“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft

Re:“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft by whoknowswhat11 on Friday July 23, 2021 @11:47PM (#27938239)

Do you understand the GPLv3? It made clear that any of this locking on hardware was prohibited. Vendors of products that had these locks have to provide the security / encryption keys to bypass them if they use GPLv3. As a result, they do not.

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Re:“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft by josephcsible on Friday July 23, 2021 @11:51PM (#27938251)

There's two separate sets of keys. One controls what OS the phone's CPU will boot, and the other controls what SIM cards the phone's baseband will use. Nothing would require releasing the second set of keys.

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Re:“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft by whoknowswhat11 on Saturday July 24, 2021 @12:03AM (#27938304)

Have you talked about this with the FSF? I can sell a GPLv3 device that ships with unmodifiable locks?

If this is true (it is not) than we can do all sorts of dongle type locks on devices.

GPLv3 is not just about the bootloader. They are very clear actually that vendors must release anything that is needed to bypass locks or integrity checks.

" It will depend on how the hardware was designed—but no matter what information you need, you must be able to get it."

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Re:“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft by josephcsible on Saturday July 24, 2021 @12:14AM (#27938347)

Can you copy and paste the exact sentence(s) from the GPLv3 that support your position? Because that's not my reading of it at all.

EDIT: This?

> " It will depend on how the hardware was designed—but no matter what information you need, you must be able to get it."

The key word there is "need". You don't need the baseband unlock information to replace the stock kernel with a modified one.

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Re:“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft by comex on Saturday July 24, 2021 @01:50AM (#27938791)

The GPLv3 requires that if you distribute GPLv3 software as part of a consumer product, users must be able to install a modified version of the software in its place.

If the baseband has GPLv3 software on it, then that implies the user has the right to run custom software on the baseband (at least at the same privilege level as said software), which probably implies the ability to connect it to arbitrary networks.

If only the application processor has GPLv3 software, then there is no requirement with respect to the baseband. The GPL isn't that viral.

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Re:“Tivoization” and Your Right to Install Under Copyleft by pabs3 on Saturday July 24, 2021 @08:53AM (#27940502)

BTW, the PinePhone baseband runs Linux on the non-DSP part of the baseband. There are folks reverse-engineering the proprietary programs running under the Linux kernel on the baseband.

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