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The Mozilla Public License (MPL). This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; unlike the X11 license, it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. That is, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the MPL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the MPL for this reason.

I just can't see how this particular choice of license makes things better for the Linux community. NASA seems to be deliberately slapping us in the face with this.

It seems, from the PDF document (page 8) that their intent is to enable commercial exploitation of their code:

The Mozilla Public License (MPL) attempts to strike a middle ground between promoting free source development by commercial enterprises and protecting free source developers. Like the GPL, it requires that any and all changes to code (derivative works) covered by the license must be made publicly available. [snip]

I'm sure that NASA hopes to collect a fat bribe ... no, a fat license fee ... no, a ``contribution to the Space Program''. That's what I said above, in the preceeding paragraph: this robbery is motivated by a desire to gouge me a second time for the work I paid for once.

no software is good enough to pay for

You don't pay for software as much as you pay people for making software. I don't work for free and I'm betting you don't either.

The gcc compiler/toolset is great. You can tell the engineers put thier heart in the work, to paraphrase a robber baron. Putting few bucks into thier pockets to reward them for thier hard work and excellent product is A Good Thing. Recognition is great compensation if your other material needs/wants are met.

Check out the FSF shopping page. The books are great and well worth the money. The art work isn't quite my thing. Does your employer match United Way contributions? Direct some of your giving to the FSF.

Note that the guy you responded to plagariazed my comment from Newsforge (ironic it is). Funny thing I am defending my own argument now :)

The only new part here is that the credit has visibility beyond those who care to look at the code.

This is a very big change. The idea of free that I was talking about was that you can make any change you want with the software. Reiser wants to force the credits to be displayed on the screen, like how mkreiserfs does so. Now what if you want to fork the code and use it in a project that doesn't output anything to the console? You can't because his licensing clause forces you to output all his advertisements to the console. This is where the software becomes non-free (as in speech), as it violates Stallman's freedom #1, you're unable to adapt it to your own needs. The credits belong in the source code and/or documentation where they will not affect the functionality.

I suppose this is a grey area, and basically comes down to opinion, but the way I see it is this makes software non-free. Do we really want free software to become ad-ware? If you want to write ad-ware, don't try to license it under the GPL.

I know Stallman is all about GNU getting credit, and calling the OS GNU/Linux, so I'd be interested in his take on this.

• FreeBSD
• Free Software Foundation
• debian.org
• EFF

Better yet, create some free information yourself. Write free software. Write some documentation. Report bugs in free software, or submit patches, or report errors in the documentation. Write free books. Make some music and release it for free. (Or do any of the above, make the information free-as-in-speech, and find a way to profit from it.)

I really couldn't care less about the fate of these students who got sued by the RIAA. All they're doing is perpetuating the public's misconception that free information is a form of parasitism, rather than a form of creativity.

You may re-publish this message or excerpts of it.

FALSE OPEN SOURCE REPRESENTATIVE CALLS FOR EUROPEAN SOFTWARE PATENTS

A false or misled "open source representative" has signed an industry resolution calling for the EU to allow software patenting, which has been sent to members of the European Parliament. Copies of the resolution are here and here . The European Legal Affairs Committee holds a plenary vote on software patenting this Wednesday, and may have been influenced by the false representation.

Graham Taylor is director of Open Forum Europe, an organization that is purported to work for broader acceptance of Open Source. Taylor has appeared at various trade shows in Europe, saying reasoanble things about Open Source, for the past year. Open Forum Europe is a division of IT Forum Foundation and InterForum. InterForum's membership includes a number of large companies that have a vested interest in the promotion of software patenting in Europe. Mr. Taylor's sponsor organization is well connected with the EU government.

I would encourage Mr. Taylor to evangelize Open Source software, something he's done successfully for a while. However, he does not have the credentials to represent the Linux, Open Source and Free Software developer communities, especially when he contradicts our extremely strong opposition to software patenting. While Mr. Taylor has been visible as a public speaker, it does not appear that he has any engagement with Open Source projects and developers, or that he brought this matter up with representative organizations such as the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, and Software in the Public Interest. No legitimate Open Source representative would think of taking this sort of position with government without first holding a public consultation with the developer community.

Software patents could be fatal for Open Source software in the U.S. and Europe. Since we do not collect royalties from the distribution of our own software, we have no funds to pay royalties to patent holders. Rather than sue us to collect money, expect patent holders to sue Open Source developers to restrain them from distributing their software or carrying out further development. Companies that produce proprietary software would bring that sort of suit to kill us off as a competitor.

While we can sometimes work around a patented algorithm that we know about, the Open Source developer is not able to defend himself from patent infringement claims, even invalid ones. In the U.S., the cost of a patent infringement defense often exceeds US$500,000. The Open Source developer, an individual working on his own time, won't have the funds to defend himself. He will be compelled to settle with his accuser, regardless of the merits of the case, in order to preserve what assets the plaintiff deigns to leave him. The copyrights of his own software won't be among those assets.

We are especially threatened by royalty-bearing software patents that are embedded in industry standards. In many cases, it is impossible to achieve compliance with a standard without infringing upon the patented algorithms that are specified by that standard. Standard compliance is critical for interoperability, and thus software patents in standards can make an un-communicating island of a Linux system. For example, the IEEE 1488 FireWire standard is encumbered by patents that apply to the software interfacing to it, and a patent r

Ask the Free Software Foundation, or ask a lawyer.

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

A copyright is any of the exclusive rights granted to the author of a work under the Berne Convention, or under local copyright laws, such as USC Title 17 for those of us in the US. These exclusive rights can be transferred, as occurs with Copyright Assignment to the Free Software Foundation, but even such a transfer isn't the copyright itself, but a transfer of ownership of copyright.

The GPL not a copyright, it is a license, and a non-exclusive one at that. A person who makes use of the GPL to redistribute or modify software doesn't have a copyright for the software, they have permission from the copyright holder to do certain things under certain conditions. The GPL makes use of copyright law, but that doesn't make it a copyright.

Music licensing is more complicated. Sometimes a license is given to redistribute a work, or to use a sample in a recording; sometimes music is licensed en masse . Sometimes copyright is assigned to various parties, sometimes it isn't, sometimes it is assumed as part of a "work-for-hire" contract. Sometimes the copyright is split, the songwriter having copyrights for the lyrics, the band having copyrights for the score, the producer having copyrights for the studio recording, and these can get licensed in whatever ways. But, again, the license is not the copyright.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be interpreted as legal advice. Determining which parties own which copyrights can be a complicated issue demanding professional legal help.

Of course, all those systems need different binaries. Even with DVD distro media that a crapload of files.

You could build from source on install, but that would be almost as bad in terms of all the little freaky patchlevels you'd need to get everything to work.

You're dead right about the FSF though. Why not become a member?

-Peter

Glancing quickly through the links for the SW Ascimiation, I see no license for copying, modifying, or distributing code.

While independent derivations of similar projects would not be an infringement of copyright, taking and modifying this work without explicit permission, or license, by the author, is.

FSF Free Software and OSI Open Source are not labels applied to any code whose source happens to be available. They are terms which apply to specific works, for which specific reserved rights under copyright and other laws have been granted. Visit the Free Software Foundation's annotated list of licenses or OSI's approved licenses page for examples of Free Software and Open Source licenses. Links from these pages discuss terms and concepts underlying these licenses.

IANAL, TINLA.

I'm not going to try to speak for others, so here is another link.

The Free Software Definition

This is one letter he wrote on the topic.

More can be found here.

This is one letter he wrote on the topic.

More can be found here.

Why do I have the distinct feeling that, in the not-so-distant future, most companies will receive their funding from anonymous people in brown paper bags left on the street corner...the funds in small denominations, unmarked, and non-sequential serial numbers.

Trust me...the day I win Powerball several organizations are going to receive anonymous donations.

Though you are technically correct, "Libre" does mean "freedom" in French, the word was apparently taken from the Spanish "Libre", which means (you guessed it...) "freedom". :-)
At least that's what my friend Brad says.

T

You'll see that the FSF is concerned with free documentation as well. The problem here is that some people are misunderstanding the invariant section provision of the FDL. As stated in that link, not every piece of writing is the same thing as software. The FDL insists that all the technical instructions be freely modifiable so that someone who creates a derivative piece of software can also modify the manual to keep it accurate.

However, some parts of a manual might be literary or express an author's opinion. This might be a political opinion ("software should be free") or it could be a technical opinion ("monolithic kernels suck"). But whatever it is it doesn't make sense for the creator of a derivative manual to change those opinions--that would be lying about the original author's intent.

The FDL recognizes that an author may have the need to guard these sections (remember, they can't have anything to do with the instructions to use the program). It doesn't make the manual any less free.

Mark this day in your calendars, everybody. Someone's saying that Debian takes licences more seriously than the FSF? BTW, you did understand that the F in GFDL stood for Free, right? That's not a word that can be used lightly, you know.

I hope transgaming goes bust.
I have little sympathy for mandrake - As they can profit in the good times they shouldn't beg in the bad (but thanks for the software contributions). The fsf and debian are much more deserving causes. Xiph does good stuff too.

Privacy International give their Big Brother awards for contributions to the destruction of privacy. Shouldn't the FSF or someone make awards for the contribution to closing software.

What do you call a sysad? Depends.

There are four major species of Unix sysad:

1. The TECHNICAL THUG. Usually a systems programmer who has been forced into system administration; writes scripts in a polyglot of the Bourne shell, sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.
2. The ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST. Usually a retentive drone (or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced into system administration.
3. The MANIAC. Usually an aging cracker who discovered that neither the Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a living wage for computer espionage. Fell into system administration; occasionally approaches major competitors with indesp schemes.
4. The IDIOT. Usually a cretin, morpohodite, or old COBOL programmer selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins, morphodites, and old COBOL programmers.

HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR:
http://www.fsf.org/fun/jokes/know.your.sysadmin.ht ml

It's a card-sized bootable GNU/Linux CD-ROM

--K.

I like the Windows link... http://fsf.org

Of course, in my browser at least, that should be http://www.fsf.org

Silly boy, it's a business ethics class and there are no business ethics. There are Software Ethics, Engineering Ethics, Medical Ethics, Legal Ethics and Sales Ethics is "caveat emptor", but there are no business ethics. All "business people" have to do is spit out their marketing and say what a great thing it is they are doing to the consumer. The teacher knows this, but tuition is already paid before the students learn it.

In big general terms he might look into the morality of NDAs, perpetual copyright through encryption and the future of the free press in a consolidated or even nationalized electronic network. That's how all those business folks get their best ideas. Business school is sort of like prison that way. It's cheaper to keep students than inmates, but they can do much more damage when they get out.

Good for her! You should not trust things you do not understand and because Windoze is closed source it's imposible to understand or trust. As has been documented here many times, Microsoft uses it's software to report things that are none of it's business without notice. The notice is now in the EULA, where Microsoft granted themselves control of your computer with a new one and in the one for Media Player. Late admission of such spying is hardly grounds for trust but is a clear indication of intent and lack of respect. If your wife bothered to fool with the computer long enough, she would notice the unusual hangs such nonsense generates. You have to wonder why they keep doing that kind of thing. M$ has enough trouble making it's "normal" software work.

Other software based on different principles is far more predictable. Even it's comercial varients are more trustowrthy.

perhaps you would prefer the meditating gnu. it's one of my favorites. you have others to choose from, many of which are similar to the one you dont like. there is another nice one for you page here. if you dont like the mascot, i think you are just shit out of luck. i doubt they will be changing it any time soon :).

perhaps you would prefer the meditating gnu. it's one of my favorites. you have others to choose from, many of which are similar to the one you dont like. there is another nice one for you page here. if you dont like the mascot, i think you are just shit out of luck. i doubt they will be changing it any time soon :).

perhaps you would prefer the meditating gnu. it's one of my favorites. you have others to choose from, many of which are similar to the one you dont like. there is another nice one for you page here. if you dont like the mascot, i think you are just shit out of luck. i doubt they will be changing it any time soon :).

Wow, two free hours of RMS insisting that "it's correctly termed GNU/Linux -- here, read this 85 point manifesto."

It's a nice chunk of change they've picked up, though. Looking at their rates [fsf.org], that's $10,000 each from IBM and HP, and probably $500 each from the others. I wonder if they really got that much or if they offered a discount to get the ball rolling.

Wow, two free hours of RMS insisting that "it's correctly termed GNU/Linux -- here, read this 85 point manifesto."

It's a nice chunk of change they've picked up, though. Looking at their rates, that's $10,000 each from IBM and HP, and probably $500 each from the others. I wonder if they really got that much out of them or if they offered a discount to get the ball rolling.

The FSF should at least offer to make the company's names on its Patron sponsor list linkable to the companys' websites. It is 2003 you know.

I hate having to go to Google to type in "OEone Corporation" to find out who the heck they are.

--LP

Apple is a leagal fiction not a person.

The whole motive for the GPL is to use the evils of copyright law to promote ethical behavior. The fact remains that it's immoral to force NDAs and other restrictions for software. You will find lots of good sound reasoning here. It's and interesting fact that free software invariably becomes excellent software.

Look at the harm that Apple's NDA has caused. You said that you wanted the person who released the browser flogged. That's exactly the kind of anti-social behavior that closed source promotes. The root of closed source is greed, pride and paranoia. It seeks to insure that only a select few can benifit fully from the software. Those who have been granted more prividges than others are resentful and angry when others share those privlidges. It's the anti social behavior of oppresion. It involves deception, punishment and force, ultimatly physical.

• There are lots of documents on the Free Software Foundation site. Don't be put off if some of the documents are not terribly new; the ideas are still valid.
  
• This explanation of the (first version of) the Open Source Definition compares some licences.
  
• This is quite a nice, simple read.
  

I've just gotten interested in Jython, although I've been using Java and Python (separately) for quite a while. I can't believe I came to it this late. Imagine having the simplicity of an award-winning dynamically-typed yet fully object-oriented scripting language at your finger tips for busting out scripts and relatively simple code, but with complete "native" access to Java libraries. (Quotes because it seems oxymoronic to use the word "native" to refer to Java.)

It's not quite the same as VB or even JavaBean-based "programming" (using a GUI-based code generator), but if you need to glue some Java classes together and don't want to go through all of the boilerplate required by straight Java programming, it's worth checking out.

But it sucks that you'd be paying the M$ Tax, so just make a contribution.

A donation to the FSF is good for everyone.

For Emacs alone, we all owe him.

There really is a SFU; it is a subsystem, and these people are using it. But you can't use a subsystem by itself; a subsystem is useful only as part of a whole operating system. SFU now inludes Interix which is normally used in a combination with the GNU development toolchain and libraries : the system is basically GNU, with SFU functioning as the compatibility DDL Library layer.

Many users are not fully aware of the distinction between the compiler toolset, which is SFU, and the whole system, which they also call `SFU''. The ambiguous use of the name doesn't promote understanding.

Programmers generally know that is a Subsystem. But since they have generally heard the whole system called `Interix' as well, they often envisage a history which fits that name. For example, many believe that once Softway Systems finished writing the posix compatibility DDL Libraries, they looked around for other free software, and for no particular reason most everything necessary to port a Unix-like system was already available.

What they found was no accident--it was the GNU system. The available free software added up to a complete system because the GNU Project had been working since 1984 to make one. The GNU Manifesto had set forth the goal of developing a free Unix-like system, called GNU. The Initial Announcement of the GNU Project also outlines some of the original plans for the GNU system. By the time Interix was written, the system was almost finished.

Most software projects have the goal of developing a particular program for a particular job. For example, Softway Systems set out to build an environment to allow UNIX apps to be ported directly to NT. Donald Knuth set out to write a text formatter (TeX); Bob Scheifler set out to develop a window system (X Windows). It's natural to measure the contribution of this kind of project by specific programs that came from the project.

If we tried to measure the GNU Project's contribution in this way, what would we conclude? If you had access to the full source code of SFU with Interix, you might find found that, GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 60% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no compatable subsystem. SFU by without Interix itself could be about 20%. So if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be `GNU''.

But we don't think that is the right way to consider the question. The GNU Project was not, is not, a project to develop specific software packages. It was not a project to develop a C compiler, although we did. It was not a project to develop a text editor, although we developed one. The GNU Project's aim was to develop a complete free Unix-like system: GNU.

Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit. But the reason it is a system--and not just a collection of useful programs--is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. We made a list of the programs needed to make a complete free system, and we systematically found, wrote, or found people to write everything on the list. We wrote essential but unexciting major components, such as the assembler and linker, because you can't have a system without them. A complete system needs more than

I just feel like people who make these arguments want to fundamentally change the very nature of what Slashdot is!

So... Duplicate stories and typos/grammar issues are "fundamental" and part of the "very nature" of slashdot?

Ah. Regarding grammar and typos, I thought you guys simply didn't care enough to read through a story three times before submitting it. I can see having one or two dupes a month, but several a month is just sloppy...

What do you guys do all day? I thought Slashdot had one or two editors that all they did all day long was story submissions. Either this is not true, or these guys aren't watching what other part-time editors are submitting, because they should have a pretty good idea of what has been posted before, especially in the recent past.

I can suggest two technical improvements which will fix spelling and dupes:

First, put in a simple spell checker for story submissions. Make it so that submit has to be hit twice if there are words that don't pass muster, wrong words can be highlighted in color in a preview above the submission editor. There are a few grammar checkers to make sure [its|it's] and things like [lose|loose] and [their|they're|there] are correctly used. This'll take care of 95% of spelling and grammar issues. Better yet, employ several proven grammar and spelling editors who get free subscriptions by spell and grammar checking stories before they show up on the front page. Give them some sort of direct line so improvements can be made in the 20 minute time span before publication.

The duplicate story is only a little harder:

No less than 3 editors have to sign off on any newly accepted story before it's displayed. If it's a dupe, chances are good that one of the three editors (the one that accepted and originally edited it and two others to add their stamp of approval to it) will have seen it before. There is no pattern matching engine in perl to match the memory of the human mind.

I understand your desire to keep the 'flavor' of slashdot the same, and to go fast and furious - jumping in where others might apply more caution. I applaud that about slashdot.

In short, you can argue all you want that the old truck on blocks and broken appliances all on the front lawn of slashdot are intended features. You'll just be very, very wrong. You aren't an artist, and you can't claim that a piece of art with feces smeared over it is still art.

-Adam

Grammar/style/spelling engines (in perl) can be found here diction and over here- a list of them. Most are relatively immature, but better than nothing - and adoption here could advertise the need for development in this area. You guys do want to push open source development, right? Don't enable it for comments or user submissions- too much load on the server. Just for the editor's submissions.

If there are too many story submissions to keep up with (ie, you do have two guys busy all the time rejecting stories) then you need to prune the stories before they get in the bin. Do auto-dupe checking on stories within the bin - when one is viewed by an editor, show the others so they can pick the best one, or just throw out dupes. I'm sure you do this to a degree already. Employ a simple spell checker and stop accepting submissions with more than 5 mispellings, never mind grammar. Make submitters work a little harder and the input will improve (garbage in, garbage out).

The best thing I can recomend for him is to spend some more time at the Free Software Society's web site, but especially this page. That "promise to give away innovations" is indeed kind of silly. The use of one idea to extract or deny others is the key sin the Free Software Foundation is fighting against. The notion that the free software people have a problem with anyone making money is also misinformed. The FSF site is a cure for the ignorance behind statments like this, which blemish an otherwise fine article:

Open-source software programmers say they're different from Stallman in one major way: They don't have a problem with people making money off their work--or making money themselves.

The free software foundation only has a problem with people screwing others, for any reason money making included. The Free Software Foundation stands against you using your own work and that of others to extract things from people. The kinds of things extracted for the use of software currently includes everything from money to limits on what you will tell others and who you might work for. The most repulsive thing non free software vendors do is attempt to keep others from understanding how to fix their own problems so that they can extract money perpetually for a problem solved by others long ago. Let's have a look at some of the good words on the above mentioned page:

However, certain kinds of rules about the manner of distributing free software are acceptable, when they don't conflict with the central freedoms. For example, copyleft (very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program, you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms. This rule does not conflict with the central freedoms; rather it protects them.

Thus, you may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies. ``Free software'' does not mean ``non-commercial''. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.

In short, people are encouraged to work together to solve common problems like free men will. Using free software will no more force a company to give away confidential information than using manila folders requires people to divulge the contents of their files. The only thing you are really encouraged to do is share your impovements to other people's work, much as lawyers, doctors, engineers and all other professionals have always done.

Wow, nothing really radical there is there? Really when you think about it the restrictions created by modern publishers, especially comercial software vendors, represent the really radical departure from social norms. Telling people that they can't share their expertise in a field? That you can't share your books or even sing a song with your friends that was originally dedicated to your cause? It all starts with a non disclosure agreement, an end user license agreement, a 100 year long copyright and that little "submit" button.

The best thing I can recomend for him is to spend some more time at the Free Software Society's web site, but especially this page. That "promise to give away innovations" is indeed kind of silly. The use of one idea to extract or deny others is the key sin the Free Software Foundation is fighting against. The notion that the free software people have a problem with anyone making money is also misinformed. The FSF site is a cure for the ignorance behind statments like this, which blemish an otherwise fine article:

Open-source software programmers say they're different from Stallman in one major way: They don't have a problem with people making money off their work--or making money themselves.

The free software foundation only has a problem with people screwing others, for any reason money making included. The Free Software Foundation stands against you using your own work and that of others to extract things from people. The kinds of things extracted for the use of software currently includes everything from money to limits on what you will tell others and who you might work for. The most repulsive thing non free software vendors do is attempt to keep others from understanding how to fix their own problems so that they can extract money perpetually for a problem solved by others long ago. Let's have a look at some of the good words on the above mentioned page:

However, certain kinds of rules about the manner of distributing free software are acceptable, when they don't conflict with the central freedoms. For example, copyleft (very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program, you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms. This rule does not conflict with the central freedoms; rather it protects them.

Thus, you may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies. ``Free software'' does not mean ``non-commercial''. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.

In short, people are encouraged to work together to solve common problems like free men will. Using free software will no more force a company to give away confidential information than using manila folders requires people to divulge the contents of their files. The only thing you are really encouraged to do is share your impovements to other people's work, much as lawyers, doctors, engineers and all other professionals have always done.

Wow, nothing really radical there is there? Really when you think about it the restrictions created by modern publishers, especially comercial software vendors, represent the really radical departure from social norms. Telling people that they can't share their expertise in a field? That you can't share your books or even sing a song with your friends that was originally dedicated to your cause? It all starts with a non disclosure agreement, an end user license agreement, a 100 year long copyright and that little "submit" button.

The best thing I can recomend for him is to spend some more time at the Free Software Society's web site, but especially this page. That "promise to give away innovations" is indeed kind of silly. The use of one idea to extract or deny others is the key sin the Free Software Foundation is fighting against. The notion that the free software people have a problem with anyone making money is also misinformed. The FSF site is a cure for the ignorance behind statments like this, which blemish an otherwise fine article:

Open-source software programmers say they're different from Stallman in one major way: They don't have a problem with people making money off their work--or making money themselves.

The free software foundation only has a problem with people screwing others, for any reason money making included. The Free Software Foundation stands against you using your own work and that of others to extract things from people. The kinds of things extracted for the use of software currently includes everything from money to limits on what you will tell others and who you might work for. The most repulsive thing non free software vendors do is attempt to keep others from understanding how to fix their own problems so that they can extract money perpetually for a problem solved by others long ago. Let's have a look at some of the good words on the above mentioned page:

However, certain kinds of rules about the manner of distributing free software are acceptable, when they don't conflict with the central freedoms. For example, copyleft (very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program, you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms. This rule does not conflict with the central freedoms; rather it protects them.

Thus, you may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies. ``Free software'' does not mean ``non-commercial''. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.

In short, people are encouraged to work together to solve common problems like free men will. Using free software will no more force a company to give away confidential information than using manila folders requires people to divulge the contents of their files. The only thing you are really encouraged to do is share your impovements to other people's work, much as lawyers, doctors, engineers and all other professionals have always done.

Wow, nothing really radical there is there? Really when you think about it the restrictions created by modern publishers, especially comercial software vendors, represent the really radical departure from social norms. Telling people that they can't share their expertise in a field? That you can't share your books or even sing a song with your friends that was originally dedicated to your cause? It all starts with a non disclosure agreement, an end user license agreement, a 100 year long copyright and that little "submit" button.

Acording to Prof. Eben Moglen (general counsel for the Free Software Foundation) in this Slashdot interview:

"Free software should be freely modifiable and redistributable by its users. Of course, any code once modified may practice claims of a patent about which the modifying user is uninformed. So anyone distributing free software is unable to assure his users that each and every modification they may want to make is noninfringing. But when someone distributes apparently-free software under actual but undisclosed legal restrictions preventing modification or redistribution, the software is not really free. GPL tries to deal with this problem through section 7, which says that if code you are distributing is actually under restriction that is incompatible with the terms of the GPL, you can't distribute under GPL at all. So if you have accepted a patent license that prohibits you from reusing some of your code, or code you have received from others, in different contexts, GPL section 7 means that you cannot distribute under GPL. " (Emphasis and URL added)

Incidentally, you may wish to check out the FSF's GPL FAQ. It helps to clear up these misconceptions.

Have you ever noticed that GNU goat looks like Osama Bin Laden?

See for yourself

The GPL is so poorly written as to be nigh unto unintelligible, but nearabouts as I can tell, it concerns the distribution of SOFTWARE that exists independently of hardware [MSFT CD-ROMs, RHAT CD-ROMs, NOVL CD-ROMs, ORCL CD-ROMs]. The firmware that lives in a cellphone is nothing but electrical representations of 0's and 1's; it's not at all clear to me that the GPL covers electricity.

ordering manuals, t-shirts and especially CD-ROMs from the FSF. Most of the FSF's funds come from selling copies of things that everyone is free to copy.

ordering manuals, t-shirts and especially CD-ROMs from the FSF. Most of the FSF's funds come from selling copies of things that everyone is free to copy.

The FSF has an extensive article about what you can do to help the GNU Project, along with a section specifically mentioning the FSF.

This articel stumbles at the gate:

'Public Domain (AKA "freeware")- help yourself, there are no strings attached;'

According to convention, experience, common sense and the FSF Free Software Definition, freeware is not public domain software. It is propriestary software distributed as gratis binaries without source.

Like others have said.. violations of the GPL have to be fought. If you fail to enforce the license then it soon becomes meaningless and you loose the ability to enforce it later.

Having an enforceable GPL is important. Many of the programmers who choose to use the GPL license or work on GPL licensed code would be lost if GPL turned out to be un-enforceable.

Personally I have no interest in spending a few hundred hours working with a group of programmers writing code only to see a company come around, grab it up, change a few things and perhaps change the output to a proprietary format. Then they start selling it and it becomes very popular but they keep the code to themselves.

Wouldn't that be great? Now not only are they making money off our original effort, but we can't even take advantage of the new product without paying. Heck, we can't even make our original program use their file format without risking breaking the law (DMCA.)

So even though we did nearly all the work we all would have to pay someone else in order to be compatible with the version that "everybody else" was using.

With GPL (if it is enforceable,) the company would have to release their changes back as GPL as well. Now we don't have to worry about suddenly needing to pay for what we worked on and gave to the world as free.

As far as wasting time fighting instead of coding goes... that is exactly why a lot of GPL programmers have assigned copyright of their software to third parties like the FSF.

And Bill Gates stated that MS EULAs don't endanger privacy.

The text of the license is the only thing with a legal standing. Anything else you hear is just so much hot air. A statement by RMS might suffice as a promise that the FSF won't pursue you for violating the GPL in that manner. But it has no bearing on how Linus Torvalds or AOL-Time Warner might react.

And without seeing a quote, I'd doubt that RMS would've said something quite like that. (Especially considering that an "Organization" can be construed to be a huge group, like "US Taxpayers")

Maybe you're talking about this GPL FAQ. It says that you're not required to release modified versions. (The fact that you've modifed GPL code doesn't force you to either send patches upstream, or post it on your own website). But it doesn't let you forbid release either. That FAQ ends with "but the decision of whether to release it is up to you". Who is "you" in that sentence? It's not the manager or board of directors- it's every single person with a copy of the software. (Another FAQ makes this more explicit)

In any organization of nontrivial size, you'll eventually find someone who both wants to publish the code, and doesn't care about keeping his job (or is secretive enough to be anonymous).