Florian Weimer wrote:
| You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not
| convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains
| in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose
| of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you
| with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with
| the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do
| not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works
| for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction
| and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of
| your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you.
This was put into the license at the very last moment. Maybe it does
not apply to the Dreamhost case, but I think it does apply to appliances
like the Tivo, and especially to customer premises equipment given to
To me the clause reads like a work-for-hire or have-made clause.
If a company needs private modifications made to a GPLv3 work, it
may need to hire a third-party programmer. Giving this programmer
the (possibly already modified) source code normally constitutes
conveyance, so the programmer would be free to publish the source
code.