Thread: Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds recently criticised you on his blog at torvalds. Do you have something to say about that?

Well, you can see that he is a person who doesn't believe in freedom. You can tell that from his writings. Why does he reject GPLv3, because GPL3 protects users from tivoization, which is a fairly new method of denying freedom. It did not exist when I wrote GPLv2 or I would have done something about it then.

Tivoization means delivering a product with some free software, but the machines are designed so that if the user installs a modified version, it won't ni'n at all. So theoretically, the users are free to study and change the source code, but they can't run their own binaries. This means that if they change the source code, it's useless. So practically, they don't have the freedom to study arid chang! the program.

Therefore, I decided in GPLv3 to prevent this. V3 requires the manufacturer to provide to the user the information necessary for the user to install his own changed binaries in the product he owns and make it run, assuming it is possible-if it's denied by law, then it's okay, because no one can change that.

We are trying to stop a practice where a manufacturer can change it, but the user can't Well, this is what Torvald objects to. He is in favour oftivoization. He doesn't care if the user of, in this case Linux, is free to change it So, whal can we do? He has a right to his views. I am not a one-issu person and I care about a lot of political issues, as you
can see if you look at stallman.arg. But the free software movement is a one-issue movement Lots of people support the free software movement, who have different views on other issues. That's why I put my views on other 1 issues into my personal site-they are not part of the free software movement