Tivoization

Tivoization (/ˈtiːvoʊɪˌzeɪʃən/) is the practice of designing hardware that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license like the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), but uses hardware restrictions or digital rights management (DRM) to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware. Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) coined the term in reference to TiVo's use of GNU GPL licensed software on the TiVo brand digital video recorders (DVR), which actively block modified software by design.[1][2] Stallman believes this practice denies users some of the freedom that the GNU GPL was designed to protect.[3] The FSF refers to tivoized hardware as "proprietary tyrants".[4]

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.

  1. ^ "Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses". Archived from the original on December 29, 2016. Retrieved March 17, 2015. GNU.org Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses
  2. ^ "A Quick Guide to GPLv3". Archived from the original on December 29, 2016. Retrieved March 17, 2015. A Quick Guide to GPLv3
  3. ^ "[Info-gplv3] GPLv3 Update #2". fsf.org. Archived from the original on October 26, 2006. Retrieved October 2, 2015.
  4. ^ "Proprietary Tyrants". Free Software Foundation. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved January 28, 2023.