Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust [LWN.net]

Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Posted Jun 11, 2021 5:05 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust by IanKelling
Parent article: Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

People don't really care about tivoization anymore. Mostly because computing became ubiquitous.

It's hard to summon righteous rage when you're talking about how you can't get into a TV HDMI stick ($50 cost) to install your own Linux there. Why bother, when a RaspberryPi costs $30 and comes with helpful manuals and a developer community?

I guess people were worried about tivoization earlier when most people had one multi-$$$ computer.

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Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Posted Jun 12, 2021 6:35 UTC (Sat) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

I think it depends on the form factor of the device, for example you can't replace a smartphone, a robot vacuum, a car or a tractor with an RPi. So Tivoisation is much more important for certain classes of device.

Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

Posted Jun 15, 2021 23:35 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

My smartphone allows me to install a different OS. There are official ways to do that on Samsung and Google phones. Not sure about robot vacuums.

Tractors are a more interesting case, because their tivoization is actually ALLOWED by the GPLv3. I'm not joking, it only applies to:

> A “User Product” is either (1) a “consumer product”, which means any tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for incorporation into a dwelling.

And tractors are an interesting case in general, because John Deere is not the only manufacturer. People can buy tractors without any sort of lockdown just fine. However, John Deere's tractors are desirable exactly because they have very helpful software, even though it locks out third-party repairs.