aug 20, 2009 18:43 UTC (Thu)
by joey (guest, #328)
[Link]
That's the main reason I got the Palm Pre in the first place.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 8:15 UTC (Thu)
by madhatter (subscriber, #4665)
[Link]
Stocks of the OpenMoko are still available (mine works well for me as a daily phone) and "maddog" hall is working with the University of Sao Paulo to get more phones made if there is demand.
It is with these devices as it once was with graphics cards: you vote with your wallet. If you buy hardware whose primary purpose is not your freedom, don't be too surprised when it keeps wanting to serve some other master.
Disclaimer: I'm a regular 'moko user and community contributor, and neither receive nor have received any kind of recognition or recompense from openmoko.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 8:50 UTC (Thu)
by fb (guest, #53265)
[Link]
I have an Android phone, and while it bugs me that Google collects so much information on everything I do, I love the way it solves so many synchronization problems.
> One of the key advantages of free software was supposed to be freedom from this kind of surveillance. With control over the software on our systems, we can remove feature which were put there for somebody else's benefit.
The way I look at it, one of the key advantages of free software is that it allows anyone to build systems.
The problem is that, even at the desktop level, there was never (AFAIK) a "KDE/Gnome/FreeDesktop Settings/AddressBook/Bookmarks/Cache" in the cloud, that would (a) solve the synchronization problems that apps like Google Reader and Google Contacts came to solve, and (b) give us reasonable control over our data.
Somehow people never got into it.
BTW, the new Maemo/N900 is already around the corner http://www.mobile-review.com/review/nokia-rx51-n900-en.shtml
Posted Aug 20, 2009 9:15 UTC (Thu)
by njwhite (guest, #51848)
[Link] (18 responses)
FWIW, I think the majority of us wo care about such misfeatures aren't buying such
I suspect I'm in a minority, but I for one don't see what the big fuss about sticking a
But I certainly agree with others that widespread adoption of the GPLv3 is the way to
I do hope that sometime the kernel developers reconsider their stance to GPLv3. It
Posted Aug 20, 2009 10:16 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (17 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2009 11:30 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (5 responses)
It would be difficult, but not impossible. Mozilla already did it, despite not reaching every contributor. I wrote a piece about relicensing Linux back in 2006.
Free software has legal teams and law firms and legal networks nowadays that can work out the hows of doing it when the time comes, but first we need to convince the Linux kernel devs that freedom is valuable or GPLv3 is useful.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 12:03 UTC (Thu)
by njwhite (guest, #51848)
[Link]
Back in 2006, Alan Cox wrote (see http://lwn.net/Articles/169831/):
> > Also, given that several of the copyright holders in the kernel are
And Linus in 2007 said (http://lwn.net/Articles/237905/):
> maybe ZFS is worthwhile enough that
So yes, I agree that the issue of relicensing is primarily social.
To me the tivoisation debate seems to stem from a false assumption that the GPL is there primarily to protect the freedom of developers, whereas its primary purpose is rather the freedom of all users (whether they're using GPLed code to develop a new TV recording product, or have bought said product).
Posted Aug 20, 2009 12:57 UTC (Thu)
by jordanb (guest, #45668)
[Link] (2 responses)
It's sufficient to post a public notice that you're going to make the change, and wait an appropriate amount of time for any copyright holders to object. There's no need to contact, individually, every possible copyright holder.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 14:21 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Aug 20, 2009 15:47 UTC (Thu)
by fb (guest, #53265)
[Link]
What happened is that the wording "only" was added at some point for clarification.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 14:19 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Aug 20, 2009 14:22 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (10 responses)
Have you, or any other kernel person, actually had proper legal advice to that effect, or are you assuming this and/or repeating herd wisdom amongst Linux kernel programmers?
It seems strange to me that the self-determined best interests of a large majority of copyright holder, both in terms of the numbers of rights holders and in terms of the proportion of the owrk, could be stymied by a trifling few rights holders. I would be *very* surprised if unknown rights holders could completely stymie change, if all known holders agreed and took all reasonable steps to locate the unknown ones.
There must surely be precedent in the recording industry. I'd really love to hear of such more substantive argument rather than (and I mean this nicely ;) your mere assertion.
I vaguely recall asking you this before on LWN (but perhaps it was someone else).
Posted Aug 20, 2009 14:36 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (9 responses)
The legal situation is awkward, and I strongly suspect that most legal opinions provided on the matter are based on an incomplete understanding of how kernel development has occured. Bear in mind that any legal argument that says the kernel can be relicensed to GPLv3 without explicit permission of all copyright holders probably also implies that the kernel (and, by extension, other large open source works) can be relicensed to a non-Free license without explicit permission of all copyright holders. That's a dangerous sounding precedent, and I think that influences people's lack of desire to put significant effort into exploring that possibility.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 15:41 UTC (Thu)
by jordanb (guest, #45668)
[Link]
Posted Aug 20, 2009 16:08 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (4 responses)
I don't really know how to search for cases, just curious if anyone does.
Basically, I strongly suspect the "we can't contact everyone" thing might not be much of an obstacle. If you make all reasonable efforts to contact known rights-holders and publicise a proposed change, over a longish period of time, then I suspect that'd be enough. Like coriordan writes in his piece, if you can show a near-unanimous acceptance of a change amongst known rights-holders, and no objections, then I doubt a judge is going to think it reasonable to prejudice all their interests in the work for the sake of a few AWOL owners. But hey..
TBH, I suspect the /contactable/ rights-holders would be much more of an obstacle ;).
Posted Aug 20, 2009 16:18 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2009 18:40 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
For the parts that are imported, a bit of due diligence in verifying the background might determine that much of it is easily upgradeable to GPLv3 (e.g. GPLv2 code where the authors didn't go out of their way to remove the "or later" and BSD licensed code). All of it must be GPLv2 compatible, and nearly all of it will also be GPLv3 compatible.
But hey...
Also, in another sub-thread you've argued that when Linus removed "or later" he was doing so within the terms of the GPLv2. That means that the Linux kernel prior to that point *was* licenced under the "or later" clause. At least, it would be by your logic. Linus argued at the time that he had never meant for "or later" to apply, iirc - which seems weak.
Basically, it seems like you could take an older version of Linux and make it GPLv3, given what you say. You could then contact contributors after that point - which seems like a *much* easier job given it was done after kernel went to an SCM (and after SCO)...
Posted Aug 26, 2009 15:46 UTC (Wed)
by sepreece (guest, #19270)
[Link] (1 responses)
The recording industry does have very good examples of this, cases where someone wants to issue historical recordings (for instance, recordings of broadcasts not originally licensed for release) or to use recordings in, for instance, soundtracks or commercials. In general, if you can't get permission of all the copyright holders, it can't happen.
A Linux relicensed without explicit permission of all included contributors would be open to infringement suits from anyone who hadn't authorized the change, which would make it generally unappealing to commercial users.
Posted Aug 26, 2009 21:40 UTC (Wed)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Though the wording of the law (at least in UK) is crystal clear, the real-world remains grey. E.g. your assertion doesn't square with the actual experience of the Mozilla foundation, who managed to relicence even with some uncontactable contributors (as per coriordan at least).
Your reply is very interesting (thanks!), but ideally I'd like to also read actual judgements.
Posted Aug 21, 2009 22:26 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 22, 2009 10:56 UTC (Sat)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 23, 2009 19:18 UTC (Sun)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link]
Posted Aug 20, 2009 16:42 UTC (Thu)
by hanwen (subscriber, #4329)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2009 18:34 UTC (Thu)
by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2009 23:24 UTC (Thu)
by njwhite (guest, #51848)
[Link]
Posted Aug 27, 2009 4:25 UTC (Thu)
by lysse (guest, #3190)
[Link]
Posted Aug 21, 2009 15:10 UTC (Fri)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link] (12 responses)
I have heard this for years, but I have always wondered how true it is in reality. The Freedom that you have is that you could rebuild your Tivo, you could rebuild your Google phone, etc etc. but they don't have to offer you service after you have done so.
The big issue is that when working in a networked world you do trade some rights for other 'privileges' to interconnect with others. Actually its pretty equivalent to the physical world, the only way you can assure absolute privacy is by living in a hut in the woods far away from others.. as soon as you start interacting with others parts of that privacy are gone. What you end up with in a social group is a 'mutual' definition of what privacy is for a person. The definition of what is private to a group has evolved over 1000's of years of social engineering swinging back and forth from close to none to close to all.
Computer networking privacy is starting to go through the same evolution and will have to go through the same evolutions til we find what people are really willing to live with when they understand the costs (if they ever really do)
Posted Aug 23, 2009 0:49 UTC (Sun)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (11 responses)
That can't have been the intent of the inventors of free software. Free software is, after all, more than a legal device; it's a philosophical ideal. If you have to pay too much (e.g. the ability to use your Tivo for anything in exchange for the ability to rebuild it), you haven't even approached an ideal. I think the founders had in mind a world in which people had essentially the same services they had with traditional software, and in addition the ability to change the software to taste.
Posted Aug 23, 2009 7:01 UTC (Sun)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link] (10 responses)
1) The physical device which could be open or closed (most of the todays hardware is closed with some exceptions).
2) The software which in our 'discussion' is GPL or similar Free/Libre software.
3) The service that the company (Tivo, AT&T, Google, Palm, etc) offers you to use. [This could be the cell phone access, the map access, diskspace, etc]
The service is the part that is not freely given to the people to use as it costs money to operate, debug, etc. The service providers are under no obligation under the GPL2 to make that service still available to you if you have altered what they gave you.
If you were to buy an OS support contract from Red Hat, Ubuntu, SuSE, etc and you were to recompile some of the packages, none of the are obligated to help support you on those changes. And if you were to recompile say apt or yum and it didn't work.. they would tell you that you couldn't access their updates directly until you went back to the default stuff.
If this is not what people want, they can either make their own services to compete (as in the case of Tivo) or need to petition the government to allow for non-monopoly access to airwaves (in the case of cell phones). And no its not fair, but the real world is sadly rarely that.
Posted Aug 23, 2009 17:13 UTC (Sun)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
the tivo style lockdown slows down the initial hacking of the device, but tivo has not been one of the companies being aggressive in preventing hacks.
if you want examples of that sort of behavior, look at the game console situation. there the manufacturers bother to implement _much_ stronger protections than anything tivo ever did, and those protections then get bypassed (sometimes by custom hardware that gets manufactured so that it requires no tampering with the original electronics), and the console manufacturers then go to court with DMCA claims to shut down the mod-chip makers.
they don't happen to use linux under the covers the way that tivo does, but I see their behavior as being very bad, while I don't really have a problem with tivo (I wish they didn't have the initial barrier to hacking, but given the entertainment industry paranoia I see why they have it)
Posted Aug 24, 2009 3:39 UTC (Mon)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (8 responses)
I guess I've lost your point. I agree with your description of how things stand and what rights people have today. But I was responding to your statement about the goals of free software:
I have heard this for years, but I have always wondered how true it is in reality.
And I believe you said that as long as people are free to remove the surveillance functions from software, free software doesn't demand that the modified software still be usable. But I think it does. It demands that the modifier of the software not have to give up anything.
After all, before the free software movement, people always had the ability to modify software -- source code licenses were available, just not at a price practical for any ordinary user.
The issue of whether Red Hat should be obligated, under the ideals of free software, to support modified software the same as unmodified under a support contract, is separable, because there's a real difference in cost to Red Hat; i.e. support of the modified software is actually more, not the same, service. But I can definitely see free software advocates demanding that Red Hat at least provide support up to the point where the modification might reasonably be affecting something.
Posted Aug 26, 2009 15:37 UTC (Wed)
by sepreece (guest, #19270)
[Link] (7 responses)
How is this different from the case of kernels with the taint flag set? The expectation there is that kernel devs will just say no to even looking at the problem...
Posted Aug 26, 2009 15:56 UTC (Wed)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (6 responses)
How is this different from the case of kernels with the taint flag set? The expectation there is that kernel devs will just say no to even looking at the problem...
That's a good point -- free software advocates might oppose the taint flag concept, as a something that reduces a person's freedom to modify software.
On the other hand, the taint flag is a lot like the copyright reserved on GPL software: it reduces a recipient's freedom to redistribute code, but is considered pro-free-software in the balance because it tends in the broader picture to increase others' freedoms with respect to the software. Red Hat refusing to service modified (openly) software doesn't have that going for it.
Posted Aug 26, 2009 16:18 UTC (Wed)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link] (5 responses)
1) Replicate the build environment. I have dealt with patched software that shows some sort of problem that the unpatched software does not. More than half of the time the issue is not the patch itself but how the code was built:
2) Replicate the use. The other large case I ran into is where the software was changed and then used in some odd way that requires specialized settings for. [Oh its using IP->SLIP->RS232->RS422->Radio- to get its network stack.]
3) Poor quality patch or other practices. [Oh thats the patch on the net, I cleaned it up a bit before putting in on the machine... (after 8 hours of debugging)]
And while the number of people who end up in those categories are 'relatively' small.. you end up spending so much time and pulling in so many extra resources that its not cost effective in the end. [Unless you sell support via an insurance policy type model and the costing for that is actually a lot higher than what most customers want.]
Posted Aug 26, 2009 17:20 UTC (Wed)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (4 responses)
or where the problem is load and timing dependant
even without modifying the code at all (and frequently even without recompiling anything) there are all sorts of ways for things to not work that are hard to duplicate.
Posted Aug 26, 2009 20:28 UTC (Wed)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (3 responses)
Right, so to complete the idea: debugging is a system of gambling. You look at all the possible causes of a problem and attack them according to their relative probabilities and the costs of the attacks. Sometimes, a user modification is high on the probability list, so it makes sense to do something costly like have the user reproduce it on unmodified software or debug it himself or live with the problem. Other times, the nature of the modification (and credibility of the user who tells you what is modified, I might add) puts it way down the list, so maybe it makes sense for the analyst to take 10 minutes to try reproducing the problem on his unmodified system.
But when an analyst just makes a blanket statement that he won't work on user-modified code, that can put a crimp in software freedom for no good reason.
There's nothing wrong with that, in terms of preserving software freedom. As long as you charge only for the time related to the user modification. If the bug turns out to exist in unmodified code and you didn't spend any time ruling out the user modification and all your normal tools worked in the debugging process, there's no call to charge the user more than you would have for unmodified code.
Posted Aug 27, 2009 3:09 UTC (Thu)
by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
[Link] (2 responses)
This is a nice theory, but if there are local changes, and the vanilla version (seems) to work fine elsewhere, logic says to check those changes first... if they turn out not be related to the misbehaviour, the work done ruling that out has already been spent.
BTW, "software freedom" is not some kind of right you enjoy because you are breathing, it is something others worked hard to give. Please respect them, their wishes and their work.
Posted Aug 27, 2009 17:22 UTC (Thu)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (1 responses)
It's just not that easy. If the local changes are far removed from the area with the symptoms, it often makes sense to check something else first (actually next -- the first thing you checked was that the vanilla version seems to work fine elsewhere) -- if your goal is to minimize the total amount of pain for everyone.
This is consistent with my claim that it's OK (meaning doesn't reduce software freedom) to charge by the hour for work made necessary by the local changes. The user would pay for that work to rule out the local change. But not for anything else.
Of course, but I don't see how this is relevant to this thread.
Posted Aug 27, 2009 17:54 UTC (Thu)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link]
My first interpretation of your postings language useage was that "Software Freedom" was an absolute right and that Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, etc MUST support any changes a customer makes to their code. That might not have been your intent, but it was how I (and possibly vonbrand) read it at first.
Freedom goes both ways. The companies could offer per hour support on changes, they are also free not to. There is nothing in the GPL which requires them to do so (even in the 3.0 versions).
It's up to the Linux devs, not GPLv3
It's up to the Linux devs, not GPLv3
model. Linux is not the only game in town for hardware vendors, and technical superiority is not a
useful business case to advocate for it's use if the vendor thinks his business model will break.
At least we won't be frustrated and feel cheated by the presence of "Linux". Keep in mind that many people, people like us are buying these devices because they run Linux. When they find that this "Linux" is locked down they are likely to be disappointed and wonder where their openness went. So the manufacturers are in fact giving a bad name to Linux, which once meant openness and, well, freedom.
great, we didn't want them anyway
It's up to the Linux devs, not GPLv3
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
> small. It would seem that, as a general rule, we are little concerned about the loss of
> our privacy.
devices in the first place. I for one can certainly do without a device which makes me
slightly more productive at such a great expense to my privacy.
GPS onto every imaginable device could be. Or even (dare I say it) wifi/GSM. I really
don't need wifi on a book reader. Without a free and usefully modifiable stack it's a real
privacy concern, and even with it it's a security concern.
ultimately combat such problems, and keep the control over privacy on which our
freedom depends. And this is why Google's insistence on Apache-like licenses makes me
so distrustful of their intentions (that and the fact that it's in their best economic
interests to gather such information for advertising purposes).
seems to me that it addresses the real problems of patents and tivoisation quite
usefully.
Devices that phone home
Difficult, but first there has to be a will
Difficult, but first there has to be a will
> > dead, I don't think we will be able to obtain permission.
>
> It isn't clear that this will be a problem. Very few people specifically
> put their code v2 only, and Linus edit of the top copying file was not
> done with permission of other copyright holders anyway so really only
> affects his code if it is valid at all.
>
> What finally happens is going to depend almost entirely on whether the
> GPL v3 is a sane license or not and on consensus
> I'm willing to go to the effort of trying to relicense the kernel.
Difficult, but first there has to be a will
Difficult, but first there has to be a will
Difficult, but first there has to be a will
Difficult, but first there has to be a will
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
Devices that phone home
Implicit relicensing
Bear in mind that any legal argument that says the kernel can be relicensed to GPLv3 without explicit permission of all copyright holders probably also implies that the kernel (and, by extension, other large open source works) can be relicensed to a non-Free license without explicit permission of all copyright holders.
IANAL, but not likely. When (if) a judge looks into the matter she is likely to look into the intent of the original and the modified licenses. If two are very similar in spirit but differ as to the details the change is quite reasonable. If however the original is the GPL and the modified is Microsoft EULA for Office, then this argument is not going to go far. And of course most code owners are not likely to sue if both licenses really convey the same meaning.
Implicit relicensing
If you have vocal developers against the change then it is not feasible to start with (even if as in this case the FSF, creators of the license, think it has the same intent). We were talking about implicit relicensing, where developers still active all agree, and there is a number of unreachable contributors. If one of those contributors -- say, Jeff Merkey -- did later come out and say that the change was unreasonable then there is good argument to counter it: all developers present agreed that the two licenses had the same intent.
Implicit relicensing
All GSMs 'phone home'
celular phones at all. Network operators collect location data (not
anonymized or aggregated) from any GSM device, and will happily turn this
information over to law-enforcement if presented with a warrant.
All GSMs 'phone home'
another thing is to hide it from Joe Scriptkiddie with a notebook.
All GSMs 'phone home'
All GSMs 'phone home'
Freedom
Freedom
The Freedom that you have is that you could rebuild your Tivo, you could rebuild your Google phone, etc etc. but they don't have to offer you service after you have done so.
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom
"One of the key advantages of free software was supposed to be freedom from this kind of surveillance. "
Freedom
Freedom
But I can definitely see free software advocates demanding that Red Hat at least provide support up to the point where the modification might reasonably be affecting something.
Freedom
A) Compile options
B) Environment settings
C) Other programs that have been modified
D) Hardware it is compiled on (oh I overclocked the box)
Usually the problems don't get resolved in hours as either the customer does not think the item they changed was meaningful or they don't understand what other changes may have been.
Freedom
Freedom
even without modifying the code at all (and frequently even without recompiling anything) there are all sorts of ways for things to not work that are hard to duplicate.
Having tried to do technical support on these issues before [I know] they become expensive quickly. The only way to support them is on an hourly rate ...
Freedom
Having tried to do technical support on these issues before [I know] they become expensive quickly. The only way to support them is on an hourly rate ...
There's nothing wrong with that, in terms of preserving software freedom. As long as you charge only for the time related to the user modification. If the bug turns out to exist in unmodified code and you didn't spend any time ruling out the user modification and all your normal tools worked in the debugging process, there's no call to charge the user more than you would have for unmodified code.
Freedom
if there are local changes, and the vanilla version (seems) to work fine elsewhere, logic says to check those changes first...
if they turn out not be related to the misbehaviour, the work done ruling that out has already been spent.
BTW, "software freedom" is not some kind of right you enjoy because you are breathing, it is something others worked hard to give. Please respect them, their wishes and their work.
Freedom