[Interest] The willy-nilly deletion of convenience, methods

[Konrad Rosenbaum]

Hi,

[this is getting a bit off-topic, but anyway...]

On 23/03/2021 16:43, Roland Hughes wrote:
> The OpenSource community was blind, deaf, and dumb when they railed 
> against Tivo locking down their devices and came up with all of these 
> poisoned pills in OpenSource licenses mandating users be able to 
> modify the software.
>
> In medical devices, that's illegal.
>
> In industrial control systems where SAFETY is mandated, that's illegal.

This is not exactly true. Modifying software of a medical or safety 
critical device is not illegal, it just revokes your right to use the 
device in its critical function because it no longer follows regulations.

Keep in mind that 99.9% of devices that were targeted by the 
anti-tivoization clauses were actually very Tivo-like: smart TVs, HiFi 
devices, mobile phones, smart buttons, cheap internet routers, etc.

The guys shouting the loudest were manufacturers of cheap network 
hardware, because they were unwilling to use WLAN silicon that was a few 
cents more expensive to be able to be compliant with both the licenses 
and the regulations. Or rather with the worst possible assumption of 
what the regulations could mean if some official had you targeted. By 
now they have fully embraced that software and regulators have shifted 
their attention elsewhere.

It is possible to use software with an anti-tivo license in critical 
systems, it just requires you to use your brain before deploying it in 
your device. Question is whether you wouldn't want to use something else 
anyway, because you need hard, certified real time capabilities.

> Change either of those and the regulators find out, you go to jail. A 
> person doesn't even have to get hurt or killed.

That's a bit of an overly generalized statement, in't it?


Your statement about industry and safety doesn't hold much water either: 
in semiconductor we change critical software all the time and nobody 
cares. Most of the time there isn't even enough documentation to tell 
you what was changed and when. The really critical parts are protected 
by hardware interlocks anyway and in industry everybody gets regular 
training to make sure they don't stick their heads in the path of a fast 
moving robot or take a bath in an acid tank. Surprisingly I haven't even 
heard rumors about faulty software killing anyone in this industry.


     Konrad


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 495 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/attachments/20210324/67eaeb8f/attachment.sig>