Intel to include DRM in new Pentium 4 series processors

[Alan Braggins]

> I believe TCPA is more of an end run around GPL that a legal attack on
> it, so this isn't particularly important in this instance.
> 
> Quoting from the bottom of the relevant question on Ross Anderson's
>   http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
[...]
> | the GPL won't work as intended.
> 
> I understand this as "sure you can copy that GPL'd work. You can
> compile it too if you like. You'll have to find somewhere else to run
> it though."
> 
> | The benefit for Microsoft is not that this will destroy free
> | software directly. The point is this: once people realise that even
> | GPL'led software can be hijacked for commercial purposes, idealistic
> | young programmers will be much less motivated to write free
> | software.
> 
> One can only hope that if it _does_ come to this, the Stuckist Net (a
> phrase coined by The Register I believe) will have enough idealistic
> or rebellious programmers, and hardware, to survive.

BSD software can already be hijacked for commercial purposes (or
used freely including for commercial purposes, depending on your
point of view), and there seem to be quite a lot of idealistic
programmers writing it.

Microsoft stand to benefit if non-copyleft free software continues
to thrive but nobody bothers with copyleft.

-- 
Alan Braggins  mailto:armb@ncipher.com  http://www.ncipher.com/
nCipher Corporation Ltd.  +44 1223 723600  Fax: +44 1223 723601