Tivoization and the GPL

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41

Freedom of the software is being confused with freedom of the hardware. You can get all of the bits to the GPL ode in TiVo. Because they have some non-GPL software involved and hardware they designed along side of the GPL code does not mean you should have access to everything.

Stallman is making the “viral” claims against GPL true - touch it and everything is infected. If TiVo were to give it all away, Comcast would download a copy and use it on their DVRs and not pay TiVo a penny. Is that who we support now - not the little company that took a risk to create a new product, but the mega-corp looking to copy their success and crush them?

It sucked when I had to format my hacked TiVo 2 back to factory so I can get listing data again, but with the rules of DRM I can understand why they are doing it. I doubt an open system would be allowed to download Amazon Unbox movies. Instead of trying to take down TiVo, Stallman should spend some more time working against DMCA and DRM, which as laws can trump his GPLv3.

42

The “support cost” argument is a load of BS. Just about every manufacturer in the world will refuse to honour any warranties or support agreements if the product has been tinkered with in any way.

Johnny Wannabehacker scans over an online “how to mod your Tivo” site and decides to give it a try, but in the process manages to brick his unit. While his response might be to suck it up and cut his losses, a good contingent of the tech community will, sadly, do something to really mess the unit up – sticking 120v on the circuit board, for instance – so they can cover their tracks and get a warranty replacement.

It absolutely does impact support costs, not only directly by having to deal with a large number of people demanding support for their mistakes, threatening to post a heartbreaking internet complaint otherwise, but indirectly by the less obvious mistakes.

43

While you may say that Tivo protects their revenue by putting their software under proprietary protection, they definitely save on cost by using GPL code instead of building an entirely new OS in house. What Tivo is saying to programmers and engineers who contributed to GNU Linux is that we’ll take your work, we’ll make money off of it, but we won’t help you access our designs.

44

I don’t understand.

What users pay here is for the service. And it seems that the payment is triggered by the software. What then, if people buy the box and use it for some other purpose, besides the fact already mentioned that the company might sell the box at a loss.

Once again, the real wtf is the business model.

45

But I also wonder how a company like Tivo could make money if users
could simply recompile the Tivo software to stop phoning home and
billing them.

Well, the legitimate places to make money in this space seem to be:
o Off the hardware.
o Charge for access to the progam guide information.

The latter is essentially what TiVo is doing now. Their real problem is that w/o the GPL-subverting DRM, there’s nothing stopping a competitor (who isn’t taking a loss on selling hardware) from compiling and selling access to their own set of program guide info for TiVos. In other words, they don’t want to have to compete.

46

Quote Linux:
"The fact is, Tivo didn’t take those rights away from you, yet the FSF says that what Tivo did was “against the spirit”. That’s bullshit.

So the whole “to protect these rights, we take away other rigths” argument hinges on the false premise that the new language in GPLv3 is somehow needed. It’s not. You still had the right to distribute the software (and modify it), even if the hardware is limited to only one version.

In other words, GPLv3 restricts rights that do not need to be restricted, and yes, I think that violates the spirit of the GPLv2 preamble!

Think of it this way: what if the GPLv3 had an addition saying “You can not use this software to make a weapon”. Do you see the problem? It restricts peoples rights, would you agree? Would you also agree that it doesn’t actually follow that “To protect your rights” logic AT ALL?

And this is exactly where the GPLv3 diverges from the above logic. If I build hardware, and sell it with software installed, you can still copy and modify the software. You may not do so within the confines of the hardware I built, but the hardware was never under the license in the first place.

In other words, GPLv3 restricts peoples freedoms more than it protects them. It does not cause any additional stated freedoms - quite the reverse. It tries to free up stuff that was never mentioned in the first place.

And then the FSF has the gall to call themselves the “protector of
freedoms”, and claim that everybody else is evil. What a crock.

In other words, if you want to argue for the changes in GPLv3, you need to CHANGE THE PREAMBLE TOO! You should change:

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not	price.  Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you	have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for	this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it	if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it	in new free programs, that you can do so in place on your devices,        even if those devices weren't licensed under the GPL;  and that         you know you can do these things.

where I added the “that you can do so in place on your devices, even if those devices weren’t licensed under the GPL”."

So Linux himself disagrees with a lot of you people here…

47

Most people here have commenting about what the Linux developers (or developers in general) want to happen with the software, or what Richard M. Stallman (I do not abbreviate his name on purpose, abbreviations like that show affection, of which I have none for this person) believes is right, as if Stallman has any say whatsoever. If you want Linux developer opinion, look to the original Linux developer, Linus Torvalds. He approves of what Tivo has done, and has said so on many occasions. Really, this whole thing isn’t a big deal, and Tivo is only trying to protect their assets and provide a marketable service to people. Just cut them a break.

48

I’m surprised there is any debate at all on this issue. GPL is a software license and was never intended to cover the hardware that the GPL software runs on. Expecting that everything a company sells should become open just because they use some GPL software somewere has nothing to to with freedom and everything to do with selfishness. They make the source of the GPL code available. You can freely use that code to help you to create your own version of a Tivo. Asking them to also help you to run your modified code on their hardware goes way beyond even the “spirit” of the GPL.

The Tivo devices can only be sold as inexpensively as they are because of the service subscription. The ability to hack the device to become a general purpose Linux computer while cool to us geeks, goes quite a bit beyond what we should be demanding from the manufacturer of a consumer appliance.

49

As a Playstation developer, I want to point out that not only can you run Linux on a Playstation 3 (see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PlayStation_3), but Sony actively supports running other OSes on the Playstation 3 hardware (see http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html). (It is true that Linux is locked out of the graphics chip and the game data and half the memory.) It’s not fair to lump the PS3, for which there is active support for opening up at least some of the hardware and the XBox (or the Tivo), which are completely locked down.

50

Jeff, if you have abandoned Tivo then what are you using currently to record shows, movies, etc.? I use a hd-dvr provided from my cable company but it seems transferring any of my recorded content to a seperate hard drive(pc) is blocked. Any thoughts/solutions?

51

Sal, I agree. To force Linux based hardware to allow modified code to run will be the death of Linux as an embedded OS. No business would touch it, any business doing so would be forced to cover their costs through hardware sales alone (loss leading hardware plus subscriptions wouldn’t work since the software can be re-written to bypass it) which would make the device less appealing to the general consumer due to its increased price. And this applies elsewhere too. Imagine a Linux mobile phone with unfettered access to the network using modified kernels. Someone could, hypothetically, reduce the effectiveness of the network, or even make the phone dial/text premium rate services through viral means. So network operators won’t allow Linux phones onto their networks. And so on. Hardware manufacturers must be allowed to lock their platform to specific builds of the software and not allow modifications to the core to be loaded onto the device. That will expand the Linux base and give us all slightly cheaper cool devices.

52

“To force Linux based hardware to allow modified code to run will be the death of Linux as an embedded OS”

http://www.nslu2-linux.org
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
http://www.sveasoft.com

Last I heard, Cisco (parent company of Linksys) was doing pretty well.

53

I can’t believe no one mentioned MythTV in all this time.

54

If you really want to get into this issue, visit slashdot.org.
This debate has been raging there for a long time.

55

Modifying a Tivo, or even a phone or router, is one thing.

But some equipment just shouldn’t be modified. So no Linux based machine tools, avionics, medical equipment, ATMs, cash registers, voting machines…

So we should use Windows? It may not be as intrinsically stable or secure, but at least we can keep users from making it worse.

56

Couldn’t they have just sold the tivo like a cell phone? Charge a profitable price for the hardware without service or take the cheap hardware with a 2 year contract. Either way you make a profit. In fact it could lead to other people creating hardware for Tivo’s subscriptiton service if they opened up how to connect to it.

57

The way to keep the software separate from the billing system is to simply retain programming data on a server that your box needs to log into in order to perform the recording options. Then it’s a matter of having an active account associated with a private key, encode the recordings with that key and have it hard wired into the bios that they key is required to play a recording.

That’s just a very simplistic way around your proposed issue for why Tivo needs to keep their source closed. I’m sure there are smarter people than me who could come up with a much more difficult system to beat, but the point is, it can be done and is not an excuse for going down the route of making their code proprietary.

58

If you really want to get into this issue, visit slashdot.org.

never heard of it.

Jeff, if you have abandoned Tivo then what are you using currently to record shows, movies, etc.?

I ran XP Media Center for a long time in parallel (w/Tivo), then switched over completely. Vista’s media center is outstanding, well, as long as you don’t need digital cable, that is. I’m sticking with analog cable until the CableCard issues get worked out. If I need high-def, well, that’s what bittorrent is for, right?

59

We all know programmers are binary folks, but it doesn’t appear to be quite so black and white.

IIRC the GPL forces you to release source if you sell a program commercially, and that program contains GPL code. Murky waters, because it sounds like they didn’t technically sell software. They sold hardware with linux (gpl) some tools (gpl) and their own software installed. I don’t think just because they run it on linux, their software becomes gpl automagically.

  1. It doesn’t sound like they modified any standard programs, but instead wrote their own proprietary s/w, using their own proprietary hardware. using GPL library calls also doesn’t make the calling code GPL.

  2. Anti-tampering does not equal DRM. While I don’t agree with it, I can see why the manufacturers do it. Support and security. If a machine is easily ‘hacked’ legitimate people could get harmed, and the company takes the fall because they’re the one’s that shipped an insecure platform. If however the company can prove they took reasonable measures to protect their customers, it’s a little harder to pin the blame. America loves to sue people, so do you blame Tivo for applying some CYA.

It’s a stupid argument, but it’s an argument. Why not just have anti-tampering detection that wouldn’t do anything (but maybe warn the user), offer to reset the system, but otherwise negate any support possibility. You can install anything in your car, but it still has to be street legal, and if you don’t get it done by an approved mechanic, you can void your warranty and/or your insurance as well.

  1. I also recall a lot of the DRM they added was in response to threats of huge lawsuits by those warm fuzzy Hollywood lawyers if they allowed the data they recorded to be distributed outside the box. Again, Tivo is reacting to American law and America’s love of litigation.

Tivo dropped the ball, but not over the GPL.

60

It just seems like an argument between whether you want an out of the box consumer electronics device (TiVo), or a totally customizable PC that records TV for you.

If they violated the GPL and they do end up getting slapped for it, what happens next? They switch to another OS that doesn’t care if they lock things down. Is it more of a boon for the Linux community to tout TiVo as a success story, or is it more of a cost savings and technology benefit for TiVo Corp to use Linux?