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

From: david
Date: Tue Jun 19 2007 - 17:40:16 EST


On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote:

On Jun 19, 2007, david@xxxxxxx wrote:

based on my experiance looking at the software released for tivos, I
think you are over-estimating these numbers. if there are more then a
dozen people producing things that are good enough to be useful and
releasing their results as opensource software I would be surprised.

Yup.

And how many more would there be should it not be tivoized? More
hackers would buy the devices, a number of them with the explicit
intent and interest in modifying the software in it.

You're losing all that.

based on the knowledge shown by these users you aren't loosing much.

remember, not all tivo models are locked down, and most of those that are locked down can be unlocked pretty easily. it's only a couple models that have required a soldering iron.

the xbox hacks show that people will produce ways to bypass hardware restrictions that are easy for less techinical people to use (and people less technical then this aren't gong to be contributing code anyway)

as a result of watching the hacker groups I can safely say that the lockdown has not blocked many users. it has slowed modification of the hacks to new types of hardware, but not for very long.

and for all that the FSF is claiming that tivos can't being modified
it's really not that hard to change.

But is it legal?

that depends on what lawyer you ask, and what they think of the applicability of the DMCA.

How many would contribute changes to a list where there are TiVo
people watching, which might expose these contributors to liabilities?

in the case of Tivo, there are many public boards that talk about hacking tivos, and tivo employees login and contribute to them. just about all of these boards ban specific topics. for example:

getting service without paying for it is banned on every board I personally look at

transferring video off of the tivo is banned on some boards, but not on others.

David Lang
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