[FSUG-Bangalore] Re: [Fsf-friends] Need help (sorry for cross posting)

[Saurabh Jain (सौरभ जैन)]

Hi All

Sorry for the late response. I was travelling.

I made this quote about copy protection at the conference.

I would like to clarify two things. First, thin clients were an
example. I work with VXL Instruments, and we make thin clients. None
of our thin clients have this lock down, and I don't know of any
competitor who does this either. Some folks in my company wanted this,
but I explained how copy protection violates the GNU spirit. We do not
build copy protection into any image containing free software.

Secondly, I do know software vendors who sell embedded "images"
containing free software, that "lock down" to a particular hardware.
An image is like a .iso that programmes into Flash memory in an
embedded system. It contains a boot loader, kernel, file system, and
other stuff. One of our vendors has been giving us an image that picks
up some signatures (maybe the MAC) from the board it first boots up
on. Then if you move the flash to another board, it won't work.

This is a growing menace, and arises from the widespread use of copy
protection by proprietary software vendors. It is easy to make
companies realise that because their software is derived from free
source, they should not lock down their "binaries". However, since
GPLv2 does not cover this kind of DRM, there are no legal means of
stopping folks from doing this.

Hope this clarifies :)

Regards,
Saurabh