Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust [LWN.net]

Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Posted Jun 10, 2021 3:19 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
In reply to: Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust by Wol
Parent article: Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

I'm not so sure GPL2 permits tivoisation, doesn't it require the scripts for compilation & installation?

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Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Posted Jun 10, 2021 3:46 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

The FSF believes the GPLv2 permits tivoiization, and addressing that was one of the primary goals of the GPLv3:

(See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.en.html starting with the 6th paragraph )

Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Posted Jun 10, 2021 4:24 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

Interestingly, Software Freedom Conservancy (who enforce the GPL on behalf of some Linux kernel copyright holders) believes the opposite, that the GPLv2 does require installation too, with the caveat (apparently for both GPLv3 and GPLv2) that devices containing both GPL software and proprietary software can remove or disable the proprietary software once the GPL software is modified:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/
https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2...

OTOH, they (and it seems RMS) believe that both the GPLv3 and GPLv2 permit what Tivo did. Some quotes from the PDF:

Ironically, even if Linux were GPLv3, Tivo’s method of crypto-lock-down would likely comply with GPLv3.

bkuhn checked this with RMS: even he agrees this mechanism complies with GPLv3.

Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Posted Jun 11, 2021 18:43 UTC (Fri) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link]

So basically tivoization, like I understand and it wikipedia defines it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization ( hardware restrictions or digital rights management to prevent users from running modified versions of the software), is not exactly what tivo did. So, it's etymology is based on an inaccuracy, but it is still a very useful word as it is defined now, so I will probably keep using it. Saying the whole definition out takes a lot more time.

Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Posted Jun 10, 2021 7:03 UTC (Thu) by matthias (subscriber, #94967) [Link]

> I'm not so sure GPL2 permits tivoisation, doesn't it require the scripts for compilation & installation?

Yes, it does. But it seems that it does not require that the scripts still work on the device:

> The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.

No word saying that the scripts still have to work on the distributed device. Maybe it is enough if the scripts work for an empty device prior to software installation. This of course does not help the end user as there is virtually no possibility to get hands on such a device.

Therefore, the GPL3 is more specific in this regard. But still, it seems perfectly ok, if any proprietary software on the device stops working in the moment you exercise your rights to install modified versions of the GPL software, which will render many devices useless.