Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 28 Apr 2003 03:35:10 -0700 (PDT) | From | Andre Hedrick <> | Subject | Re: Flame Linus to a crisp! |
| |
Linus,
There is one fundamental problem, and nobody has addressed.
Who will enforce the GPL over DRM violations? Since it is a blanket over the entire kernel, and you have formally (for the most part) have authorized DRM, thus one assumes you are the only one who can pursue in a court of law.
Regardless of what I or anyone thinks, this effective places total copyright to you. Additionally for you to have a legal position to stand on, it may be required for one to show you have total authority/assignment of the entire kernel.
This is only an old man thinking out loud.
Cheers,
Andre Hedrick LAD Storage Consulting Group
On Sat, 26 Apr 2003, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> In article <Pine.GSO.4.21.0304261459210.10838-100000@vervain.sonytel.be>, > Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> wrote: > > > >Hence the development rate of Linux will go down, since you cannot use your > >Linux development box running your own development kernel for anything else, > >since that would require a signed kernel. > > Quite frankly, I suspect a much more likely issue is going to be that > DRM doesn't matter at all in the long run. > > Maybe I'm just a blue-eyed optimist, but all the _bad_ forms of DRM look > to be just fundamentally doomed. They are all designed to screw over > customers and normal users, and in the world I live in that's not how > you make friends (or money, which ends up being a lot more relevant to > most companies). > > Think about it. Successful companies give their customers what they > _want_. They don't force-feed them. Look at the total and utter > failure of commercial on-line music: the DRM things that has been tried > have been complete failures. Why? I'm personally convinced the cost is > only a minor issue - the _anti_convenience of the DRM crap (magic file > formats that only work with some players etc) is what really kills it in > the end. > > And that's a fundamental flaw in any "bad" DRM. It's not going away. > > We've seen this before. Remember when dongles were plentiful in the > software world? People literally had problems with having dongles on top > of dongles to run a few programs. They all died out, simply because > consumers _hate_ that kind of lock-in thing. > > This is part of the reason why I have no trouble with DRM - let the > people who want to try it go right ahead. They'll only screw themselves > over in the end, because the people who do _not_ try to control their > customers will in the end have the superior product. It's that simple. > > As to the quake-on-PC issue - it's a completely made-up example, but it > does show the same thing. Nobody in their right mind would ever _do_ a > DRM-enabled quake on a PC, because it limits you too much. PC's are > _designed_ ot be flexible - that's what makes the PC's. DRM on a PC is > a totally braindead idea, and I _hope_ Microsoft goes down that path > because it will kill them in the end. > > The place where client authentication makes sense is on specialty boxes. > On a dedicated game machine it's an _advantage_ to verify the client, > exactly to make sure that nobody is cheating. I think products like the > PS2 and the Xbox actually make _sense_ - they make it convenient for the > user, and yes they use DRM techniques to "remove rights", but that's > very much by design and when you buy the box 99.9% of all people buy it > _because_ it only does one thing. > > Linus > - > 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/ >
- 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/
| |