Re: GPLv3 comedy unfolding -- FSF member: "If this continues, I will have to reevaluate that commitment."

[Alexander Terekhov]

http://trends.newsforge.com/comments.pl?sid=57982&cid=129724

-----
Section 3 is not the problem (Score:0)
By Anonymous Reader on 2006.08.10 18:47 (#129724)

Section 1, paragraph 4 is. This section states that modified versions
must be able to hide the fact that they're modified. Read it. Think
about it.

Here's what's wrong with that:
  - it contradicts Section 5a
  - it makes it impossible to provide a paid warranty on products
incorporating GPLed software and verify that the people calling you are
actually running what you distributed.
  - it makes it impossible to build distributed systems that rely on
verifiable client integrity and release them under the GPL.

Additionally, in my opinion (note that IANAL), it'll be quite a stretch
to claim (as is done all the time in the Tivo case) that the hardware
and the free software running on it somehow amount to a "derived work",
while the proprietary software running on and distributed together with
the same hardware is "aggregated". It overstretches the bounds of
copyright law. It is dangerous to the continued viability of copyleft.

And it doesn't protect anyone, because even the FSF acknowledges that
it's perfectly OK for Tivo to burn the whole thing into ROM - if nobody
can upgrade it, so they explain, then everybody is free.

I'm an FSF member. Still. If this continues, I will have to reevaluate
that commitment. 
-----

regards,
alexander.