linux-kernel - Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

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Date:	Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:48:44 -0400
From:	Michael Poole <mdpoole@...ilus.org>
To:	david@...g.hm
Cc:	Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@...hat.com>,
	David Schwartz <davids@...master.com>,
	"Linux-Kernel\@Vger. Kernel. Org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

david@...g.hm writes:

> On Mon, 18 Jun 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>
>> On Jun 18, 2007, "David Schwartz" <davids@...master.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>> Sure, and you use the hardware to stop me from modifying the
>>>>> Linux on your
>>>>> laptop.
>>
>>>> Do I?  How so?
>>
>>> Any number of ways. For example, you probably don't connect the serial ports
>>> to a device I have access to.
>>
>> But you're not the user of the software on my laptop.  I am.
>
> ahh, but by your own argument you aren't
>
> the software on your laptop is owned by people like Linus, Al Viro,
> David M, Alan Cox, etc.

To be pedantic, the *copyrights* for certain software on his laptop
are owned by those people.  (Fortunately, they have been friendly
enough to engage in software quid-pro-quo with those rights.)

> they have the right to put a license on that software that would
> require you to give them access to your hardware (after all, that's
> the argument that you are useing to justify requireing Tivo to give
> you access to their hardware)

Even as straw men go, that is pretty incoherent.

First, end users buy and use the hardware in question.  It does not
belong to Tivo, so the analogy to his laptop fails there.

Second, the important access is not to the hardware, but to the bits
used to build the version of Linux that is distributed by Tivo.  This
is purely software.

Third, such a license would be neither a free software nor an open
source license.  No one argues it would be.

Michael Poole
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