@@ -2803,6 +2803,35 @@ program might not have the keys.
% FIXME: installation information
Why do distributors only have to provide Installation Information for User Products?
Some companies effectively outsource their entire IT department to another
company. Computers and applications are installed in the company's offices,
but managed remotely by some service provider. In some of these situations,
the hardware is locked down; only the service provider has the key, and the
customers consider that to be a desirable security feature.
We think it's unfortunate that people would be willing to give up their
freedom like this. But they should be able to fend for themselves, and the
market provides plenty of alternatives to these services that would not lock
them down. As a result, we have introduced this compromise to the draft:
distributors are only required to provide Installation Information when
they're distributing the software on a User Product, where the customers'
buying power is likely to be less organized.
This is a compromise of strategy, and not our ideals. Given the environment
we live in today --- where Digital Restrictions Management is focused largely
in consumer devices, and everyone, including large companies, is becoming
increasingly worried about the effects of DRM thanks to recent developments
like the release of Microsoft's Windows Vista --- we think that the proposed
language will still provide us with enough leverage to effectively thwart
DRM. We still believe you have a fundamental right to modify the software on
all the hardware you own; the preamble explains, ``If such problems [as
locked-down hardware] arise substantially in other domains, we stand ready
to extend this provision to those domains in future versions of the GPL, as
needed to protect the freedom of users.''
% FIXME: This needs merged in somewhere in here
The mere fact that use of the work implies that the user \textit{has} the key