[Fsf-friends] Flame

[Sasi Kumar]

On 8/2/06, doxa at sancharnet.in <doxa at sancharnet.in> wrote:
> Linus quotes "Say I'm a hardware manufacturer. I decide I love some particular
> piece of open-source software, but when I sell my hardware, I want to make sure
> it runs only one particular version of that software, because that's what I've
> validated. So I make my hardware check the cryptographic signature of the
> binary before I run it ... The GPLv3 doesn't seem to allow that, and in fact,
> most of the GPLv3 changes seem to be explicitly designed exactly to not allow
> the above kind of use, which I don't think it has any business doing."

It is the hardware manufacturer who has absolutely no business
controlling what version of what software the buyer wants to run on
the machine. This reminds me of the case when one of my colleagues
bought an HP machine and wanted to install GNU/Linux in it. It came
with M$ Windows perloaded, which he wanted to keep. But the hard disk
had a single partition and he wanted it partitioned. The supplier told
him that he is not allowed to partition it, and if he partitioned it
the warranty would become invalid. So my colleague told him that he is
rejecting the computer if he is not allowed to partition the hard
disk. This, of course, the supplied did not expect. So he made a show
of consulting some bosses at HP and finally partitioned it and we
installed GNU/Linux in one of the partitions. I guess people
will/should simply reject a product that comes with such stupid and
restrictive conditions. The freedom should be for the user, and not
for the manufacturer to control the user.

Best
-- 
V. Sasi Kumar
Free Software Foundation of India