The current draft of GPLv3 includes controversial language forbidding DRM-locked embedded operating systems, but compromise remains possible, suggests ExtremeTech columnist Victor Loy in an insightful look at the GPL's role in device development. Loy's story includes quotes from Eben Moglen's LinuxWorld BoF (birds-of-a-feather) session.

Moglen, the legal counselor to the Free Software Foundation, has been at the center of efforts to update the world's most popular open source license, although final say over the license's language ultimately rests with GPL creator Richard M. Stallman.

Loy notes that Linux and the GPL have helped device manufacturers share the burden of non-differentiating operation system feature development, saving them from “reinventing the wheel.” This helps consumers, too, Loy writes, in the form of “lower prices, shared technology with the development community, and positive network effects from products built on open, interoperable platforms.”

At the same time, device makers concerned about security issues such as copyright protection have sometimes strayed from the spirit of the GPL, Loy suggests, by preventing their devices from running user-modified OS variants.

GPL author Richard M. Stallman has dubbed the practice of protecting embedded operating systems with DRM (digital rights management) “tivoization” — something the current GPLv3 draft includes language aimed at preventing:

The Corresponding Source also includes any encryption or authorization keys necessary to install and/or execute the modified versions from source code in the recommended or principal context of use, such that they can implement all the same functionality in the same range or circumstances. (For instance, if the work is a DVD player and can play certain DVDs, it must be possible for modified versions to play those DVDs. If the work communicates with an online service, it must be possible for modified versions to communicate with the same online service in the same way such that the service cannot distinguish.

Some Linux developers — including Linux project originator Linus Torvalds — appear to think that the current GPLv3's draft language goes too far.

According to Loy, “Torvalds contends that DRM and private digital signatures can have useful applications in security. Linux kernels downloaded from kernel.org are, after all, signed with a form of DRM. Governments, health care providers, and finance firms require private, tamper-proof solutions.”

Loy goes on to wonder, “With the founder of Linux and the author of the GPL at a critical impasse, is there room for compromise?”

He concludes with a few quotes from Moglen's presentation at the LinuxWorld Expo last month in San Francisco. Loy writes, “Eben Moglen[stated] that Linus's objections 'can be dealt with,' and that 'common ground can be found.' Moglen was optimistic about a GPLv3 that granted 'everyone a license that reflects their own view of freedom.' He continued, 'The development community has basically accepted version 3.' 'There is a determination to compromise on all sides.'”

Despite his apparent optimism, there's little doubt which side of the issue Moglen stands on. A Wikipedia posting quotes him as having said, “A world full of computers which you can't understand, can't fix and can't use [because it is controlled by inaccessible proprietorial software] is a world controlled by machines.”

Loy's ExtremeTech column on the GPLv3 and embedded Linux can be found here.

The GPLv3 language quoted above is from a draft released about three weeks prior to the LinuxWorld Expo. At LinuxWorld, Moglen said the FSF still anticipates releasing the final version of GPLv3 early next year. Whether the new version of the license will be adopted for the Linux kernel remains to be seen.

 
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