Re: DFSG violations in Lenny: Summarizing the choices

[Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net>]

On Sat, 2008-11-08 at 18:55 -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> 
> The FCC understands that you can't make it *impossible*.  Even before
> software radios, it was understood that someone posessing the skills,
> say, of an amateur radio operator might be able to add a resistor or
> capacitor in parallel with an RC/LC tuning circuit, and modify the
> length of the antenna, etc., thus making a radio transmit outside of
> the band which it was type-certified to operate on.  

That's right.  The FCC says that modifications of hardware make you, the
modifier, the one responsible for the transgressing equipment.

But now we have this claim that the FCC's well-understood rule about
hardware does not apply to software: that software modifications *are*
traceable back to the manufacturer, even though hardware modifications
are not.  Oddly, however, in all these conversations, we've never seen
any indication that this is really the FCC's policy.

And none of this is really relevent: the DFSG and the Social Contract do
not contain an exception for dishonest or scared hardware manufacturers,
or stupid FCC policies.

Thomas