[Fsfe-ie] Agenda for Tuesday's meeting (Tomorrow)

Malcolm Tyrrell malcoh0l at yahoo.ie
Mon May 15 18:48:40 CEST 2006


> GPLv3

Actually, a thought on this topic did pop into my head. I've been
trying out (and liking) rockbox on my digital audio player:

http://www.rockbox.org

I gather that several manufacturers claim you void your warranty if
you install non-official firmware. From their perspective, a modified
version could cause hardware to fail. For example, by overclocking the
CPU to an unacceptable degree, or mismanaging the battery.

Let's imagine that a manufacturer decided to use rockbox as their
firmware. No doubt the release they use with their device will have
undergone some degree of code auditing and testing. So should they
be obliged to cover me if I've make changes to their "official"
release of the firmware?

Now for good reason (Freedom 1), GPLv3 (as I understand it) is meant
to stop manufacturers from signing Free Software binaries in such a
way that users can't run modified versions. But does it (and should
it) also prevent them from determining whether a device has had
modified firmware installed on it?

Hmmm...

Malcolm.

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