What's Wrong with Tivoization

This post originally was going to be a comment on A fight against evil or a fight for attention? but it got kinda long.

The primary purpose of the GPL is not to make better software, or to make software available for private tinkering. The purpose of the GPL is to keep software Free with a capital F. While Tivo's attempt to maintain their business model may or may not be ethical, their attempt to hamstring the Freedoms that the GPL provides is definitely not.

When Tivo does it, people say "Well, don't buy a Tivo". But what will you do when it becomes standard practice for hardware to only allow signed, approved software? What good does the Freedom to Run modified software do you if your hardware refuses to run it?

Petreley asks, "What does the GPL have to do with hardware? Hopefully, nothing.

In fact, I am suspicious of the motives of anyone who wants to modify the GPL such that it forces vendors to redesign their appliances to conform to the Free Software Foundation's ideas of how such appliances should work."

Have you even read the GPLv3 draft? The DRM sections require distributors of GPLed code to provide any and all encryption keys required to make the software work. That's a far cry from "forcing vendors to redesign their appliances." In fact, the GPLv3 says nothing about how manufacturers should design their hardware, it merely says that they must provide the tools to make modified GPLed software run.

He goes on to say, "Why is the FSF cramming issues into the GPL that are arguably unrelated to the original intent of the GPL?"

I suppose if the FSF were to do such a thing, that would be a problem. But the Freedom to Run is Freedom 0 in the Free Software Definition, and preserving those Freedoms is precisely and exactly the original intent of the GPL.

Fighting DRM is not a sidenote to preserving user's Freedoms, it's a central issue, and as such its inclusion in the GPLv3 is entirely appropriate. People don't seem to get that the Free Software Foundation's purpose is to maximise the Freedom that users have with their Software. Like the name says, maybe? Commercial software and hardware companies' business models are wholly irrelevant to that purpose. Would you compromise Freedom of Speech to allow a company to make an extra buck? No? Then why should the FSF compromise Freedom of Software?