Re: Question to all candidates: How do you feel about OSI, FSF and LF? (and Debian while we're at it (and AI if you want to))
Il giorno mer 26 mar 2025 alle ore 11:11 Gianfranco Costamagna
<locutusofborg@debian.org> ha scritto:
> >By "I don't like the tivoization issue" I understand you mean "I don't
> >like how the GPL-3 was designed to forbid tivoization". Is that
> >correct, and if so, why do you think it's a bad thing?
>
> yes. There are use case (e.g. automotive, safety), where you *have* to lock
> the system, for good reasons.
> We can think that people might want to use the same component for unrelated
> usages, and open it in that case, or something similar.
> But if you have a component in automotive that is a safety component, you
> have to lock and close it, even if you use some OS tools to build it.
I disagree. You have to lock the system from *users*, not from the
*maintainer* of the system.
That's like saying that the hood of a car should be welded shut and
nobody but the manufacturer should be allowed to repair it.
That's wrong. It should be up to you to choose whom you trust to
repair YOUR car.
If it's a safety critical component, I agree it must be made sure that
no incompetent person can mess with it. But the proper way to do that
is through safety regulations, not by the manufacturer claiming a
monopoly on modifications. If you don't allow modifications then it
can't be free software. That the GPL-2 allowed tivoization was a bug
in the license and it is good that the GPL-3 fixed it.
> Specifically, forcing usage of old coreutils, old bash, and old non-gpl3 software
> won't make fsf happier, nor the component more secure.
Nobody is "forcing" anybody to use an old pre-GPL-3 version. They
choose to do so in order to be able to make money by grabbing other
people's free work and making it proprietary. I have no sympathy for
that and I don't believe that Debian should help them do it.
And if it's safety critical software, using an old unsupported version
is highly irresponsible and any vendor who does that deserves being
sued to hell should anyone suffer damage because of a bug that has
been fixed for years in newer versions.
Gerardo
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