Compliance Toolkit

Story: Torvalds rules out GPL3 for Linux

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While I admire what Richard Stallman is trying to accomplish, as I've said elsewhere in comments to the GPL3, I think the DRM clause is flawed and in the wrong place for such a campaign.

Yes, DRM is evil and wrong in general, or at least in the way the entertainment industry uses it.

But you aren't going to get the Music and Film industries to treat their customers with respect and not as prospective criminals over night.

This means that anyone using software which conforms to the GPL3 license would be unable to watch any modern films (DVD HD and BD) or copy-protected music.

To RS: Yes, the DRMing of music and film as it is at the moment is wrong - mainly because it only makes life difficult for the legal purchaser, the dedicated copier will still find a copy somewhere which is DRM free. But using the GPL3 as a soapbox to fight against it isn't the right thing to do.

This will just spite the potential users to prove a point and could be more harmful to OSS in the long run.

I would love to live in a DRM free world. It wouldn't affect the number of DVD's and CD's I buy - well, actually it would, because I don't currently buy any CD's or downloaded music that is copyprotected or DRMed.

From a moralistic stand-point RS is correct, but from a practical stand-point Linus is correct...

I'd rather suffer having to put up with some DRM in closed source drivers running on top of my OSS software than not be able to access the content at all, until the conglomerates can be persuaded that people who buy their product aren't the criminals...

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