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

From: Kyle Moffett
Date: Thu Jun 21 2007 - 22:54:55 EST


On Jun 21, 2007, at 15:19:35, Stephen Clark wrote:
David Schwartz wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:55:10 -0700 "David Schwartz" <davids@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A key is a number. A signature is a number. They are neither statements nor instructions. The argument that GPLv2 prohibits Tivoization is really and truly absurd. It has neither a legal nor a moral leg to stand on.

A computer program is a number too.

No, it's not. It can be expressed as a number, but it is not a number.

??? can be expressed as a number, but it is not a number ??? sure its a number.

Keys are purely numbers, they are nothing else. Signatures are pure primitive facts encoded as numbers (authority X blessed object Y).

A computer program is a set of instructions to accomplish a particular result. It can be expressed as a number, but that doesn't mean it is a number.

It might be true in principle to develop a scheme whereby every physical object uniquely corresponds to an extremely large number. That doesn't turn physical objects into numbers.

Both of you lose this argument. All irrational numbers, for example, "break" every copyright that could possibly exist. For example, you can find any arbitrary sequence of Base-N digits when you express PI in base-N form. I can simultaneously express both the laws of physics (not copyrightable) and the latest episode of the TV show "Numbers" (thoroughly copyrighted) as numbers. In fact, we do both all the time (you can express both the latest equations for theoretical physics and a TV show as bits (IE: numbers) on an HDD. Ergo "$FOO is a number" says *NOTHING* about whether or not copyright applies to $FOO. In case you haven't noticed, the whole damn point of math is that you can express *EVERYTHING* as numbers, albeit maybe horribly unbelievably complex ones.

Now, back to actual legal issues: Since most copyright laws explicitly prevent copyrighting of pure math, the only actual protection you have for some collection of so-called numbers is whether or not the numbers *REPRESENT* something which may be copyrighted. Furthermore, copyright has _always_ been independent of representation; a person owns copyright on a book regardless of whether it's hardback, softcover, digital, memorized, etc. The person who owns the copyright on a book is able to prevent someone who has memorized the book from giving public recitals of said book, and the neuron-linkage-based storage the brain uses is about as far as you can possibly get from twiddling magnetic bits on a disk drive or dumping carbon-based inks on a page made of plant cellulose.

Cheers,
Kyle Moffett

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/