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Cross-reference the right to read by the FSF.

Some time ago in the UK, the government planned to introduce a levy on the price of blank audio tapes, on the grounds that it would help make good the shortfall on revenues caused by people taping music. As far as I am aware, there is no similar tax on blank CD media, even though it is obviously used for pirating music, and not for making software distributions, perfectly legal linux CD's, or exchanging the fruits of your labors with others.

There was an article in 1992 in Wired magazine, as annotated by Richard Stallman here which looks at a similar tax on digital media.

Who has the right to "information"?
Who should the laws protect, the producer(publisher) or the user ?
Everyone has an opinion. Check out the Free software foundation for some very good bedtime reading on these important questions.

I enjoy the irony that a book explaining and extolling the virtues of Open Source and free software must be purchased.

So, is there an open source version of this book, available for free download?

You seem to be confusing "open source" with "free". Open source does not necessarily mean free. Please review the difference between free and open source.

--

What about RCS? SCCS? Aegis?

If that doesn't work for you, follow some links. Go to freshmeat. Do a search.

Heck, there are whole books written about this stuff, even by O'Reilly!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Here's my friggin license!

http://www.fsf.org/software/hurd/debian-gnu-hurd.h tml

Free software is both infinitly configurable and arguably best. Anyone can take a plausable solution and make it into exactly what they or their organization needs. The result is better for everyone and forms the next plausible solution.

Companies that make it are going to be the ones that provide a real service using the best available software. That software will be increasingly Free . They will provide the funds for others to continue writing software. Part of that service might even be a shrink wraped box with paper documents, as a "reasonable" price.

Those who do not study Stallman are compelled to hear him repeat himself.
-- with apologies to Georges Santayana

If you don't want to listen to a recitation of dogma, you shouldn't ask the High Priest of Free Software how to make non-disclosure work with Open Source. You wouldn't ask the Pope how to reconcile Baal-worship with Catharism, would you? Tyberghein made the mistake of soliciting Stallman's opinion on the best way to comprimise with Evil without turning his back on Heresy. Of course Stallman responded by refusing to offer advice until Tyberghein renounced the Open Source heresy, and then replied with a sermon on Freedom.

Until people get it straight in their heads that Free Software is a religion, Stallman will always seem weird, dogmatic, and holier-than-thou. Once they do understand, "weird" will become "sacred", "dogmatic" a compliment, and "holier-than-thou" simply "holy". Likewise his antipathy for the schismatic Open Source Movement and it's Martin Luther, Eric Raymond. It will also then make perfect sense that Stallman is regarded by himself and his followers as the ultimate arbiter of Free-ness, and that he takes the clerical position of accepting donations while advocating poverty as a virtue. Like most religions, Free Software even has its lay evangelical arm, the League for Programming Freedom.

Tech Square is Stallman's cloister. Those who expect him to recognize terms like "console" and "PS2" ignore the Christian zealot's desire to be "in the world, but not of the world". Stallman knows about that which impinges upon his ascetic life as the chief prophet of software freedom. Like the most fervent and true practicers of monasticism, he is blissfully unaware of all else, and appears out of touch with reality to the world at large.

There's nothing wrong with religion. Like everything else, it has its place. And like most organized religions, Free Software is usually not well-understood outside of the priesthood. The lay preachers (those who write software but get paid to do so) tend to honor and in some cases revere the priests, but also tend to hold forth on scripture incorrectly. The Christian Bible is so full of contradictions and passages open to interpretation that the Roman Catholic church used to forbid its study outside the priesthood. At least Stallman asks his followers to read his works (see "What is Free Software?"), although he tends to reserve their interpretation to himself. Like most other religions in their infancy, Free Software lacks a category of simple adherents - the non-programmer software users in this case.

And perhaps that's the biggest reason for Stallman's hatred of Open Source. Those who are not practicing programmers are much more attracted to the heresy than to the mother church. Free Software is focused on software practitioners, and has no story to attract software users other than that they will benefit as a side-effect of having free practicioners loose in the world. Open Source focuses on the availability of quality software, and that interests users and programmers alike.

Your distinction between "Free Software" and "Open Source" makes no sense. GPLed code is "licensed by contract" (the GPL) while the Open Source Definition explicitely states that Open Sourec is freely redistributable -- in fact, it's the first requirement.

NO! The GPL is not a contract. It is a unilateral grant of rights above and beyond what copyright law allows, and it states precisely this. If you choose not to agree to the GPL, you possess the rights you would otherwise possess under copyright law in any case. Please see section 5 of the GPL.

While Blender looks like a fine product and is provided at no cost , it is not a source code distribution and is not free . Thank you for pointing to Blender, I may download it one day.

• Selling Free Software; and
• GNU General Public License.

• Selling Free Software; and
• GNU General Public License.

• Selling Free Software; and
• GNU General Public License.

Professor Mathieu Deflem's problem is one of principle. If students bunk his class & pay up $10 to get a Kinko's copy of whatever was said in his class, that defeats the purpose of his class.

So? Sounds like Prof. Deflem needs to peek his head out of academia for a second and think about another, more important principal - free speech.

As others have noted, it would (possibly) be a different story if we were talking about audio/video recordings, but these are notes!!

Two things disturb me about this situation. First, it's a fairly classic 'slippery-slope' problem. How long will it be until non-commercial distribution of class notes are prohibited? See RMS's 'Right to Read' story for a worst-case scenario.

Second, legislation that passes in CA is often adopted throughout much of the rest of the country. Clearly, that would be a mistake with this one.

The bill is so clearly unconstitutional, I wonder that it got sponsered in the first place.

Oh... IANAL....

That didn't come out very well. Check out their explanation and see if that makes more sense.

That didn't come out very well. Check out their explanation and see if that makes more sense.

but as much as I disagree with a lot of what RMS says, The Right to Read is certainly seeming more-and-more a reality. First you can't reverse-engineer anything (DMCA), and now they're going to ration debuggers and compilers? shudder...

Take a look at Richard Stallman's 1997 text The Right to Read. Very interesting and far-sighted perspective on the things that RMS saw coming three years ago and that are becoming reality much more quickly than even the more paranoid among us had thought.
--
Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown

Another point to make in the US is why new laws are needed to "protect" computer companies when Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and others are widely known as the richest men in America, and 39 of the top 40 richest Americans under 40 are all techies. Where are all the sports stars ? Only Michael Jordan made it at number 40. Will the general public really support laws aimed at making them even more money ?

RMS is the FSF (and vice versa).

Well, at least there's a Treasurer:-) No, seriously: It's a foundation, not a membership organization. RMS is for sure the most prominent evangelist, and I think it's OK to let charismatic people like him to the PR job, so that others can do the important job to keep the (GNU) wheels turning. Anyway, it was a kind of rhetoric, "RMS equals FSF" might hold quite long, but there are in fact others, too.

RMS is the FSF (and vice versa).

Well, at least there's a Treasurer:-) No, seriously: It's a foundation, not a membership organization. RMS is for sure the most prominent evangelist, and I think it's OK to let charismatic people like him to the PR job, so that others can do the important job to keep the (GNU) wheels turning. Anyway, it was a kind of rhetoric, "RMS equals FSF" might hold quite long, but there are in fact others, too.

Terms and Conditions for Copying, Distributing and Modifying, 2.a:

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.

You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.

What both KDE and GNOME want to do is write code, unincumbered by any legal issues. The problem is these pesky legal issues can become very important at times. RMS, while maybe being a little extreme, understands this better than any of us. The most important thing is that now, KDE and GNOME are on equal footing, with their underlying widget libraries equal. Now it truly is about who has the best code, not who has the best licence.

And yet, it isn't.

This is a cop-out, IMHO because RMS saw that if he pushed the issue, more people would realize that X11 is more free than the GPL.

And, while it is true that the X11 license is "more free" than the GPL in that it has fewer restrictions, the issue is whether those freedoms are good. There are, after all, bad freedoms (such as the freedom to steal). Some might say that the freedom to steal is bad because it is incompatible with the freedom to own. RMS says the freedom to create proprietary software is bad because it is incompatible with the freedom (of the user) to control his software. Whether or not this is the case I would rather not address here -- but certainly the GPL cannot be dismissed through such an overly-simplistic application of the concept of freedom as "less restrictions == better". It is not incompatible with freedom to restrict a person's ability to infringe upon others' freedom (whether or not it is, in the case of the GPL, a good thing).

Maybe not straight out, but he sure seems to imply it often enough.

Stunts like demoting the LGPL to "lesser" status certainly don't argue against this perception.

There are only 3 categories GPL-compatible, but non-GPL software: public domain, strict GPL subsets, and software with a specific GPL-surrender (a clause that says "you can also just forget any other terms and distribute it under the GPL"). Anything else contains terms which are incompatible with the GPL.

Oh right. I forgot about what we were originally discussing -- whether RMS considered Xfree to be non-free. What were you saying about that?

And yet, it isn't.

This is a cop-out, IMHO because RMS saw that if he pushed the issue, more people would realize that X11 is more free than the GPL.

And, while it is true that the X11 license is "more free" than the GPL in that it has fewer restrictions, the issue is whether those freedoms are good. There are, after all, bad freedoms (such as the freedom to steal). Some might say that the freedom to steal is bad because it is incompatible with the freedom to own. RMS says the freedom to create proprietary software is bad because it is incompatible with the freedom (of the user) to control his software. Whether or not this is the case I would rather not address here -- but certainly the GPL cannot be dismissed through such an overly-simplistic application of the concept of freedom as "less restrictions == better". It is not incompatible with freedom to restrict a person's ability to infringe upon others' freedom (whether or not it is, in the case of the GPL, a good thing).

Maybe not straight out, but he sure seems to imply it often enough.

Stunts like demoting the LGPL to "lesser" status certainly don't argue against this perception.

There are only 3 categories GPL-compatible, but non-GPL software: public domain, strict GPL subsets, and software with a specific GPL-surrender (a clause that says "you can also just forget any other terms and distribute it under the GPL"). Anything else contains terms which are incompatible with the GPL.

Oh right. I forgot about what we were originally discussing -- whether RMS considered Xfree to be non-free. What were you saying about that?

I don't think there are many people using nothing but GPL software. I also don't remember a top-priority effort to replace something evil and unfree like XFree86 (gasp! people are allowed to reuse the code without being required to distribute the source, it's not free!).

" The X11 License
This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL. XFree86 uses the same license."

"if you want to release a program as non-copylefted free software, [...] please copy the license from XFree86."

I don't think there are many people using nothing but GPL software. I also don't remember a top-priority effort to replace something evil and unfree like XFree86 (gasp! people are allowed to reuse the code without being required to distribute the source, it's not free!).

" The X11 License
This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL. XFree86 uses the same license."

"if you want to release a program as non-copylefted free software, [...] please copy the license from XFree86."

I don't think there are many people using nothing but GPL software. I also don't remember a top-priority effort to replace something evil and unfree like XFree86 (gasp! people are allowed to reuse the code without being required to distribute the source, it's not free!).

" The X11 License
This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL. XFree86 uses the same license."

"if you want to release a program as non-copylefted free software, [...] please copy the license from XFree86."

I don't think there are many people using nothing but GPL software. I also don't remember a top-priority effort to replace something evil and unfree like XFree86 (gasp! people are allowed to reuse the code without being required to distribute the source, it's not free!).

" The X11 License
This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL. XFree86 uses the same license."

"if you want to release a program as non-copylefted free software, [...] please copy the license from XFree86."

First of all, he makes it look he along with his cronies decided to develop Gnome, then he insists on calling it GNU Gnome - everything is not GNU !
Its NOT GNU Linux and its NOT GNU Gnome !

Gnome is very much a GNU project - obviously you are just trolling. Check the list of GNU software, and also check the copyright of the GNU source code (listed on top of every file).

And how is that different from anyone that you might know? --sugarman--

Isn't there a tradition of keeping quiet about a patent to let your "victims" build a greater dependence on the technology before springing the royalty trap?

Indeed. Witness the huge flap when Unisys suddenly decided to enforce their patent on the GIF algorithm. Unisys' official story on the subject was that although in theory, the GIF format should have been free, it contained a patent-protected algorithm (LZW compression), and their failing to charge license fees over it was "an oversight." It wouldn't surprise me if this was actually true (as opposed to a convenient fabrication), but it still sucked.

On the other hand, the Unisys GIF thing at least had the effect of forcing some people towards PNG, which is a good thing. With apologies to Princess Leia, "The harder you grip your intellectual property, the more clients will slip through your fingers."

Actually, no need to do the work again :). The FSF has such a list (with some comments). Just go to http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/license-list.html for the information. It lists both compatible and incompatible licenses and non-free (FSF style) licenses. The number of licenses and the ways they are and arent compatible is rather amazing...

Perhaps you're forgetting that RMS wrote the GPL?

He couldn't quite manage to argue that the QPL was non-free, but he did manage to argue that it was incompatible with the GPL (I doubt this claim would stand up in court)

See this site on this very topic.

Now he takes the psoition that, even when the QPL is replaced by the GPL, the fact that you ever tried to link against the QPL irrevocably forfeits your rights to release the software under the GPL.

No, he's saying that they couldn't borrow code from other GPL applications without explicit permission into KDE (which depends on a incompatible license).

He knows what he's talking about.

From Why Software Should Be Free, by RMS:

Those who benefit from the current system where programs are property offer two arguments in support of their claims to own programs: the emotional argument and the economic argument.

The emotional argument goes like this: ``I put my sweat, my heart, my soul into this program. It comes from me, it's mine!''

This argument does not require serious refutation. The feeling of attachment is one that programmers can cultivate when it suits them; it is not inevitable. Consider, for example, how willingly the same programmers usually sign over all rights to a large corporation for a salary; the emotional attachment mysteriously vanishes. By contrast, consider the great artists and artisans of medieval times, who didn't even sign their names to their work. To them, the name of the artist was not important. What mattered was that the work was done--and the purpose it would serve. This view prevailed for hundreds of years.

a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work [...] "effectively" might be interpreted in such a way that rot13, etc. would be interpreted out of the picture

There seems to be an even deeper ambiguity than some unknown criterion for how strong the protection has to be. Does "effectively controls access" mean that it is an effective means of controlling access, or just that its effect is to control access?

If it's the former, then there are the questions the rest of you have been talking about, namely, "How 'effective' does it have to be?" -- and, strictly speaking, as soon as it has been cracked, doesn't it by definition cease to be "effective"?

But if it's the latter, which seems to me to make more sense semantically, "effectively" doesn't mean that it is actually effective, but only that that is what its effect is, i.e., that that is what it is intended to do. The phrase simply refers to any copy-protection or access-control mechanism (the equivocation between copy-protection and access-control, by the way, is an even bigger problem, since that's the part that ignores fair use). So, yes, I guess rot13 (or XOR, for binary data) would qualify, since simply applying it to a standard file format would cause the files to appear unreadable to a standard application and a naive user.

For a similar example, have you ever seen a multimedia CD-ROM on which the media files were in a folder with a "hidden" flag set, so it wouldn't appear on the desktop? To get at the files, you have to copy the entire disk to your hard drive (where the directories are writable), then use a low-level filesystem editor to unset the flag. Now I think that would count as "effectively" controlling access, since to a naive user, or a knowledgable but unmotivated one, its effect is to make it so the content can only be accessed through the accompanying application, even though it is trivial for a knowledgable and determined user to get around it. I don't think that this would make low-level filesystem editors illegal ( at least I hope not ) because this is clearly not their primary function, but perhaps public posting of the technique would be, (uh-oh!) since it makes it possible for people who already have the necessary tools but don't know how to do it. This could be another interesting case, since the circumvention does not require any specific tools, but simply a bit of knowledge.


David Gould

It seems to me that what we need is a new boiler-plate agreement for stuff like this... just like the GPL and BSD licenses are set up to easilly protect free software.

I think you can not lump the GPL and the BSD license together when it comes to 'protect(ing) free software'. The BSD license does not offer any protection against what 'Escient' (who the hell makes up these moronic names for these companies?) has done with CDDB. It does not offer the guarantee that something which is free today will also be free tomorrow, since it is ineffective against the 'embrace and extend' tactics now used by 'Escient'. The GPL does offer this protection, so if you really value freedom you are better off using the GPL (for software) and FDL (for documentation). For more info on all those licenses which are used and abused, refer to the Various Licenses and Comments... page on the Free Software Foundation website.

It seems to me that what we need is a new boiler-plate agreement for stuff like this... just like the GPL and BSD licenses are set up to easilly protect free software.

I think you can not lump the GPL and the BSD license together when it comes to 'protect(ing) free software'. The BSD license does not offer any protection against what 'Escient' (who the hell makes up these moronic names for these companies?) has done with CDDB. It does not offer the guarantee that something which is free today will also be free tomorrow, since it is ineffective against the 'embrace and extend' tactics now used by 'Escient'. The GPL does offer this protection, so if you really value freedom you are better off using the GPL (for software) and FDL (for documentation). For more info on all those licenses which are used and abused, refer to the Various Licenses and Comments... page on the Free Software Foundation website.

has standards, here and here. Most of the Open Source projects have similar directives.

has standards, here and here. Most of the Open Source projects have similar directives.

• what about the developers that wrote the original version that you added custom hacks to? They did 99.99% of the work, but you get all of the payment?
  
• Who will your custom changes be useful to? Your employer, and maybe their competitors, but no-one else. To me, that's a rather empty form of open-source. "Let's give something useless back to the community!"
  
• Can't you write the code, and then not release it as open-source? Then you don't risk your competitors learning anything from it. This is within the restrictions of the GPL too, since you're not distributing the code. Less risk is a benefit, so its to your advantage to not release the code.
  
• This one's personal: I don't like writing custom hacks. I want to write real software from the ground-up.

In my experience, people generally get what they want if they try hard.

That's a cop-out. You seem to want to convince me, yet you haven't. Should I then conclude that you're not trying hard? The fact is, I am trying hard, but the real world is getting in the way. We live in a capitalist world. For professional developers to work on open source full-time, they need to be compensated financially, or it'll always just be part-time hacking.

Burying yourself in pessimism is self-defeating, and it sounds as if that's what you may be doing.

I wasn't so pessimistic before. But after a lot of thinking, and trying to get information from various people in the open source community, it's driven me to this. Every time I ask about how to make money as a developer of open source I'm either told about business models that have huge gaping flaws, told that I should make all sorts of sacrifices or I get flamed because "money isn't the only reward". Tell me about some business models that work where I can get paid the same as proprietary software developers, and which don't have gaping holes, and I'll stop complaining.

I think it would be of great benefit to the open source community (and society as a whole) if ways were found that professional developers could work on it full-time. So far, no-one has offered any real answers though.

There need to be companies that can hire these developers. Note I said developers, not webmasters or sysadmins. For these companies to exist, there must be viable business models they can use. So far, the only really good business model I've seen for open source is "widget frosting", ie: device drivers, software in embedded devices, etc. That only scratches the surface though. There are many other types of software that can't work with that model.

Incidently, I have seen a few companies looking for actual open source developers. I have serious doubts over how long they'll last though. One of these companies iz developing an application to be released GPL, and they've openly admitted that they have no idea how they're going to make money off of it. Presumably they're going to have an upgrader service, but since the code is GPL, anyone can upgrade for free, so there goes the business plan...

I've been on the hiring side, and I saw lots of companies recruiting just last week. If you aren't getting the jobs, it's not because they aren't there.

Most of the jobs I've seen you posting were sysadmin or webmaster type jobs. Where are the jobs for actual full-time software developers?

Most companies have profit centers, which make money, and cost centers, which provide essential services to the profit centers.

Sorry, I misunderstood. I've never heard that terminology (I'm a developer, not a suit, after all...). At the company where I work, we call all of those things "cost centers", and from what I've seen they'd better all make a profit, or people start losing their jobs...

If you can save $1 from continuing overhead in a cost center, it's as good for your company as making $1 in a profit center - that's $1 they would not have had otherwise, either way.

I'm assuming you're talking about situations where you've got some developers in your IT department, and while the IT department doesn't make money, it "saves you money" by allowing you to do business more efficiently (one would hope). There are two issues I have with this. One is that there is a possibility that "the competition" might make use of the software you release. So while you're saving yourself money, you're also saving your competition money. In the capitalist world we live in, that isn't good. The other thing is: most "internal" software is so closely tied to your own systems and/or business that it would only be useful to either people in the same business (your competitors), or people interested in knowing how the internals of your company work (...your competitors). I mean, who cares if Coca Cola releases part of their supply-chain system, except possibly Pepsi?

Nobody is forcing you to give away your code, unless you consider competition a form of forcing you.

When I hear people saying that "all software should be free", "copyrights are evil", and accusations that developing proprietary software is immoral, then that sounds like the next best thing to being forced. Sure, you're not physically forcing me, you're just telling everyone I'm evil...

In Why Software Should Be Free, RMS actually says that developers who demand payment should be punished. (See the section "What Do Users Owe to Developers?") To me, demanding payment for your work is far less immoral than demanding work without payment.

BTW, one thing that's always struck me as odd: why is it possible to have software that's "free as in beer", but not "free as in speech", but it isn't possible to have software that's "free as in speech" but not "free as in beer"? The OSD, and the FSF's definition of free software both essentially state that people should be able to distribute the software free of charge, thereby making it "free beer".

Free Software is a term co-opted by the FSF free software

That term is tied to the GPL.

Open Source wants to be INCLUSIVE. BSD/X11/Artistic/insert fav licence that is open/GPL *ALL* qualify as Open Source.

Last time *I* checked the GPL != BSD != X11, so to say Free Software == Open Source is not correct.

You can pick your words and actions to be inclusive of ALL people who publish their code per the Open Source guidelines, or just limit yourself to the GPL.

1. I mentioned widget frosting. I don't want to write hardware drivers though.
   
2. How is it a benefit to the service company if the software is free? Doesn't that just make things easier for their competitors? If they close the source, only they will be paid to make improvements. As an aside, I'm not interested in doing contract work. I like to concentrate on coding, not negotiating for new "gigs".
   
3. Sounds like selling banner ads. That only works for extrememly high-traffic sites like Yahoo and popular search engines.
   
4. I could also become adept at waiting tables. By why can't I get paid for writing code, which is what I'm good at, and which is useful to others?

The real threat -- to listeners and, conceivably, democracy itself -- is the music industry's reaction to it

The record industrys attempts to solve the piracy problem won't solve anything, but they will make life awful for consumers and musicians.

I already pay a tax on the DAT tapes I use to mix down the recordings I produce. Where does this tax go? The major labels. Now DAT's aren't being used to steal from the majors - they are 99% used by home and semi-pro recording artists to record original material. Still the Big 5 record labels profit.

Now we hear about schemes to build protection into hardware devices. Well watermarks are going to be audible in some cases (despite the claims made). So now even though I buy a record legally, the sound of the recording will be compromised by the stupid protection scheme. Still - the protection scheme won't stop the pirates. Worse the devices are likely to confuse and anger consumers, and make it more expensive to master content to play on them. And expect more taxes that will be paid by the innocent, to cover the costs of pirates - with little or no money going to independant labels or independant musicians.

The problems with incompatibility with the GPL will probably be resolved in time for the release of KDE2.0 and QT2.2.

If you REALLY wonder why plain old C is the wrong language, you should read Bruce Eckels free(as in beer) book Thinking in C++ for an introduction to the advantages of OOP.

The source for POVRay is freely available, right? Then it's open source.

I don't think you're being helpful with the terminology. The term "open source", "opensource", "Open Source" or however you spell it is universally understood by slashdotters to mean that its licence complies with the Open Source definition. POV-Ray does not comply, therefore it is not open source.

Yes, POV-Ray's source is "freely available" for some definition of "freely" (that's a can of worms in itself, so let's not go too farther down that track). So is PGP's source, but you wouldn't call PGP "open". Merely being available doesn't make it open. In particular, it's not open if it discriminates between commercial and non-commercial redistribution.

If you mean to say the source is available at no cost, say that. Please don't confuse well-understood terminology by redefining it.

It IS a free software licence. Don't get me wrong, it is not the best licence by any means, but it is free.

http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/licen se-list.html

"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."

Mozilla provides a good FAQ on why things have to be the way they do (they are contracturally obligated).

http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/FAQ.html

• Don't forget that it was a driver issue (for a printer) that broke RMS' camel's back and led him to form the Free Software Foundation.
• If enough people voted with their wallets, your employer might realize there's a monetary benefit to freeing the code -- that is, if we take a stand that we won't purchase any hardware that isn't supported by free software, then there's a profit incentive for hardware manufacturers to free the drivers. Of course, realistically, they may be happy enough selling to those who don't mind non-free drivers (such as the larger market of MS Windows users).