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The FSF decided to investigate this AR9271 part. I'm not sure why.

The reason is because RYF certification is not simply done on software for a given chipset. RYF certification works by us entering into a formal agreement with a company that sells hardware. The agreement states that the company can display the RYF certification mark on all products that pass our testing and certification process so long as that company agrees to meet various requirements; we agree to do a limited amount of promotion on the product (press release, listing the product on our site, etc). In this case, the agreement is with ThinkPenguin and the product we tested and certified is the TPE-N150USB.

Over time we will certify more products and enter into agreements with more companies. I hope that people will come to trust the RYF certification mark and seek it out when looking to purchase computers and other hardware products — thus making it valuable to both the buyer and seller.

If you know a company selling devices with these other chipsets that support free firmware, or really any company selling hardware that supports 100% free software, please email us to let us know, and maybe send that company a link to FSF.org/RYF and encourage them to consider applying for certification.

The FSF decided to investigate this AR9271 part. I'm not sure why.

The reason is because RYF certification is not simply done on software for a given chipset. RYF certification works by us entering into a formal agreement with a company that sells hardware. The agreement states that the company can display the RYF certification mark on all products that pass our testing and certification process so long as that company agrees to meet various requirements; we agree to do a limited amount of promotion on the product (press release, listing the product on our site, etc). In this case, the agreement is with ThinkPenguin and the product we tested and certified is the TPE-N150USB.

Over time we will certify more products and enter into agreements with more companies. I hope that people will come to trust the RYF certification mark and seek it out when looking to purchase computers and other hardware products — thus making it valuable to both the buyer and seller.

If you know a company selling devices with these other chipsets that support free firmware, or really any company selling hardware that supports 100% free software, please email us to let us know, and maybe send that company a link to FSF.org/RYF and encourage them to consider applying for certification.

The FSF decided to investigate this AR9271 part. I'm not sure why.

The reason is because RYF certification is not simply done on software for a given chipset. RYF certification works by us entering into a formal agreement with a company that sells hardware. The agreement states that the company can display the RYF certification mark on all products that pass our testing and certification process so long as that company agrees to meet various requirements; we agree to do a limited amount of promotion on the product (press release, listing the product on our site, etc). In this case, the agreement is with ThinkPenguin and the product we tested and certified is the TPE-N150USB.

Over time we will certify more products and enter into agreements with more companies. I hope that people will come to trust the RYF certification mark and seek it out when looking to purchase computers and other hardware products — thus making it valuable to both the buyer and seller.

If you know a company selling devices with these other chipsets that support free firmware, or really any company selling hardware that supports 100% free software, please email us to let us know, and maybe send that company a link to FSF.org/RYF and encourage them to consider applying for certification.

Sure, there's a point to buying quality hardware, but at the same time, why is buying a $54 dongle and keeping it for a long time better than buying a $20 one today and buying an improved one for $20 sometime in the future.

Primarily because doing so sends a clear signal to suppliers that we ARE willing to pay extra to get something done right.

Secondarily because buying the "improved one" should be done on my timescale and for my reasons, not forced because I have a piece of junk that wont work properly.

This isn't 2004, you really don't have to search for laptops/wireless dongles that support Linux, its a rarity if they don't support Linux.

To the contrary, although it is not 2004 and some things have improved, I still count one single dongle that actually supports GNU/Linux properly. One.

Supporting one or many binary distributions of GNU/Linux does not constitute proper support. Meeting the criteria for this particular certification does.

Windows RT is worse than Windows 8 because it doesn't give its users the freedom to boot another OS, or control the computer at its very lowest level. Sure, maybe most users don't care, but they should. If tech-savvy users boycott the Surface RT, maybe users will as well.

I can't yet see any reason for not allowing users to control their own device at its lowest level. Maybe an "unlock" option like a few Android phones do would prevent users from making unwise decisions.

I feel like I had to say something, because many of the comments here are aimed at the technical qualities of the Windows RT/iPad/other proprietary OS. This is missing the point! If people aren't adopting Windows RT at the moment, let's tell them why they should avoid it forever.

Also, I believe the FSF's petition to stop Restricted Boot is still open. Please take a moment to sign it if you have the time - it's getting close to 50,000 signatures.

-- some crazy free software user.

It is actually the VLC author who decided to pull the software because he only wanted to comply in one specific way to the GPL

Incorrect. Remi Denis-Courmon is one of the VLC developers, but he told Apple he would be fine with them distributing VLC as long as they complied with GPL. He gave them a choice, he didn't just say "remove the app."

Instead of being a zealot fuck he could've just used another way, and got his software on there, but he has no respect for his users.

It's because he has respect for his users that he insisted on compliance to protect their rights under GPL. If you let Apple get away with violation, the door is open to anyone else who wants to distribute VLC while ignoring the license conditions. The problem with GPL2 software on the App Store is the TOS make you forfeit your redistribution rights under GPL in order to download the software.

As another poster pointed out, App Store binaries are "Tivoized" and can't run on your iDevice without a digital signature. That means a GPL2 app can be sold on the App Store (because it has no guarantee that the binary being distributed will run on any particular platform). If it's GPL3, it's incompatible with the App Store TOS.

Incidentally Firefox is not licensed under GPL.

See: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/why-free-software-and-apples-iphone-dont-mix

The Free Software Foundation campaign about this all the time, and have for some time now. They do have the organisational structure to do this.

But nobody listens, because they also care about linux and free software in general, and that's eww hairy nerds, don't take my capitalism! Maybe if angry gamers would join up, they would get the manpower to actually get heard.

they're much more likely to consider it than if a bunch of twattish neckbeards who preface their demands to Apple with, "I'm not an Apple customer, I hate you, and I will NEVER be your customer, but here's how to run your business:"

You are wrong. FSF told Apple they would "be happy to see Apple distribute these programs under the GPL's terms." Your talent for hyperbole is strong, and nearly matched by your denial over your bias. It's very amusing.

Why the fuck would Apple spend time designing a 2-button mouse when you can trivially buy one yourself? They built in support for a 2-button mouse, and said, "If you want one, go get one."

That's accurate but in no way addresses my point about Apple's attitude toward customer demand. In fact, it reinforces it.

Look, Apple has long had a reputation for arrogance and self-aggrandizing marketing. That is nothing new. Read What's a Megaflop? for an example. In this instance, we see Steve Jobs exhibit:

1) arrogance regarding Apple's quality ("You're going to have to wait a long time to find something better than the Mac!")

2) cluelessness about customer needs ("What's a megaflop?")

3) dishonesty and bluster ("Oh, we believe in that, too. Apple will have an affordable 3M machine before anyone else.")

Sorry, but Apple has always had a practice of introducing products they think are great, and can't understand why anyone would disagree. Their dismissiveness toward customers was arrogant, and of developers was foolhardy. And it almost killed them in the '90s, when they got a thorough pasting in the market.

VLC was pulled because one contributor among hundreds decided to insist that Apple respect the terms of GPL and filed a complaint as partial copyright holder.

There, FTFY.

All Apple had to do was allow an exception to their TOS for GPL'd software, and everything would have been cool. There's nothing in the GPL that keeps Apple from distributing. It's Apple who were being dicks.

Ubuntu is evil! Richard Stallman says so!!

No Richard Stallman says this http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do which is about the intrusive nature of an opt-out system on them in which local system search terms are sent to Amazon.

Quit with the hyperbole already. It is what it is.

High Priority Free Software Projects

There are tons of options. You are so full of shit: http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Category/Interface/window-manager

The FSF says the licenses are incompatible and any GPL apps in the app store are in violation:

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement

So instead of WINE the environment emulator, the article is talking about WINE's less talked about feature, WinAPI emulation via a shared library (not unlike nt2unix, windu or Willows Twin).

I've actually used products like this before. It isn't much different than using libC instead of the native OS API. It makes porting from Windows to Unix so much easier. The only performance cost is the thunk to the emulated API. But if you want to port your Windows app to a big iron server (POWER or Sparc), it is the way to go.

Direct link to the petition / statement referred to in the summary: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement/

Only takes a few seconds to sign it!

They seem to be more focused on the DRM aspect in your link, and again here. What I'm saying is that this campaign against one single implementation of a locked bootloader means absolutely nothing if the leader in the marketplace has sold 100 millino locked down units and you've done nothing to stop that. If the FSF succeeds with their campaign, most tablets sold will *still* be locked down. What will they gain by this?

Think of it like a boss battle, where the boss is supported by many little nuisance helpers. Sure you can pick off the helpers, but when they're all dead the boss is still there.

FSF did complain about iPad, but it seems they were focused on the DRM aspect of the store. Did they also start a campaign about the locked bootloader? I'm just looking at the practicality of their campaign... if they were really concerned about the practice, perhaps they should have started this campaign before Apple sold 100 million locked down iPads, and turned locking down tablets into an industry standard. Microsoft has carte blanche to lock down Windows RT because they can point any government agency to Apple and say "They're the market leaders in this space and they lock down their hardware."

The "Apple does it too" line doesn't nullify what MS is doing, but it does make stopping their efforts much more difficult for FSF.

The FSF has been knocking Apple over iOS since its release. http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/why-free-software-and-apples-iphone-dont-mix

Correction, I meant to link Support the FSF: Help us stop Restricted Boot

This post is a little misleading. We think Secure Boot is OK so long as computer makers implement it in a way that it still allows a user to control his or her own computer. What we don't want computer makers to do is implement UEFI in such a way that a user is unable to sign their own software (e.g. bootloader) AND they are unable to turn Secure Boot off -- we call such an implementation Restricted Boot (because we want to emphasize that it instead of providing security, it exists to restrict a user from controlling his or her own device). We hope that computer makers will choose to implement UEFI in a way that truly does provide security and control, and many are implementing Secure Boot in this way.

Joshua Gay
Licensing & Compliance Manager
Free Software Foundation

Speaking of better products, see whether you can read this until the end without laughing out loud. Personally, I broke at the point where they compared FSF membership card to a $50 iTunes card. I mean, seriously?

FSF is happy with binary blobs as long as they are burned into a ROM.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/task2-openmoko
The openmoko did not see any benefit from the course of action, and so kept the blob on the filesystem in the hope that one day it can be replaced.

(Also i have huge respect and am very grateful for the great code that has come from the GNU project)

You can publish VLC on the App store yourself as long as you also distribute the source as it is GPLv2 which doesnt' do any silly things that prevent it from being put there.

Wrong.

Just call rms to release all its fury. Jokes aside, I suppose you can request help from the Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org/ Clear GPL violations, even this relatively small ones, should not be tolerated.

Well, since Micro$oft requires that any Windoze 8 certified computers must use secure boot, it's very likely you'll get to enjoy this bullshit as well.

Read all about it: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot

Although GNU and the FSF's views are often thought to be exactly the same as yours, they are not. GNU and the FSF are many other people and although they overall have the same aims, individuals associated to each organisation may deviate slightly from your views.

The FSF right now is pretty indepenent from you. John Sullivan is actively leading it, but there are other very public members of the FSF. It has become independent from you, even if you're still the president of the FSF. Unlike its beginnings, the FSF is also no longer primarily concerned with creating free software, but rather it is now involved in campaigning for free software. Social activists mostly aligned with your views have replaced the hacker majority in the FSF.

GNU has no such clear independence. You have the final say on aything that happens in GNU, such as for example usinng bzr as a DVCS for Emacs, a choice of dubious tactical advantage that has generated much discontent. You have nevertheless vetoed any dissent on this topic. Your health is apparently deteriorating, and I hesitate to think what will become of GNU when you die.

Is there any clear path for the future governance of GNU you in the same way that the FSF has done this?

http://shop.fsf.org/product/book_bundle/

I saw this the other day, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a DRM-free 3D printer. http://www.fsf.org/news/hardware-certification-aleph-objects-lulzbot-3d-printer

pulled an iPhone out of his pocket

He wasn't homeless, that was RMS

Whatever RMS that might have been, it wasn't Richard M. Stallman. He wouldn't be caught dead carrying a defective-by-design iToy. See 5 reasons why iPhone poops.

From 10 years ago: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html#what_have_funding_policies_in_automotive_intelligence_wrought

Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what developers carry in their heads).

We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be "stewards" of a larger free and open community development process?

Open source software is typically eventually of much higher quality ( http://www.fsf.org/software/reliability.html )
and reliability because more eyes look over the code for problems and more voices contribute to adding innovative solutions. About 35,000 Americans are killed every year in driving fatalities, and hundreds of thousands more are seriously injured. Should the software that keeps people safe on roads, and which has already been created primarily with public funds, not also be kept under continuous public scrutiny?

Without concerted action, such software will likely be kept proprietary because that will be more profitable sooner to the people who get in early, and will fit into conventional expectations of business as usual. It will likely end up being available for inspection and testing at best to a few government employees under non-disclosure agreements. We are talking about an entire publicly funded infrastructure about to disappear from the public radar screen. There is something deeply wrong here.

And while it is true many planes like the 757 can fly themselves already for most of their journey, and their software is probably mostly proprietary, the software involved in driving is potentially far more complex as it requires visual recognition of cues in a more complex environment full of many more unpredictable agents operating on much faster timescales. Also, automotive intelligence will touch all of our lives on a daily basis, where as aircraft intelligence can be generally avoided in daily life.

Decisions on how this public intellectual property related to automotive intelligence will be handled will affect the health and safety of every American and later everyone in any developed country. Either way, the automotive software engineers and their employers will do well financially (for example, one might still buy a Volvo because their software engineers are better and they do more thorough testing of configurations). But which way will the public be better off:
* totally dependent on proprietary intelligences under the hoods of their cars which they have no way of understanding, or instead
* with ways to verify what those intelligences do, understand how they operate, and make contributions when they can so such automotive intelligences serve humane purposes better?

If, for ex

See a reminder of the role of free software in education. You can focus your donation on a particular concern, too.

We must be looking at different logos. This looks okay to me:

https://static.fsf.org/dbd/DRM-free/DRM-free.png

The app stores are fundamentally incompatible with the GPL. You may remember how VLC for iOS was pulled from the app store last year for license reasons.

Because it's a horrible company. Try reading this http://web.archive.org/web/20110519051938/http://msversus.org/

And that archive doesn't contain newer crimes such as ooxml and uefi. You can read about those here, respectively http://www.noooxml.org/ and http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/

FUCK MICRO$OFT!

RMS seems to be embracing a self-contradictory position.

He's all for ignoring the unjust copyright laws when they don't suit his position.

But the FSF goes after people for violation of their license which is based on the same unjust copyright laws.

http://www.fsf.org/news/2008-12-cisco-suit/

Feel free to read this answer from rms to Pirate Party proposal.

Mark Shuttleworth is not a stupid guy, and it seems likely that he is engaging in a misrepresentation rather than a misunderstanding of what he was told by the SFLC. There are a couple of points worth making in this context.

First, the SFLC does not appear to sanction Shuttleworth's interpretation of Grub2 and its implications for UEFI. The SFLC is a signatory of the FSF's statement on UEFI, "Stand up for your freedom to install free software." It has also called out Microsoft's, er, flexible attitude toward its statements and representations about UEFI in the ARM context.

Second, Ubuntu has often shown this inclination to make a "separate peace" with Microsoft and the OEMs without really helping the larger community. The certified hardware deals with Dell and others don't really guarantee a system that will run any distro well without the help of binary blob drivers, and if that's not the point of the certification process, I'm not sure what is--other than to gain some positive cred and some market share in the corporate IT world.

Third, the scenario Shuttleworth is purportedly so worried about--an OEM "screwing up" and not shipping a PC in custom mode, making it impossible to replace its bootloader--is a pretty bad one to have to worry about in the first place. It sounds more like making a deal with a hostage taker than making a deal with the FSF does, because although the FSF does try to be litigious about its copyright, at least you know what its red lines are. Microsoft, as is shown by what they're doing with UEFI in the ARM space, is playing games here, trying to stay one step ahead of antitrust litigation in the Wintel world but no farther.

Sure, it would need to be finalized in a legal document, but the first draft can look something like this:

Canonical: Howdy, Partner. When we work together to bring a computer to market running Ubuntu and GPLv3'd GRUB, can you make sure that the end-user is able to install their own signing keys so they can install modified versions of GRUB, per the licensing terms?

Partner: Okay, how would we do that? I mean, how can we make sure that we meet the terms of the license?

C: It's not that difficult. Basically y'all just need to make sure that the end-user can change the set of signing keys listed in the firmware. The Free Software Foundation wrote a whitepaper about it. You can also contact them via email if you have any questions!

P: Wow. That's really difficult to understand, too bad we don't have any engineers on staff who can figure....awww... I'm just kidding with you, of course we have skilled engineers and lawyers on staff. We even have people who know how to write emails. We should be all set!

C: Awesome, Partner. Before you actually ship hardware with an Ubuntu-Certified sticker on it, why don't you send one of the pieces of hardware to us so that we can manually test to make sure that end users can install their own signing keys. We'll use my son jimmy, 'cause we want to make sure it's so easy a kid can do it.

P: Okay, sounds great on my end. Glad that we had this conversation. I was worried it would take all day, but it really just took 15 minutes of my time.

C: Yep. Now remember: If you do ship some hardware with GRUB installed and you make a mistake so that users can't install their own signing keys, you're going to have to make a firmware update or otherwise make this problem right. Understand?

P: Isn't that what we have to do when we break the license of any of the pieces of software that we ship on our devices?

C: Yes. But I just wanted to make sure that we stated it explictly so that you wouldn't try to push the mistake off on us.

P: Fair enough.

C: Great to talk. We'll put all of this down in the formal contract when our lawyers draw it up. Have your engineers call our engineers about any kernel bugs. We should be able to get this hardware out by Q1 of 2013. So long!

P: Bye!

---------------

I mean, seriously, what's The Big Deal here? Just make some contracts with your hardware partners and hold them to the terms of the contracts like every other business deal that has ever happened. Why does Canonical think this is so difficult?

As far as VLC is concerned, the DRM issue is mostly a red herring, unless you accept that decorating a binary with DRM is a violation of paragraph 6 of GPL v2.0. This is essentially what the GNU claimed when they had GNU Go pulled from the App Store.

According to their interpretation, distribution of a binary through the App Store compels sub-licensing as specified under paragraph 6, thus any encumbrance on someone copying/modifying/whatever an app they received from the app store, mechanical (through DRM) or legal (through the App Store Terms of Service) constitutes an imposition of "further restrictions." Their position is that the original distribution at time of purchase is governed by restrictions in the TOS, and thus taints the entire transaction, even though the source code of the distribution is publicly available and can be compiled by anyone onto any computing platform they wish, complying with whatever terms they wish.

The GNU thus attempts to thread v3.0's more hardware-demanding restrictions through the eye of the GPL v2.0 needle. My personal opinion is that a developer's compliance with paragraph 6 should be evaluated relative to the most permissive terms he offers for the source; he may offer the source or a binary through a more restrictive medium, but as long as he offers a distribution that meets the conditions of paragraph 6, he's in compliance. The GPL doesn't see it that way, however, and simply states that GPL code may not pass through any medium that imposes any restriction -- and in this way, they seem to be much more concerned with how developers money and do business than with how people acquire, use, learn from and share code.

Note also that paragraph 6 only encumbers re-distributors. Someone with original copyright on a work, like our Mr. Denis-Courmont, is not bound by it. Granted he's using GPL code in his product, thus redistributing that code, and if those developers were to register a complaint, he would be bound to respect it.

Remember to sign this important FSF petition:

https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement

Of course the panel front and center which reads:

Stand up for your freedom to install free software
!
Join 30,000 people in opposing Microsoft's Restricted Boot by signing this statement

Has nothing to do with it.

Who is John Sullivan? What "corporate" did he warn about Microsoft's propietary network security programs? Is with [sic] the FSF?

Where have you been? Sullivan's been with the FSF for about a decade.

You can go directly to http://my.fsf.org/donate/ if donate.fsf.org is blocked by your local friendly firewall. You can also use Tor to bypass blocks like these.

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-software-replacement-for-skype

Please don't quote RMS. if you have a quote from Torvalds or Perens or frankly anybody else then great, but RMS tried to claim "if you can't update its a circuit" so the man's logic isn't even consistent with itself anymore. hell if you go by that then the PS2 is FOSS friendly since you can't update it so its a circuit and if you disabled updates for the PS3 and X360 then they'd be circuits as well. The man honestly doesn't even make sense with his own logic anymore (you can see and modify JavaScript but its bad if its not GNU, but locking down a chip so it can't be updated and you can't see the code is GNU-friendly) so please don't use him to bolster an argument, as he gets older he just contradicts himself. At least Torvalds has been consistent in his views over the years.

As for TFA...what is the odds we are gonna end up with another Rambus mess all over again? Because i really don't want to go through that, the prices went all over the place and it seemed to take forever to get it all straightened out. hell this company only has 60 million in revenue a year so why don't Micron or a couple of the big boys just get together and buy the damned thing and make their patents RAND. As we saw with Rambus it would probably cheaper in the long run just to buy 'em and RAND it than it would be to pay lawyers for years worth of court dragging, if this tech is really that important frankly the big four memory makers could buy this corp with what they make in profits in the average month with plenty of change left over.

60+ floppies (check), X hand-made configuration,... Ah yes, those were the days, been there, done that as well.

Slackware is simply, as far as I am concerned, the first, the best and the only Linux I truly care about. All the rest are either boring, uninteresting, buggy or way over-the-top. Slackware always gave me this rock-solid, work-of-love, geeky feeling of goodness. And yes, with Slackware, everything works out of the box.

Keep your Ubuntu, your OpenSUSE or your Gentoo - as long as I got my Slackware CDs, I am good.

Now that my fanboi minute is over, I'd like to point something very important Pat "The Man" Volkerding said in that interview:

Right now, the big change that has me concerned about the future of not just Slackware but Linux in general is the impending implementation of Secure Boot in all Windows8 client certified hardware, and the total lockdown of ARM hardware with no option to shut this "feature" off. I'm imagining that we'll proceed forward initially requiring that Secure Boot be disabled in order to install Slackware, and was (to say the least) rather surprised that wasn't the path all the Linux distributions were taking. If that makes it impossible to dual boot without making a BIOS setting change, or leaves us without drivers because they are designed to only run against certain signed kernels then we'll have to reconsider that approach, but I can't imagine our users being happy if they suddenly found that they were prohibited from compiling their own kernels and modules. The goal here will be to maximize the end user's freedom to modify their own system, and if that means they'll need to go into the BIOS and flip a switch that doesn't seem like a high bar. Hopefully that won't evolve into needing to flash the BIOS because the switch has gone away when the next generation of machines comes out, if flashing the BIOS would even be possible. All it would take is making that a requirement for the next Windows hardware certification. I'd urge everyone to sign the Free Software Foundation's secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot petition to let the hardware manufacturers know where you stand on this issue. I'm especially disappointed to hear that the ARM based systems designed for Windows will be locked down out of the gate, but maybe it's possible that Google or some other company will come through for us.

Here is the petition in question. Go sign it.

When someone like Pat Volkerding mentions such an issue, you can be fairly sure it's an important one.

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement

Pointless? No more pointless than bitching on Slashdot, I guess.

free from restriction

free to share and copy

free to learn and adapt

free to work with other

Taken from what I wrote a decade ago: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html

What have funding policies in automotive intelligence wrought?

Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what developers carry in their heads).

We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be "stewards" of a larger free and open community development process?

Open source software is typically eventually of much higher quality
http://www.fsf.org/software/reliability.html
and reliability because more eyes look over the code for problems and more voices contribute to adding innovative solutions. About 35,000 Americans are killed every year in driving fatalities, and hundreds of thousands more are seriously injured. Should the software that keeps people safe on roads, and which has already been created primarily with public funds, not also be kept under continuous public scrutiny?

Without concerted action, such software will likely be kept proprietary because that will be more profitable sooner to the people who get in early, and will fit into conventional expectations of business as usual. It will likely end up being available for inspection and testing at best to a few government employees under non-disclosure agreements. We are talking about an entire publicly funded infrastructure about to disappear from the public radar screen. There is something deeply wrong here.

And while it is true many planes like the 757 can fly themselves already for most of their journey, and their software is probably mostly proprietary, the software involved in driving is potentially far more complex as it requires visual recognition of cues in a more complex environment full of many more unpredictable agents operating on much faster timescales. Also, automotive intelligence will touch all of our lives on a daily basis, where as aircraft intelligence can be generally avoided in daily life.

Decisions on how this public intellectual property related to automotive intelligence will be handled will affect the health and safety of every American and later everyone in any developed country. Either way, the automotive software engineers and their employers will do well financially (for example, one might still buy a Volvo because their software engineers are better and they do more thorough testing of configurations). But which way will the public be better off:
* totally dependent on proprietary intelligences under the hoods of their cars which they have no way of understanding, or instead
* with ways to verify what those intelligences do, understand how they operate, and make contributions when they can so such automotive intelligences serve humane purposes better?

If, for example, a

We shouldn't read Florian Mueller because he takes money from Oracle. OK. Does that mean that we shouldn't listen to the FSF...?

The FSF? No it doesn't mean that at all. First of all, the FSF do not portray themselves as objective, neutral observers. They are advocates for a very specific viewpoint, and they unapologetically follow that viewpoint wherever it takes them. A quick Google (heh) search of the FSF's site for references to Google shows that they are not only willing to criticise the search company and advocate for alternatives to their software, they're also willing to go to court to oppose them.

So no, your example doesn't seem to have anything at all in common with Florian Mueller's.

(It's parenthetically notable that Google doesn't attempt to hide search results that are critical of them, either. So I think the only way you could realistically make the insinuation that the FSF and Google are in bed together is to put them in a ménage à trois with The Truth.)

(I'll leave the Berkman Centre as an exercise for the reader....)