TVSquad

In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, TiVo has warned that a new open source license could cause big trouble for the company.

TiVo is based on Linux, an open source operating system. And for the most part, TiVo's turned a blind eye to hardware hackers, allowing users to put larger hard drives in their boxes or enable networking.

But when it comes to software, that's another story. TiVo has always walked a fine line with content owners, and has included copyright protection that limits what you can do with television recordings. To that end, TiVo includes software that cripples the machine if you try to manipulate the source code.
That's not the kind of thing that sits well with the open source community, and the Free Software Foundation is preparing to release an update to the General Public License, or GPLv3, which will prohibit such measures.

If GPLv3 is adopted by open source developers, TiVo could continue to offer boxes with its existing software. But the company would have a difficult time incorporating updates published by the open source community, essentially forcing TiVo to choose between copyright protection and more advanced software. If TiVo were to comply with GPLv3, the company could still use copyright protection, but users who knew how would be free to disable it.

If TiVo turns its back on copyright, it will lose the ability to sign up partners like Amazon Unbox to offer new video download services. The company would also risk really ticking off television networks and movie studios, which generally a good idea when your business model is based on their products.