Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

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> The FSF drives a hard line sometimes, frankly I think more ire should be directed at TiVo than FSF.

In the first place, IMO, "Tivoization" is an overblown problem ; in the second place, I think the anti-tivoization (and, insofar as they limit the use cases of Free Software, anti-software freedom) provisions of the GPLv3 have done more to prevent GPL usage than to prevent tivoization.

I think it dramatically highlighted the problem with the GPL approach: that, now that the value of open source software is demonstrated, while some people will take and not give back with the opportunity, lots will, and you end up getting more growth of usable F/OSS software if you don't burden the people downstream, and if you try to use compulsion, you get locked in a cycle of increasing the complications and restrictions for downstream users in a way that just gets more people to throw up their hands and not bother with your code at all. While the bad actors find new and creative ways of complying with your most recent license while subverting its intent, leading to yet more complicated licenses, with more burdens, etc.

The funny thing is, in a way, Stallman and Apple agree: users should be able to modify and enjoy their devices any way they like. For the hackers, that means root access. For normal users, that means being able to install apps without worrying about security and privacy. The Stallman model drives the internet's infrastructure, but the Apple model now drives consumer computing. We can argue about the particular provisions (I do prefer Android), but apps work.

I think the GPL was a legal solution to a social problem: companies were hoarding software and trying to patent it. But software patents are still illegal in most of the world, and the best way to ensure software cannot be patented is to publish it under a permissive license, and demonstrate prior art. Regardless of intent, licensing something under GPL is a kiss of death in certain cases, so it acts a bit like a patent anyway: it scares away commercial competitors.

Tivoization is also interesting, because we sort of have a modern day Tivo: Netflix. It's so convenient and affordable, people don't care how the video is being delivered. Instead of Tivo hacking, there's the Netflix API. (http://developer.netflix.com)

The fact is, software- and content-as-a-service have largely made the GPLv3 irrelevant, because the goals it's meant to enable, i.e. freedom and accessibility of software, have been realized in different ways. Society at large simply does not care about a Grand GPL future. It does care about privacy, and being able to export their data from the services they sign up for.

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