18
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by lousyd@lemmy.sdf.org to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

How do I free my television?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

It should be a thing because most (all?) "smart TVs" run some variety of Linux, which, as Free Software, is supposed to guarantee the device owner's right to modify the software running on the thing. However, in most (all?) cases, the practical ability to do that has been destroyed by subverting encryption functions against the owner in a process called Tivoization.

In other words:

  1. No, it isn't really a thing,
  2. It's wrong for it not to be a thing, and
  3. You should be pissed off about it.
[-] sir_pronoun@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Thanks for teaching me a new concept to be angry about, I guess.

[-] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago

I mean, they did it with phones too. Android is just Linux. That was one of the main attractions, for me at least.

At first, many people and groups supplied their own phone OSes. There was a whole thriving community ecosystem. Then they started to make it really hard, locking bootloaders and including critical pieces of hardware that didn't or couldn't have open source drivers (look up WinModems for a very early example of this technique, it remains really effective) or otherwise required extremely convoluted methods to access and the phone might function marginally without some of these fully functional, but at least you could still install a custom ROM on it if you were stubborn enough.

But even that wouldn't last. Nowadays they've made it literally impossible to defeat the security on most phones, in the name of keeping hackers and criminals out, but really a big part of their motivation is blocking these pirate OSes that let you actually control the hardware and software in your phone, doing criminally nefarious things like stopping them from downloading ads (the horror!) and preventing them from funneling all your data and activities back to Big Brother (how rude!) and worst of all updating it with modern functionality after they've declared it "obsolete". The goal going forward is to sell you things that you don't and can't control, so they can shut them down or make them gradually more and more useless and make you buy new ones forever. They want you to have a subscription for everything including physical objects without realizing that you've been forced to subscribe to their regularly-scheduled-disposable-device-replacement-plan for no actual reason.

They're coming for computers too, or at least they'll try. They want control of everything we interact with. For profit, mostly, but I wouldn't rule out other motives. It's a powerful thing when you have control of everything people see and do.

[-] sir_pronoun@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

STOP IT!! I WAS ABOUT TO HAVE A GOOD DAY TODAY!!

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 3 points 2 months ago

The Free Software Foundation explicitly forbade tivoization in version 3 of the GNU General Public License. However, although version 3 has been adopted by many software projects, the authors of the Linux kernel have notably declined to move from version 2 to version 3.

How come Linux doesn't use GPL v3?

[-] stinerman@midwest.social 2 points 2 months ago

Linux copyrights are owned by many different people, so it would be prohibitively difficult to ask every person to agree to a GPLv3 change. Even if you could, Linus Torvalds is not a fan of the v3 license.

[-] whostosay@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Woah woah woah, slow down partner, you're not done yet.

  1. you should absolutely make as much headway on this project as you can, then share the results so we can all benefit.
[-] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 1 points 2 months ago

It's interesting to see some of the back-and-forth on this topic between different proponents of free software.

I listened to this talk by Linus Torvalds a while back and it relates to the GPL license used by the Linux kernel and why the kernel hasn't changed to GPLv3. Apparently Linus doesn't find this practice by Tivo and other hardware manufacturers to be an issue.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Yes, it's a damn shame that Linus is weak on property rights.

Because that's what this actually is, by the way: violating the device owner's property rights in order to prioritize the manufacturer's temporary monopoly privilege over the software -- which was only created for the sole and express purpose "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts" in the first place -- above them.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 0 points 2 months ago

Linus is kinda infamous for being a dick.

[-] breakingcups@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

That really doesn't contribute anything to the merits of his remarks or not though.

[-] oo1@lemmings.world -1 points 2 months ago

I think he needs to work with HW manufacturers and chip designers/manufacturers to get drivers. They're always going to have some proprietary HW and FW and communication protocols somewhere in their stuff. I think if he pisses them off too much he has to to bit-bash or reverse engineer all drivers for loads of stuff - which is never going to happen.

[-] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago

Linux would need overwhelming market share in the consumer end to force chip makers to play, whether they like it or not.

Windows might be finally doing a bad enough job again, to drive Linux adoption, but it’s hard to tell if that’s just Lemmy talking.

[-] oo1@lemmings.world 0 points 2 months ago

Linux doesnt "force" chip makers. It tries to collaborate , that's the point of what Linus has been saying and doing for several years. I don't know which market you're talking about though, embedded - which is relevant here, or consumer PC. I don't even think MS gives a shit about consumer PC, it's worth next to nothing to anyone - maybe apple does.

[-] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

Force is the wrong word, I meant more difficult to ignore.

this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
18 points (90.9% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36691 readers
359 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS