French Court Issues Damages Award for Violation of GPL

Re:French Court Issues Damages Award for Violation of GPL by crest on Monday March 04, 2024 @07:54AM (#39589870)

Imo the question is do you want to protect passive users access to the code or developers freedom to use the code how they want it even if that does mean they take existing code, modify it slightly, put it in an embedded device, and enable temper protections on the MCU preventing anyone but them from signing new firmware images? If that embedded device is something harmless like a video player or gaming console most open source developers would probably like to use the license as a crowbar to force the device open, but what if it's a medical device, or a payment terminal the user is explicitly not trusted to modify?

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Re:French Court Issues Damages Award for Violation of GPL by the8472 on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:24AM (#39590158)

If anything medical devices, especially implants, should be modifiable. Otherwise you're stuck with an unmaintainable device (possibly in your body) once the manufacturer goes out of business or the support window ends or whatever. Right to repair and all that.

And this is a very real concern. https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

For external devices breaking some big, visible "last inspected on XX/XX" seal to do so would be acceptable.

For payment terminals you could do the secure boot thing where replacing the manufacturer keys and flashing custom firmware wipes the TPM storage.

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Re:French Court Issues Damages Award for Violation of GPL by Nullabillity on Monday March 04, 2024 @09:58AM (#39591237)

For payment terminals the core problem is that the trust model is ass-backwards. The user is the one at risk from a faulty authn device, so they should be the side "controlling" the authn flow. Merchants would be fine just carrying dumb plastic cards with an ID number. Though these days there's little reason not to just make both sides smart… it could even run on the phones they already have!

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Re:French Court Issues Damages Award for Violation of GPL by kelnos on Monday March 04, 2024 @04:37PM (#39596470)

To me it's not solely about modification. It's also about transparency. While I most likely would shy away from trying to modify the software of a medical device, I think it should be illegal to lock down those devices so that people can't at least see the code that's running it.

If you're going to build something that's going to directly affect my health, I would much appreciate it if it were easy for researchers to find bugs and security issues with the software that controls it.

But ultimately I don't care about the whole "legally locked down" thing, and think that concept is a net negative for society. If I can buy a medical device to use at home, then it should be on me if I decide to modify it and it injures or kills me. I expect the law hasn't really kept up with that notion; I wouldn't be surprised that in many cases the manufacturer might still be liable. But that's a legal problem (that should be fixed!), not an ideological one.

> ... or a payment terminal the user is explicitly not trusted to modify

This is the worst thing, IMO. I wholeheartedly reject the concept of software that I am given to use, but am not "trusted" to modify. Screw that. Unfortunately I do have to use software like that. But I think the entire concept is garbage.

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