Re: [Fsfe-uk] Explanation of Tivosiation and problems - comments sought

[Alex Hudson]

On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 12:13 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> Alex Hudson <address@hidden> writes:
> > Plenty of businesses resell hardware devices with added services;
> 
> That lowers the barrier, but we're still talking about people who've set up
> a business, have done some product design, and who do support/shipping/etc.

I'm not sure what argument you're making - that the GPL can place extra
burdens on commercial distributors simply because they're making a
product? 

> > I would also disagree that maintaining a set of encryption keys for each
> > customer
> 
> Maybe that's not necessary.  They could have two keys per chip - their
> single master key, and the customer's individual key.  So they don't have to
> maintain per-customer keys.

Well, I did say that it could be something you could work around in some
other manner.

At the end of the day, I don't think it makes that much difference,
simply because so few people are actually using this type of lock-down
for whatever reason. I just find it slightly worrying (in a, "I hope
there aren't too many unintended consequences" type of way) that the GPL
is legislating against a certain technical solution, rather than a more
specific end result. Section 3 of the draft is a lot less worrisome, for
example.

Cheers,

Alex.