Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S933517AbXFRX0R (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:26:17 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1764927AbXFRX0B (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:26:01 -0400 Received: from allen.werkleitz.de ([80.190.251.108]:40260 "EHLO allen.werkleitz.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1762556AbXFRX0A (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:26:00 -0400 Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:25:49 +0200 From: Johannes Stezenbach To: Alexandre Oliva Cc: Linus Torvalds , Al Viro , Bernd Schmidt , Alan Cox , Ingo Molnar , Daniel Hazelton , Greg KH , debian developer , david@lang.hm, Tarkan Erimer , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton Message-ID: <20070618232549.GA22170@linuxtv.org> References: <4673CA7C.5040207@t-online.de> <20070616181902.GB21478@ftp.linux.org.uk> <20070618155016.GA31892@linuxtv.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: 87.162.100.158 Subject: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3 X-SA-Exim-Version: 4.2.1 (built Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:23:22 +0000) X-SA-Exim-Scanned: Yes (on allen.werkleitz.de) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3762 Lines: 80 On Mon, Jun 18, 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote: > > People talk a lot about TiVo here, but do they the faintest idea of > how the conversations with TiVo are proceeding? I thought so... Oh, if you know something we don't, could you please fill us in? And who was it who coined the "Tivoization" term, thus putting TiVo into focus? > So, you see, when people who oppose anti-tivoization measure the > outcome for the community, they only look at the second possibility, > assuming the vendor would immediately switch to some other software. > As if that was easy for the vendor, and as if the software sucked so > much that the vendor was just looking for a reason to switch. > > But since the software is good, and moving to another software would > be costly in various dimentions, the vendor has an incentive to stick > with the software they have. Hm, you only talk about people who already use free software, but I tried to make you aware of the importance of _promoting_ free software, i.e. winning new people and companies for the free software idea. I think the majority of embedded devices still run proprietary RTOSes, and the majority of desktops still run Windows or Mac OS. Don't you want to change that? There are dozens of proprietary RTOSes, and along with them dozens of proprietary toolchains, development environments and trace/debug tools. Companies which worked in this field for decades have invested money to create proprietary software on top of them, and to train their staff to use them. Those companies won't switch to Linux lightly. And it won't be a singular event, but a process. They might start low, and maybe (hopefully) might become well-playing free software contributors. But if you raise the entry barrier too high, they won't get started at all. OK, I don't have experience talking to big companies, but I have talked to people working for smaller ones. They are aware of the trend towards Linux, but are afraid that the obligations of the GPL might be impractical for them. Then they only have the choice to not use Linux, or to use "creative workarounds". It's true that what these companies do might have little direct benefit for users buying their products, however the long term benefits of getting the people in these companies exposed to free software ideas, and in contact with the free software community, can only be positive -- I think it's more important to spread the general idea of free software into as many minds as possible than to ensure that few follow the pure spirit of the FSF free software definition in every detail. > So you see, the picture of anti-tivozation is not as bleak as people > try to frame it. In fact, it's not bleak at all. If one out of 10, > maybe even 1 out of 100 vendors start respecting users' freedoms, when > faced with anti-tivoization provisions, the community will already win > big time, because each vendor is likely to have thousands of > customers, some of which will use the freedoms to serve the goals of > the community, in the very terms the community claims to care about. Does this multiplicator also apply to new companies which start using free software for their products? I think the FSF strategy is suboptimal. The Linux strategy works better for promoting free software. In the end I want my devices to be open and hackable, too, and I'm sure it will take an effort to convince companies to open up. But I'm not convinced that the GPLv3 is a step in the right direction towards that goal. Johannes - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/