[MereInterest]

> Yeah the installation requirement is silly.

Is it? From my reading, much of the GPL v2/v3 divide comes from different expectations of what GPL is intended to achieve. One camp (e.g. Linus) believes that the goal is to ensure that the freely available product is the best product, that all improvements that are distributed can make their way back to the freely available repo. The other camp (e.g. Stallman) believes that the primary goal is to ensure that end users have control over their computers. That any software distributed to them can be modified to suit the end user's needs.

These are both valid viewpoints, and both camps thought the GPLv2 fit their needs, at the time of its writing. When TiVo found a loophole that satisfied one interpretation of the letter of GPLv2, but violated the its spirit as seen by the second camp, the GPLv3 was made to make explicit what was previously potentially ambiguous in the GPLv2.

That it all to say, I think it's premature to dismiss the viewpoint of Stallman's camp as "silly".

[ajklsdhfniuwehf]

There is only GPL :)

GPLv3 only goal is exclusively to twart bad actors from using needlessly complex things with the sole goal of avoiding GPLv2 (and 3 since they are practicaly the same) goals, which is to provide source for code that was originally GPL'ed.

In Tivo specific case, that needlesly complex thing was a rubegoldberg build/install process. Also TIVO did not find a loophole. They provided the code as their shenanigans was exposed as such in the end.

Note that you are commenting under an article which main point was exactly to dismiss the misunderstanding in pop culture about the TIVO case! and here you are repeating it. sigh.