# Guardian article on TiVo's Linux licensing



## ndunlavey (Jun 4, 2002)

There's an article in today's Guardian (Technology section) on wrangles over TiVo's GPL/FSF Linux licensing.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

That would be this article then?


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Bit disingenuous, though. The article claimed you can't use third party kernels. Erm... Isn't that what all of us with LBA support are doing?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I think they are referring to S2 & S3 machines which are locked down much tighter than our ancient S1s


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Ah, I'd forgotten how backwards the S1 machine is compared to new fangled technology.


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## ndunlavey (Jun 4, 2002)

Yes, that's the article. It hadn't been released to the web yet when I posted this morning.


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## deshepherd (Nov 30, 2000)

I think the issue is that TiVo aren't doing anything that breaks the GPL v2 terms ... but are still making money via proprietory software that they don't need to share with anyone else ... and this is the sort of thing that Stallman doesn't like so he's written a new GPL v3 that would, I believe, make it much moer difficult for TiVo to do what they do. Not that it matters all that much as (1) TiVo are using software which is governed by GPL v2 and that can't be retrospectively changed and (2) most of the Linux development community seems to be a bit less absolutist than Stallman (who in any case is still clearly peeved that after spending years working on GNU Hurd as the oen and only true operating system found the whole world adopting a kernel that soem finnish student wrote one night in his bedroom).

N.b. to get a real feel of where Stallman is coming from you need to read some of the discussions from the Xemacs group over their split with Stallman's emacs development. Again they wanted and used a slightly more restrictive licence than pure GPL on the extensions they added to emacs which left Stallman complaining that, due to GPL, they could use any enhancements he developed for Emacs but he could use anything they did without corrupting the purity of his GPL-ed code base.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Yeah. I only went looking on the off-chance. Wasn't expecting it to appear on-line until tomorrow


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

The Guardian is pretty good at things like this - their stuff is usually on the website on the same day as, or before, it's in print.


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## chimaera (Nov 13, 2000)

Yes, not much point buying the printed version really - although there are many other reasons for not buying it in any case


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Certainly it'd be expensive for me to buy a printed copy  But the digital.guardian.co.uk is a great second best (when it works).


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## manolan (Feb 13, 2001)

kitschcamp said:


> The Guardian is pretty good at things like this - their stuff is usually on the website on the same day as, or before, it's in print.


Isn't this true of the Times and Telegraph? It is in my experience.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Don't know about now, but previously it only appeared on their websites once it was in print. I don't read the Telegraph for idealogical reasons so I don't know how that works these days.


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## ndunlavey (Jun 4, 2002)

I used to avoid the Telegraph, but since the demise of the Times, it's my second paper of choice. I'll get it if I'm somewhere uncivilised that I can't get the Guardian (like when I was in Devon a couple of weeks ago).


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## deshepherd (Nov 30, 2000)

I think the Guardian annouced a few weeks/months ago that they were no longer going to give any special priority to the print version over the digital versions ... so I assume break news stories will be first on the digital version now and other coverage will appear on the digital version as soon as they consider that days edition to be "live" (which will be before print is available). At the time they said they were the only mainstream UK newspaper doing this but others may have followed since then.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Actual breaking news appears on the Guardian web site through the day. The features used to appear later but it makes no particular difference. 
A recent Guardian business feature about the new London free newspapers actually went down the route of explaining how cost efficient it would be to drop printing completely for these publications. The advertising revenue makes up most of the paper's income so as long as you maintain good online pricing there is no real reason to "protect" your offline stories and features. Especially as searchability and archiving mean you get more 'views per page' than you would on tomorrows chip wrapper.


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## kitschcamp (May 18, 2001)

Agree - The Guardian and Observer can afford to offer digital copies of every days paper for a month for less than a tenner, and at the moment for about a fiver.


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