"David S. Miller" <[email protected]> writes:
>Yet I personally am offended by their behavior. You mean that I wrote a
>substantial amount of code that makes your damn product even possible
>yet I can't boot my very own kernel on your box? Well, thanks a fucking
>lot Tivo.
Then you shouldn't have given your code away.
I personally don't want anyone boot anything on anything linux
driven. Consider a linux driven medical appliance that controls your
bodily functions after open heart surgery. You don't want the hospital
admin to boot a "newer and better, self rolled Linux kernel" on
that. It might be even legally required by the medical appliance
vendor to make it impossible for a hospital admin to do so.
TiVO is an appliance. Not a general purpose computer running Linux
connected to a TV. If you want that, assemble it from readily
available components. You can't get it for the price of a TiVO? Well,
vote with your wallet.
If TiVO decides that it don't want to boot non-signed kernels on their
appliance, they can do so. If you consider this a GPL violation, sue
them.
If you don't like it, start hacking it like they do with the X-Box. Or
don't buy it.
As you yourself said many times, Linux is about freedom. About
choice. TiVO has chosen and you don't like it? Well, tough luck.
>See, it's not about what you're allowed to do, it's about being nice to
>people especially the ones that help you.
Linux and the GPL are not about being nice. Just because you wrote
parts of the code that I use for writing this message and sending it
on the internet does not mean I have to give you elevated priviledges
on the system that runs this code. I do appreciate your work and I am
grateful for it. However, that's all.
Regards
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen INTERMETA GmbH
[email protected] +49 9131 50 654 0 http://www.intermeta.de/
Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development -- hero for hire
On Tue, 2003-05-06 at 04:25, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Well, vote with your wallet.
I said this is exactly what I intend to do.
And yes it is about being nice. If Linus wasn't "nice" nobody
would give a shit about his project and want to work with him
in the first place and Linux as we know it wouldn't exist today.
If Linus, like TIVO, said "ok you can hack my kernel, but you
can't ever boot one except the ones that I distribute and I'm going to
enforce this by signing the kernels and not giving out the bootloader
sources nor the keys I use" nobody would hack on Linux. He could
certainly "do it", but he "didn't". He "didn't" because that would
be "stupid".
You can say whatever you want about Linus, and while he is firm in his
decisions he is still "nice".
Nothing in my email is about what I think TIVO "has to do".
--
David S. Miller <[email protected]>