Slashdot Mirror

Ridgelift writes "California residents can help support the Free Software Foundation by donating their Microsoft vouchers to the FSF. In turn, the FSF will be able to convert the vouchers into hardware. There's more information here at the FSF website. With 1.1 billion dollars in vouchers Microsoft is forced to pay through the recent anti-trust court case, it's satisfying to see some of those fortunes being spent to help create good software for a change."

Ridgelift writes "California residents can help support the Free Software Foundation by donating their Microsoft vouchers to the FSF. In turn, the FSF will be able to convert the vouchers into hardware. There's more information here at the FSF website. With 1.1 billion dollars in vouchers Microsoft is forced to pay through the recent anti-trust court case, it's satisfying to see some of those fortunes being spent to help create good software for a change."

An anonymous reader writes "Daniel Lyons, the man you may remember for calling the FSF 'Linux's Hit Men' is now reporting that SCO is 'Holding Up Hollywood.' Their reasoning? It's because 'They're using a ton of Linux in Hollywood, so they've become a lightning rod for us,' says Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive. As usual, Groklaw provides insightful commentary concerning rehash SCO has planted to remain in the news, saying 'Maybe they should fulfill prior threats before they throw out new ones? Otherwise, it could lead some of us to doubt their sincerity.'" At least it's smarter than trying to sell a license to every home user of Linux.

Ridgelift writes "Eric S. Raymond is proposing a new logo for Hackerdom. 'The Linux folks have their penguin and the BSDers their demon. Perl's got a camel, FSF fans have their gnu and OSI's got an open-source logo. What we haven't had, historically, is an emblem that represents the entire hacker community of which all these groups are parts. This is a proposal that we adopt one - the glider pattern from the Game of Life.'"

ComaVN writes "Not a big surprise for those who have followed the recent SCO misery, but SCO is going after SGI. According to SGI, SCO intends to terminate their Unix System V license, much like they did with IBM earlier. I guess it's hard to stop once you've chosen a certain direction for your company." sheddd writes "Does this case have any merit? Joe Formage has written a good article on SCO's strange behavior." Read on below for SCO's odd tactic of attacking the GPL by belittling IBM's legal diligence in not avoiding GPL'd software, and word on why Linux users aren't being served SCO invoices.

larry2k writes "PR newswire has an open letter from SCO to IBM.

From the letter: 'SCO believes that the GPL -- created by the Free Software Foundation to supplant current U.S. copyright laws -- is a shaky foundation on which to build a legal case.'" The release is also carried by NewsForge. Among other things, SCO says "By so strongly defending the controversial GPL, IBM is also defending a questionable licensing scheme through which it can avoid providing software indemnification for its customers."

Doesn't supplant mean "replace"? That's not what the GPL does.

And if you're wondering why you have not received an invoice from SCO for any Linux-based OS you may be running, benploni writes "From Groklaw: In this Detroit News story Blake Stowell explains why no one has received an invoice: 'SCO in August said Linux users could avoid lawsuits by paying a one-time fee of $699. The fee will rise to $1,399 on Oct. 15. Since the response to its appeal was adequate, SCO didn't send bills to thousands of Linux users, company spokesman Blake Stowell said.' [emphasis added]. We all knew there was no way they'd risk actually sending out invoices, and here's the proof."

bkuhn writes "Last week's Wall Street Journal (and other news outlets) carried statements by SCO's Mark Heise challenging the "legality" of FSF's GPL. FSF has issued a response to this baseless claim." Also, mcgroarty points out that Intel and HP seem to be backing swiftly away from their sponsorship of SCO's in-progress Las Vegas conference (a EWeek article suggests that "Intel Corp. was recently billed as one of the lead sponsors of SCO's Forum 2003 conference here this week, but then suddenly disappeared from all marketing and press material for the forum. It appears that Hewlett-Packard Co. also got cold feet. As late as last week, SCO was telling attendees that HP would be giving a partner keynote at the forum on Tuesday morning. But on Sunday the schedule of events given to attendees when they registered makes no mention of an HP keynote...") M adds: Now we've got a few stories from the conference: News.com.com and Eweek. Despite some bad headline writing at News.com, SCO simply continues to employ the Chewbacca defense, showing no code to back up their claims. Amusingly, Darl McBride started his rant about copyright infringement by copying some footage from a James Bond movie. Bravo!

bkuhn writes "Last week's Wall Street Journal (and other news outlets) carried statements by SCO's Mark Heise challenging the "legality" of FSF's GPL. FSF has issued a response to this baseless claim." Also, mcgroarty points out that Intel and HP seem to be backing swiftly away from their sponsorship of SCO's in-progress Las Vegas conference (a EWeek article suggests that "Intel Corp. was recently billed as one of the lead sponsors of SCO's Forum 2003 conference here this week, but then suddenly disappeared from all marketing and press material for the forum. It appears that Hewlett-Packard Co. also got cold feet. As late as last week, SCO was telling attendees that HP would be giving a partner keynote at the forum on Tuesday morning. But on Sunday the schedule of events given to attendees when they registered makes no mention of an HP keynote...") M adds: Now we've got a few stories from the conference: News.com.com and Eweek. Despite some bad headline writing at News.com, SCO simply continues to employ the Chewbacca defense, showing no code to back up their claims. Amusingly, Darl McBride started his rant about copyright infringement by copying some footage from a James Bond movie. Bravo!

bkuhn writes "Given the recent confusion about LGPL on slashdot, and the concern it raised for those convincing corporate legal departments to adopt to Free Software, perhaps your readers might be interested in FSF's legal seminar on the GPL and related licenses. The first one is in Silicon Valley, and if it is successful, we hope to hold others in the next 8 months in New York City and Tokyo." Since the FSF and the GNU project have long created and fought for software that's shareable, Free, and Not UNIX, what's taught at these seminars will probably differ sharply from what you can hear at next Monday's SCO conference call on the "IBM lawsuit, UNIX Ownership and Copyrights."

bkuhn writes "Given the recent confusion about LGPL on slashdot, and the concern it raised for those convincing corporate legal departments to adopt to Free Software, perhaps your readers might be interested in FSF's legal seminar on the GPL and related licenses. The first one is in Silicon Valley, and if it is successful, we hope to hold others in the next 8 months in New York City and Tokyo." Since the FSF and the GNU project have long created and fought for software that's shareable, Free, and Not UNIX, what's taught at these seminars will probably differ sharply from what you can hear at next Monday's SCO conference call on the "IBM lawsuit, UNIX Ownership and Copyrights."

tomdp writes "Eben Moglen, Law professor and general counsel for the Free Software Foundation, has written a statement about SCO's lawsuit against IBM."

An anonymous reader writes "Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News reports that OpenTV is violating the GNU General Public License. He notes that the Free Software Foundation is threatening to file a lawsuit in the case. If you haven't become an associate member of the FSF yet, now would be a good time!" Note that Gillmor is reporting the FSF's claim of violation, not making it himself.

An anonymous reader writes "Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News reports that OpenTV is violating the GNU General Public License. He notes that the Free Software Foundation is threatening to file a lawsuit in the case. If you haven't become an associate member of the FSF yet, now would be a good time!" Note that Gillmor is reporting the FSF's claim of violation, not making it himself.

bcrowell asks: "Here's a moral conundrum for you. The much-hated DMCA can be a tool to enforce copyleft licenses, and in my case, it may be the only effective tool. I'm the author of some free physics textbooks (all free as in beer, some free as in speech) that are available under the GFDL and OPL copyleft licenses. I've learned that there's a guy on eBay who is selling my books on CD and violating the license. (Selling is allowed, since they're free-as-in-speech, but he's violating the license in various ways, such as not informing his buyers about the license, and selling them under a different title and using the tables of contents in his ads without showing the license or listing me as the author.) It's not just me. He's doing the same thing with other copylefted books, such as this one." The submitter is worried about the ethics behind using the recent misuses we've seen so far. Those interested in this question might also be interested in Prof. Felten's answers from his recent Slashdot interview.

"eBay has several different mechanisms for complaining about this, and I used one of them. Other people have complained too, but so far the result just seems to be that eBay deletes the listings of the items (which have already been sold). Meanwhile the guy is still violating copyleft licenses (as well as selling other copyright-violating stuff, such as screensavers containing commercial porn images).

Apparently the most effective way to deal with this on eBay is to participate in their vero program, which basically means sending the DMCA Police after the guy. For instance, if I wanted to sue the guy (which I don't), I'd need to know his name and address. The DMCA says that eBay has to provide that info to someone who complains about a copyright violation.

It seems like it would be a similar deal in the software world. The conventional wisdom about how to prevent infringement is to GPL your code, and transfer the copyright to the FSF, which will contact license violators and (theoretically) sue them if it comes to that. So how long will it be until the FSF is asked by an open-source developer to invoke the DMCA in order to deal with a license violation? In my own case, should I go ahead and join eBay's vero program? It would make me feel like I was in bed with the enemy, but it does seem like it would give me some very effective options for dealing with the situation. For instance, members of the program can have eBay run automated boolean searches for copyright-violating items, and get the results e-mailed to them periodically.

One possible reply to my question is 'Why do you care?" The problem here is that this guy is doing exactly what RMS originally designed copyleft to prevent: he's taking free information and making it not-free. His customers don't know that the books are copylefted, and have effectively had their own freedom taken away: they don't know they can modify the books, copy them, or sell them."

David Turner writes "Tomorrow, 4/23/03, Georgia's General Assembly's Public Utilities Committee is holding a hearing on yet another DMCA-like bill, HB867. Please come to the capital, room 230, at 2:00pm. I'm told that the bill is unlikely to pass this term anyway, but if you have time, it's important that the legislature sees that only the MPAA supports this, and that it's a special interest bill. Also, this bill is worse than most other state bills, because it hasn't had the latest set of MPAA patches applied, so it still has major anonymity problems." Read on below for Turner's list of specific problems with the bill.

"Section 1:

• (b)(7)(A): "In proving actual damages, the complaining party shall be required to prove only that the violator manufactured, distributed, or sold any communication device or unlawful access device, but shall not be required to prove that such device was actually used in violation of this Code section."

  Note that this makes security research much harder.

• (c): mere linkage and "unauthorized" access is illegal

  Under (c)(1), it's possible that merely typing the wrong web site (and thus, creating a TCP connection) could be a violation. Under (c)(2), if you hook your computer up to your cable line, watch out! Because it could be used to descramble HBO, it's illegal.

Section 2:

• (a) is too broad:
  • (1): Almost everything is a communication device
  • (2): Almost everything is a communication service, including network television.
  • (3): Almost everyone is a communication service provider, including network TV stations
• (b)(1)(A): ... to acquire or facilitate the receipt, interception, disruption, transmission, retransmission, decryption, or acquisition of a communication service without the express consent or authorization of the communication service provider; ....

  Here's my standard commentary on this:

  Section (b)(1)(A) prohibits receiving communication services without the express consent of the communication service provider. This means that you can't use a radio or television without permission from the broadcasters. Nobody is going to tell you that you can't watch TV, but they might tell you that you can't record it, a right the US Supreme Court affirmed in 1984. They might tell you that you can't use your TiVo to pause it while you answer the phone. The Motion Picture Associate of America, primarily through its Copyright Protection Working Group, has already said that it wants to limit these sorts of freedoms.

  Although I'm too young to remember it, I'm told that people used to be required to rent phones from the phone company. People would get in trouble for using third party phones, and had to pay for each extension. If TV and radio broadcasters have their way, you may have to rent your radio, TV, and VCR from them, or only use "authorized" equipment. And this equipment won't have a record button.

• (b)(1)(B): This section prohibits anonymous communication, a right the Supreme Court affirmed in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission. IIRC, there was also an anyonymity ruling from the northern district of GA.
• (b)(4): You can't distribute "plans" for these devices, so freedom of speech is implicated. It's impossible to effectively discuss security unless security breaks can be studied."

David Turner writes "Tomorrow, Tennessee's Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on two nearly identical DMCA-like bills. These bills threaten personal privacy, anonymity, and security research. SB 213 and HB457 are similar to state laws introduced all over the country by the MPAA. Despite amendments, the bills still threaten digital freedom. Last month, twenty people showed up at the Massachusetts public hearing, and effectively opposed the one MPAA lobbyist. If you attend, speak from notes rather than simply reading a statement (but you may be able to submit written testimony). Please come to Legislative Plaza in Nashville, rooms 12 and 14 at 3:30pm." And Kraken137 writes "The House and Senate of the Arkansas state legislature have passed the MPAA's "Super-DMCA" Bill, and it is now sitting on the Governor's desk awaiting his signature. It's not too late to convince him to veto this bill! Arkansas residents are urged to contact the Governor's office to express their opposition to this violation of rights. The ever-vigilant EFF has a page where residents can send a fax to Governor Huckabee's office to let their voices be heard. Remember, paper and phone calls make more of a difference than emails!"

numbski asks: "As a systems administrator, I find myself moving from machine to machine to machine on a daily basis. I happen to be a FreeBSD/MacOS X nut, so on a given day I move from my 17" iMac at home, to my 12" Powerbook at work, to any one of my 16 FreeBSD Servers. That's not to mention any of the Win2k Servers that have Cygwin loaded. All of that said, there is a longing in me to have a simple $HOME that all of my systems use and understand. I've considered the Knoppix way of dealing with this problem using a USB key device from this previous Slashdot article, however I don't know how many systems I could get away with consistently having my USB device picked up and used correctly without scripting changes to fstab, not to mention the issue of choosing a filesystem that just about every OS will recognize: FAT32. Windows is going to be unhappy no matter what I'm afraid, as it doesn't understand symlinking. c:\Documents and Settings\$USER can't just be moved off to another volume. The one glimmer of hope I have is this article on ftpfs and webdavfs. Using these one should be able to set up a single, persistent home that follows you from machine to machine over the internet. I guess I would like to know how others have gone about setting up a mobile $HOME. I look forward to having all of my preferences, dotfiles, and bookmarks follow me around."

Andy Tai writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced a 'Corporate Patronage Program' to allow companies to support the work of the FSF. The members already include IBM, HP, Ada Core Technologies and MySQL. Interested parties should contact Ravi Khanna."

Andy Tai writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced a 'Corporate Patronage Program' to allow companies to support the work of the FSF. The members already include IBM, HP, Ada Core Technologies and MySQL. Interested parties should contact Ravi Khanna."

Andy Tai writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced a 'Corporate Patronage Program' to allow companies to support the work of the FSF. The members already include IBM, HP, Ada Core Technologies and MySQL. Interested parties should contact Ravi Khanna."

BrianWCarver writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has the most detailed article I've yet seen on Microsoft's Palladium architecture. The article discusses the potential Palladium has to give publishers power to eliminate fair use and the potential for software manufacturers to use Palladium to enforce shrink-wrap licenses. Comments from several great sources including, Ed Felten (Freedom to Tinker), Eben Moglen (pro-bono counsel for the Free Software Foundation and recent Slashdot interviewee), and Seth Schoen (Electronic Frontier Foundation) among many others. Key quotations from article: Palladium could create 'a closed system, in which each piece of knowledge in the world is identified with a particular owner, and that owner has a right to resist its copying, modification, and redistribution. In such a scenario the very concept of fair use has been lost.' 'Palladium will "turn the clock back" to the days before online information was widely available.' and 'Microsoft could decide to lock everything up.'"

Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen has been the Free Software Foundation's (pro bono) general counsel since 1993. He's also involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and has been mentioned on Slashdot a number of times because of his participation in these groups and some of the worthy causes they support, as well as other freedom-related matters. One question per post, please. We'll run Prof. Moglen's answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as he gets them back to us.

leonbrooks writes "Microsoft are fond of touting Shared Source as being "as good as" Open Source, with a view to muddying the waters as much as possible, and so keeping as many people away from the benefits of Open Source Software (OSS) (particularly Software Libré AKA "Free Software") as they can. This new article analysing the differences arrives just in time for Microsoft's Australia-wide series of "Competitive Hour" misinformation sessions on Open Source, and includes a handy list of potentially showstopper questions. We'd like your help in putting these and other questions to the speaker during such misinformation sessions, with the dual aim of opening the eyes of many of the audience, and reporting back to us what was said so that we can refine the questions to close whatever loopholes are employed in evading these important issues."

Slashback this fine 23:59 GMT brings you a response to MS GPL FUD, an update on Lessig's challenge, a followup question regarding domain disputes, a reminder that clone claims aren't new, and more. Read on for the details.

Needed: One referee. Quixotic1 writes "A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute. There was a query last week about inexpensive alternatives to the $1000+ UDRP arbiters. The discussion ended up revolving around whether the author had a valid claim or not, but I'd still like to know -- are there inexpensive alternatives?"

I bet there's money to be made if someone can come up with cheaper means of settling such disputes.

Store in the ammunition box. leonbrooks writes "Recently, images from a presentation by Microsoft Belgium were published on the web. The presentation made some startling (for Microsoft) concessions to Open Source, then set about FUDding the GPL into the ground. I whacked together a point-by-point answer to the anti-GPL FUD. Happy linking ..."

Tithe 10 percent. Luke Francl writes "Inspired by Lawrence Lessig's OSCON remarks, Lessig's Challenge is a way for people concerned by the attempts by the entertainment industry to close off the net to fight back. The challenge is to spend more on those who fight for the open network than you do on its enemies. Since it appeared on Slashdot last month, 10 people have joined me and we've raised over $2300 for good causes (organizations like the EFF, the ACLU, the FSF, along with free software/open source programmers and online artists). And that's just the ones I know about! Cory Doctorow wrote to tell me that many people were inspired by the challenge to join the EFF. ... Check out the list of suggested recipients."

Like obsidian, and coal, and dirt ... salimfadhley writes "Today BBC Radio 4 began serialising Phillip Pullman's popular "Dark Materials" trilogy. The beeb will be broadcasting one episode per week, with a RA stream of the latest episode that can be found on the promotional site. You can find "The Golden Compass" (called "Northern Lights" in Europe) on the website now. This stream will be replaced with episode 2 next Saturday.

The Dark Materials series was originally intended as children's fiction, however owing to excellent storytelling and a significantly darker theme than Harry Potter, has done rather well in U.S. and UK adult market.

The central premise of the series is that God is evil, a celestial impostor who pretends to have created the universe and who so intensely hates flesh and blood that he wants people to live a repressed, joyless existence. Unsurprisingly this theme has upset fundamentalist Christians."

Unfamiliar? Read the Slashdot review of the trilogy.

The clones I meet are mostly in pairs. PizzaFace writes "The Washington Post reports that the Raelian clone claim echoes a hoax of 25 years ago. And while we have better technology now for testing the claim quickly, there is still room for deception, and some people don't trust the science (and pseudoscience) reporter the Raelians appointed to test their claim."

Michael Cray asks: "I'm an MIS student and a pro-Linux / Open Source guy. I've been trying to find an article, that serves as an introduction to Open Source, which my Professor could use in class. To me, Open Source is more philosophical than technical. Since this is an IDS/MIS course called 'Management of Information Systems', the professor picks articles from journals like the Harvard Review to be used in class. So if you are a teacher, what article would you use to present 'open source' in a college class room?" What articles have you found that would serve as a good introduction to Open Source? Documents like The Cathedral and the Bazaar and the GPL would be good intro pieces, but are there other pieces that might flesh out these two as an introduction to Open Source?

dbarry writes "Many here have read recently about the FSF membership program. The much-coveted membership card is to be a version of the Bootable Business Card distribution. We are curently looking for testing of our pre-2.0 releases and automated builds. The 2.0 release of the LNX-BBC (and, thus, the FSF membership card) will use the powerful GAR build system to compile nearly all software on it from source code. As such it has changed greatly since the 1.618 release from 2001." Is it ok to covet the card but not the membership? :)

Jay Sulzberger, Corresponding Secretary of LXNY (New York's Free Computing Organization) writes with a report on the ongoing fight over patents in Web standards. "In the past two years the Free Software Movement has moved W3C, the Official Standards Body of the World Wide Web, from a proposed patent policy, which would have, in future, denied us our present right to full and free use of free software to build the Web, to a policy intended to guarantee that free software may be used without fear of patent encumbrances. This move is an important victory for us. But the present proposed policy on patents has a bug that is worth fixing. The mechanism of the bug is non-obvious, except to people who have studied the GPL and certain other free software licenses. It is a bug that, if the proposal is made an official standard, would allow for patent encumbrances to be laid on certain free software in circumstances where today no encumbrance is allowed." Read the rest of Jay's commentary (below) on this devil in the details.

Here is what the Free Software Foundation says on its front page about this bug:

"The W3C 'Royalty-Free' patent policy proposal does not protect the rights of the Free Software community to full participation in the implementation and extension of web standards. Please read more on this issue and send a comment to the W3C."

Part of the effort that moved the W3C to its present position was a furious outpouring of comments in opposition to the original proposal of the Englobulators:

• www.w3.org/2001/ppwg
• www.w3.org/2001/10/patent-response
• lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment
• lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Oct/thread.html

The fix needed right now is a small fix. But the W3C must again be reminded with what jealous vigor we guard our right to build our Web the way we have built it down to this day, using free software. The bug appears in Item 3 of Section 3, titled 'W3C Royalty-Free (RF) Licensing Requirements,' of the present proposal.

This Item allows for a supposedly free grant to use a patent to be so restricted that a piece of Web infrastructure software might be encumbered if used for some non-Web use. Since the GPL does not allow such encumbrancing, GPL-ed Web software re-purposed for non-Web use could not be legally freely redistributed. Please read the Free Software Foundation's page on this bug.

Here is the official Last Call for Comments.

If you write a comment in your own words, for repair of the bug, it will help. I shall write in, and I shall argue against adoption of the buggy sub-section. I shall also suggest an extension of the deadline for comments.

Andy Tai writes "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched an associated membership program. Support Free Software by becoming an FSF associated member. From the FSF website: On Monday 25 November 2002, we launched the FSF Associate Membership program. Now, you can support FSF by becoming a card-carrying associate member. You can find out about the rates and benefits of membership, sign up to be an Associate Member, login to edit your membership options, and even read briefly about some current projects of FSF. " Seems a little odd to me, but what do i know ;)

Andy Tai writes "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched an associated membership program. Support Free Software by becoming an FSF associated member. From the FSF website: On Monday 25 November 2002, we launched the FSF Associate Membership program. Now, you can support FSF by becoming a card-carrying associate member. You can find out about the rates and benefits of membership, sign up to be an Associate Member, login to edit your membership options, and even read briefly about some current projects of FSF. " Seems a little odd to me, but what do i know ;)

Henri Poole writes "I've got friends who ride their bikes for a week and get me and others to donate $100 to their cause. Spending more time on lists then roads, we've set up an analogous service for Free Software and Open Source projects. Substitute the physical sweat with a good hack, and you'll see the match. After you save your next newbie from tech-hell, just ask them to help your cause. In Lessig's blog, he writes "If there's one thing I've learned from watching, and tinkering, in this web-log space, it is that the many tiny brushstrokes of thousands paints more and more powerfully than the blast of even the most important and powerful papers...As I indicate on my Affero page, I count FSF and EFF as the two key players to support." And if you don't think you can make a difference, do this math: A $1 donation to the FSF for every user of GNU/Linux would increase their budget by 30 fold."

bkuhn writes "FSF released its position on the proposed W3C 'RF' patent policy. W3C's proposed policy is a step in the right direction (compared to RAND), but because of 'field of use' restrictions, it is in fact not a Free-Software-friendly policy. The Free Software community is encouraged to say so in their comments on the last call draft."

bkuhn writes "FSF released its position on the proposed W3C 'RF' patent policy. W3C's proposed policy is a step in the right direction (compared to RAND), but because of 'field of use' restrictions, it is in fact not a Free-Software-friendly policy. The Free Software community is encouraged to say so in their comments on the last call draft."

Karin Kosina writes: "Real-time Free Software solutions are moving forward with the first release of ADEOS, a hardware abstraction layer allowing a real-time kernel and a general purpose kernel to co-exist. RTAI will eventually use ADEOS services, thus offering a real-time kernel based on a principle clearly different from the 5,995,745 US Patent. Read the official press release by Philippe Gerum, Karim Yaghmour, Paolo Mantegazza et al. for details."

Karin Kosina writes: "Real-time Free Software solutions are moving forward with the first release of ADEOS, a hardware abstraction layer allowing a real-time kernel and a general purpose kernel to co-exist. RTAI will eventually use ADEOS services, thus offering a real-time kernel based on a principle clearly different from the 5,995,745 US Patent. Read the official press release by Philippe Gerum, Karim Yaghmour, Paolo Mantegazza et al. for details."

Slashback (below) is chock full of updates to recent (and not recent) Slashdot stories, including some good news for AMD fans, and a last drizzle of news from E3.

Making your computer worth even less. Acid-F1ux writes: "Advanced Micro Devices has slashed prices of its desktop and mobile Athlon processors just days after a similar move by rival Intel. The cuts range from 17 percent to 52 percent for mobile Athlon XP chips and between 11 percent and 32 percent for desktop Athlon XP chips. On Sunday, Intel dropped prices of its Pentium 4 processors by as much as 53 percent."

Progressive Education strikes a blow. darnellmc writes: "According to this Atlanta Journal-Constitution news article GA Tech had so many students violate the school's "honor code" that they have decided to change it.

"In the wake of the investigation, Tech officials have decided to allow students in introductory computer science courses to share information and collaborate on homework, previously prohibited under the school's academic honor code."

Of course code sharing also teaches the value of Open Source ;o) . Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."

How many letters will the next big threat have? matthew writes: "LWN is carrying the notes from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) conference (more info at the EFF). The BPDG is the body that will be suggesting future technological control measures; they make the DMCA and CBDTPA seem like trivial problems. The BPDG conference was last week and it was open to the public so anyone could call in. You can read about what the FSF's Bradley M. Kuhn digitalspeech.org's Jonathan Watterson thought of the conference. The basic summary is that we're screwed if people don't start fighting against this kind of injustice."

This is what's called taking license. infochuck writes "Back in January, this story on Slashdot focused on Borland's licensing PR fiasco, and how they promised to remedy the situation (in short, their license permitted them to search at any time any of your computers looking for stolen software). Well, here we are, five months later, and their license hasn't changed one bit - at least not the two most unreasonable clauses, 12 and 14.4, and not in the license included with the Windows version of the Personal Edition. Download for yourself to see, but be warned, you'll have to register, which involves many questions and no less than 5 checkboxes to uncheck, as well as at least a 25MB DL. I believe pr@borland.com is still the place to write..."

Playful is good. If the last month of pre-hype hype, pre-hype, actual hype and post-hype weren't enough, you'll be pleased to read that E3 coverage continues, at Gamespy (some cool reviews), Gamegal (good photos) and other sites beginning with "Game."

jonathanjo writes "Smart Money announces the ten hot jobs they see rising in the next decade. Among them, many familiar to slashdotters (wireless engineer) and several of those are of dubious ethical value (data miner, IP lawyer). "Forensic Accountant" even made accounting sound cool! But why oh why did I give up on being an Adventure Travel Guide to be a web designer? D'ohh!"

jonathanjo writes "Yesterday (5/15/02) the US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled: "Copyright Royalties: Where is the Right Spot On The Dial For Webcasting." This was a review of the work of CARP, the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel, the group formed by the DMCA that has closed down webstreaming for many independent radio stations with new high fees and exhaustive reporting requirements. Representatives from RIAA, Digital Media Association, Arbitron, Real Networks, and Yahoo gave testimony, as well as people representing two independent Vermont webcasters, and the American Federation Of Television and Radio Artists. Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) testimony was surprisingly sympathetic to small webcasters (especially by inviting two from his state to speak). Orrin Hatch gave the expected pro-DMCA boilerplate."

Though it's been out for more than a year, most people have not gotten a chance to see Revolution OS ; luckily for those who'd like to, a video release is planned for later this year, and for California readers, the screenings page lists four two-night showings over the next several weeks, in Newport Beach, Pasadena, California, Santa Monica, and L.A. Reader AdamBa submits his impressions of the movie (below).

Linux users who wonder why drag-and-drop doesn't always work between applications may find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between Gnome and KDE -- a difference they may not have known existed.

Linux users who watch the documentary Revolution OS will find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between free software and open source software -- a difference they may also have been unaware of.

The film by J.T.S. Moore is about the growth of the free software movement, and its eventual co-option by the open source movement. I don't think that's what the movie was supposed to be about; it was supposed to be about Linux and its battle about Microsoft. But the movie is quickly hijacked by its participants and turned into a theoretical discussion, in which Linux itself is a mere sideshow.

The combatants are Richard Stallman for free software, and Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens for open source. Much of the movie is after-the-fact interviews with them, as well as other notables: Linus Torvalds, Michael Tiemann from Cygnus, Larry Augustin from VA Linux, Brian Behlendorf from Apache. Rob Malda, aka CmdrTaco of Slashdot, even makes an appearance. But the Stallman vs. Raymond/Perens debate forms the core of the movie.

All three main participants come out looking reasonably good. I think when Microsoft executives see photos of typical open source luminaries, they might feel an urge to give them a hug and a bowl of soup, rather than worry about them taking market share from Microsoft (forgetting that Bill Gates created the same impression at age 24, negotiating the deal to license DOS to IBM). But Stallman and Raymond and Perens are not like that; they have spent decades writing software and thinking about writing software, and the intellectual heft of their arguments reflect that. Stallman, in particular, gets a chance to explain at length his feelings about software and how these led to the Free Software Foundation and the GNU public license, which may be news to viewers who only know about Linux.

Heavy with interviews, the movie lacks the staple of documentaries: scenes with multiple people that are later analyzed individually by each of the participants. The main characters almost never appear together, and when they discuss the rare events at which two or more were present, they contradict each other as often as not. This is an artifact of distributed development: there are not a lot of scenes where they are together because they do not need to be together a lot.

The movie also lacks a villain, a battle of good vs. evil. Nominally Microsoft is the bad guy, but except for Bill Gates' quarter-century-old "Open Letter to Hobbyists" and a snide comment from Bruce Perens about intellectual property, it isn't clear why Microsoft is disliked. Nobody explains why Windows is worse, or Linux better. In fact, the movie demonstrates that GNU and Linux began as alternatives to expensive and proprietary hardware and software from Sun, not from Intel and Microsoft.

Even the open source vs. free software debate is presented from both sides. Since more people have heard of open source than free software, the fact that Stallman gets equal time is in a sense a victory for him over Raymond and Perens. But all three are shown acting both profound and petty, combining smugness with "aw, shucks" modesty, and attempting to claim their rightful credit without being obvious about it.

* * *

An outsider might come away from the movie with the inaccurate impression that open source is the commercialized cousin of free software. Digging a little deeper, he or she might find the Free Software Foundation's web page that attempts to clarify the issue. "While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas. The term 'open source' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable." However, after kicking the ideas around a bit, the article doesn't come up with any concrete differences. The site also provides a handy chart, but the "free software" and "open source" boxes intersect completely (except for the small space allocated to their names).

The two movements do have different grounding philosophies. Free software is based on four freedoms, open source is based on nine criteria. The freedoms are more general -- they could be applied to almost any creative work -- but in practice, when it comes to software, the four freedoms generate a set of rules very much like the nine criteria. Linux, the standard-bearer for open source, was released under the GPL, a license that came from free software.

While the Free Software Foundation's site devotes significant verbiage to the difference between free software and open source, the Open Source Initiative doesn't talk about free software. Its history begins (somewhat guilelessly) on February 3, 1998, the day the term "open source" was coined (an event whose location is pointed out by Larry Augustin in the movie).

This gives some insight into the difference between the two movements. The Open Source Initiative has a more pragmatic attitude, and I think this rankles the Free Software Foundation. Of course, OSI has to please various people, while the moral compass of the FSF is inseparable from that of Richard Stallman, making it easier for it to stay the true course. In the movie Eric Raymond describes the term "free software" as "lousy marketing," which if it was intended as an insult, I fear will miss the mark. As Stallman puts it, free software is "important for quality of life and the good of society." What worries the FSF about OSI is not so much the nine criteria that exist and whether they conflict with the four freedoms, but whether the tenth criteria would conflict with the fifth freedom.

In computing, with its thousand ways to do the same thing, such arguments are often termed "religious," and the comparison is not inapt. In his book What is a Jew?, Rabbi Morris Kertzer writes, "[Jewish] tradition pictures God as saying, 'It would even be all right if my children forgot me, as long as they keep my commandments.'" That is an open source attitude: who cares what is motivating you to release the source code; just release it. Free software is different. To do free software right, you gotta believe.

In the movie, neither side is completely frank during its interviews. As part of the GNU project, the FSF created every part of a working Unix system except the kernel, a gap that was filled by the Linux kernel. Linux would not exist without the GNU code (particularly the compiler), lending credence to Stallman's claim that the system should be known as "GNU/Linux," but it is disingenuous of Stallman to portray the kernel as just one part of the whole system, on par with a text editor.

Stallman appears annoyed by a lack of purity in the Linux project. Linus Torvalds had the temerity to start writing software without first working out a detailed philosophy that governed all aspects of his life. Furthermore, he used a simpler approach to kernel writing (a monolithic kernel) than what GNU was planning for its Hurd kernel (a microkernel), and more gallingly, got it working sooner and wound up having the name of his kernel be used to refer to the whole thing, a synecdochic slap in the face to Stallman.

Open source has done such a complete job of embracing and extending free software that we are treated to the sight of Richard Stallman receiving an award named after Linus Torvalds, when historical events seem to dictate the other way around as more appropriate. Stallman, to his credit, shows up to accept the award at LinuxWorld, but he cannot resist haranguing the crowd about the GNU/Linux name (a premise that Torvalds elsewhere labels "ridiculous"). Linus gets the last laugh, however, since during Stallman's rant he is being upstaged by Linus' two adorable toddlers, scooting around on the back of the stage.

* * *

Revolution OS does unearth some good background information on a few aspects of open source. We learn about Cygnus and VA Linux, two of the first companies to attempt a business model based on free software. The movie goes into some detail on Netscape's decision to open-source its browser

But Linux itself is rarely seen, missing from its own movie. The product is merely an adjunct, a manifestation of the battle between open source and free software, with both sides claiming moral ownership. When two dogs fight over a bone, you don't see the bone fight. We are never shown anyone using Linux, except for unhappy users at an Installfest. The rise of Linux is chronicled only in occasional titles, superimposed over footage of cars zooming down a road, showing the impressive rise in the numbers of users through the years. Important issues, such as what a distribution is and why there are different ones, are never addressed.

Tiemann and Augustin discuss how Linux can help customers, but they are too polished to make much of an impression amidst the geekosophical debate. Stallman and Raymond and Perens care more about the abstract fight than the market battles, and their passion drives the movie. If they developed their software to scratch an itch, it's clear they gave the interviews for this movie to scratch a different itch, the nagging feeling that someone else was trying to steal their glory.

This leads one to wonder about the movie's target audience. Open source navel gazers will enjoy matching names to faces, but the average non-technical user will probably fail to grasp the significance of most of the issues discussed. They will be left with an entertaining story, peopled by colorful characters who obviously disagree about something they feel passionate about, but the gist of the arguments will likely elude them. An executive watching the movie may also be puzzled; the term "open source" was chosen over "free software" partly to avoid the non-commercial associations that the old name evoked, but watching the internal bickering may cause some to wonder if the software is ready for prime time, or if it is best reserved for zealots willing to accept certain tradeoffs because of the feeling of moral superiority that the software engenders.

The organization that screened the movie in Seattle, the Northwest Film Forum, has two theaters, one seating 70 and one seating 48. They chose to show it in the little theater (called, in fact, the Little Theater), which seemed to me a mistake in tech-savvy Seattle, at a theater just a few miles from the University of Washington campus. Yet, despite being hyped in the Friday "What's Happening" section of the paper, only 19 people showed up for the show on a Saturday night -- mostly Linux users and their tolerant dates, as far as I could tell.

Others may have to wait a while to see the movie. It has been showing at film festivals since last year, and is now starting limited runs in some cities. Luckily, the film is planned for DVD and video release in the second half of 2002.

The filmed part of the movie ends on a positive note, first with LinuxWorld in 1999 coinciding with the Red Hat IPO (featuring Rob Malda commenting on what the unevenly divided influx of money will mean to the Linux community), and then the VA Linux IPO in December 1999, where the stock rose 698% the first day, a record. Check out the NASDAQ stock ticker crawling by on the CNBC footage from that period! Of course in retrospect we know what is coming, and the movie finishes with a couple of intertitles explaining that VA Linux and Red Hat are now trading below $5 a share.

I think this leaves the average viewer a little puzzled. Did Linux peak in 1999? Now that the money that fluxed in to Linux has fluxed out again, is the community closer to its pure roots, moving away from the open source movement and back towards free software? The movie doesn't say, but you get the feeling that somewhere, Richard Stallman is smiling.

Though it's been out for more than a year, most people have not gotten a chance to see Revolution OS ; luckily for those who'd like to, a video release is planned for later this year, and for California readers, the screenings page lists four two-night showings over the next several weeks, in Newport Beach, Pasadena, California, Santa Monica, and L.A. Reader AdamBa submits his impressions of the movie (below).

Linux users who wonder why drag-and-drop doesn't always work between applications may find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between Gnome and KDE -- a difference they may not have known existed.

Linux users who watch the documentary Revolution OS will find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between free software and open source software -- a difference they may also have been unaware of.

The film by J.T.S. Moore is about the growth of the free software movement, and its eventual co-option by the open source movement. I don't think that's what the movie was supposed to be about; it was supposed to be about Linux and its battle about Microsoft. But the movie is quickly hijacked by its participants and turned into a theoretical discussion, in which Linux itself is a mere sideshow.

The combatants are Richard Stallman for free software, and Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens for open source. Much of the movie is after-the-fact interviews with them, as well as other notables: Linus Torvalds, Michael Tiemann from Cygnus, Larry Augustin from VA Linux, Brian Behlendorf from Apache. Rob Malda, aka CmdrTaco of Slashdot, even makes an appearance. But the Stallman vs. Raymond/Perens debate forms the core of the movie.

All three main participants come out looking reasonably good. I think when Microsoft executives see photos of typical open source luminaries, they might feel an urge to give them a hug and a bowl of soup, rather than worry about them taking market share from Microsoft (forgetting that Bill Gates created the same impression at age 24, negotiating the deal to license DOS to IBM). But Stallman and Raymond and Perens are not like that; they have spent decades writing software and thinking about writing software, and the intellectual heft of their arguments reflect that. Stallman, in particular, gets a chance to explain at length his feelings about software and how these led to the Free Software Foundation and the GNU public license, which may be news to viewers who only know about Linux.

Heavy with interviews, the movie lacks the staple of documentaries: scenes with multiple people that are later analyzed individually by each of the participants. The main characters almost never appear together, and when they discuss the rare events at which two or more were present, they contradict each other as often as not. This is an artifact of distributed development: there are not a lot of scenes where they are together because they do not need to be together a lot.

The movie also lacks a villain, a battle of good vs. evil. Nominally Microsoft is the bad guy, but except for Bill Gates' quarter-century-old "Open Letter to Hobbyists" and a snide comment from Bruce Perens about intellectual property, it isn't clear why Microsoft is disliked. Nobody explains why Windows is worse, or Linux better. In fact, the movie demonstrates that GNU and Linux began as alternatives to expensive and proprietary hardware and software from Sun, not from Intel and Microsoft.

Even the open source vs. free software debate is presented from both sides. Since more people have heard of open source than free software, the fact that Stallman gets equal time is in a sense a victory for him over Raymond and Perens. But all three are shown acting both profound and petty, combining smugness with "aw, shucks" modesty, and attempting to claim their rightful credit without being obvious about it.

* * *

An outsider might come away from the movie with the inaccurate impression that open source is the commercialized cousin of free software. Digging a little deeper, he or she might find the Free Software Foundation's web page that attempts to clarify the issue. "While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas. The term 'open source' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable." However, after kicking the ideas around a bit, the article doesn't come up with any concrete differences. The site also provides a handy chart, but the "free software" and "open source" boxes intersect completely (except for the small space allocated to their names).

The two movements do have different grounding philosophies. Free software is based on four freedoms, open source is based on nine criteria. The freedoms are more general -- they could be applied to almost any creative work -- but in practice, when it comes to software, the four freedoms generate a set of rules very much like the nine criteria. Linux, the standard-bearer for open source, was released under the GPL, a license that came from free software.

While the Free Software Foundation's site devotes significant verbiage to the difference between free software and open source, the Open Source Initiative doesn't talk about free software. Its history begins (somewhat guilelessly) on February 3, 1998, the day the term "open source" was coined (an event whose location is pointed out by Larry Augustin in the movie).

This gives some insight into the difference between the two movements. The Open Source Initiative has a more pragmatic attitude, and I think this rankles the Free Software Foundation. Of course, OSI has to please various people, while the moral compass of the FSF is inseparable from that of Richard Stallman, making it easier for it to stay the true course. In the movie Eric Raymond describes the term "free software" as "lousy marketing," which if it was intended as an insult, I fear will miss the mark. As Stallman puts it, free software is "important for quality of life and the good of society." What worries the FSF about OSI is not so much the nine criteria that exist and whether they conflict with the four freedoms, but whether the tenth criteria would conflict with the fifth freedom.

In computing, with its thousand ways to do the same thing, such arguments are often termed "religious," and the comparison is not inapt. In his book What is a Jew?, Rabbi Morris Kertzer writes, "[Jewish] tradition pictures God as saying, 'It would even be all right if my children forgot me, as long as they keep my commandments.'" That is an open source attitude: who cares what is motivating you to release the source code; just release it. Free software is different. To do free software right, you gotta believe.

In the movie, neither side is completely frank during its interviews. As part of the GNU project, the FSF created every part of a working Unix system except the kernel, a gap that was filled by the Linux kernel. Linux would not exist without the GNU code (particularly the compiler), lending credence to Stallman's claim that the system should be known as "GNU/Linux," but it is disingenuous of Stallman to portray the kernel as just one part of the whole system, on par with a text editor.

Stallman appears annoyed by a lack of purity in the Linux project. Linus Torvalds had the temerity to start writing software without first working out a detailed philosophy that governed all aspects of his life. Furthermore, he used a simpler approach to kernel writing (a monolithic kernel) than what GNU was planning for its Hurd kernel (a microkernel), and more gallingly, got it working sooner and wound up having the name of his kernel be used to refer to the whole thing, a synecdochic slap in the face to Stallman.

Open source has done such a complete job of embracing and extending free software that we are treated to the sight of Richard Stallman receiving an award named after Linus Torvalds, when historical events seem to dictate the other way around as more appropriate. Stallman, to his credit, shows up to accept the award at LinuxWorld, but he cannot resist haranguing the crowd about the GNU/Linux name (a premise that Torvalds elsewhere labels "ridiculous"). Linus gets the last laugh, however, since during Stallman's rant he is being upstaged by Linus' two adorable toddlers, scooting around on the back of the stage.

* * *

Revolution OS does unearth some good background information on a few aspects of open source. We learn about Cygnus and VA Linux, two of the first companies to attempt a business model based on free software. The movie goes into some detail on Netscape's decision to open-source its browser

But Linux itself is rarely seen, missing from its own movie. The product is merely an adjunct, a manifestation of the battle between open source and free software, with both sides claiming moral ownership. When two dogs fight over a bone, you don't see the bone fight. We are never shown anyone using Linux, except for unhappy users at an Installfest. The rise of Linux is chronicled only in occasional titles, superimposed over footage of cars zooming down a road, showing the impressive rise in the numbers of users through the years. Important issues, such as what a distribution is and why there are different ones, are never addressed.

Tiemann and Augustin discuss how Linux can help customers, but they are too polished to make much of an impression amidst the geekosophical debate. Stallman and Raymond and Perens care more about the abstract fight than the market battles, and their passion drives the movie. If they developed their software to scratch an itch, it's clear they gave the interviews for this movie to scratch a different itch, the nagging feeling that someone else was trying to steal their glory.

This leads one to wonder about the movie's target audience. Open source navel gazers will enjoy matching names to faces, but the average non-technical user will probably fail to grasp the significance of most of the issues discussed. They will be left with an entertaining story, peopled by colorful characters who obviously disagree about something they feel passionate about, but the gist of the arguments will likely elude them. An executive watching the movie may also be puzzled; the term "open source" was chosen over "free software" partly to avoid the non-commercial associations that the old name evoked, but watching the internal bickering may cause some to wonder if the software is ready for prime time, or if it is best reserved for zealots willing to accept certain tradeoffs because of the feeling of moral superiority that the software engenders.

The organization that screened the movie in Seattle, the Northwest Film Forum, has two theaters, one seating 70 and one seating 48. They chose to show it in the little theater (called, in fact, the Little Theater), which seemed to me a mistake in tech-savvy Seattle, at a theater just a few miles from the University of Washington campus. Yet, despite being hyped in the Friday "What's Happening" section of the paper, only 19 people showed up for the show on a Saturday night -- mostly Linux users and their tolerant dates, as far as I could tell.

Others may have to wait a while to see the movie. It has been showing at film festivals since last year, and is now starting limited runs in some cities. Luckily, the film is planned for DVD and video release in the second half of 2002.

The filmed part of the movie ends on a positive note, first with LinuxWorld in 1999 coinciding with the Red Hat IPO (featuring Rob Malda commenting on what the unevenly divided influx of money will mean to the Linux community), and then the VA Linux IPO in December 1999, where the stock rose 698% the first day, a record. Check out the NASDAQ stock ticker crawling by on the CNBC footage from that period! Of course in retrospect we know what is coming, and the movie finishes with a couple of intertitles explaining that VA Linux and Red Hat are now trading below $5 a share.

I think this leaves the average viewer a little puzzled. Did Linux peak in 1999? Now that the money that fluxed in to Linux has fluxed out again, is the community closer to its pure roots, moving away from the open source movement and back towards free software? The movie doesn't say, but you get the feeling that somewhere, Richard Stallman is smiling.

Though it's been out for more than a year, most people have not gotten a chance to see Revolution OS ; luckily for those who'd like to, a video release is planned for later this year, and for California readers, the screenings page lists four two-night showings over the next several weeks, in Newport Beach, Pasadena, California, Santa Monica, and L.A. Reader AdamBa submits his impressions of the movie (below).

Linux users who wonder why drag-and-drop doesn't always work between applications may find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between Gnome and KDE -- a difference they may not have known existed.

Linux users who watch the documentary Revolution OS will find themselves treated to a lengthy philosophical discourse on the difference between free software and open source software -- a difference they may also have been unaware of.

The film by J.T.S. Moore is about the growth of the free software movement, and its eventual co-option by the open source movement. I don't think that's what the movie was supposed to be about; it was supposed to be about Linux and its battle about Microsoft. But the movie is quickly hijacked by its participants and turned into a theoretical discussion, in which Linux itself is a mere sideshow.

The combatants are Richard Stallman for free software, and Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens for open source. Much of the movie is after-the-fact interviews with them, as well as other notables: Linus Torvalds, Michael Tiemann from Cygnus, Larry Augustin from VA Linux, Brian Behlendorf from Apache. Rob Malda, aka CmdrTaco of Slashdot, even makes an appearance. But the Stallman vs. Raymond/Perens debate forms the core of the movie.

All three main participants come out looking reasonably good. I think when Microsoft executives see photos of typical open source luminaries, they might feel an urge to give them a hug and a bowl of soup, rather than worry about them taking market share from Microsoft (forgetting that Bill Gates created the same impression at age 24, negotiating the deal to license DOS to IBM). But Stallman and Raymond and Perens are not like that; they have spent decades writing software and thinking about writing software, and the intellectual heft of their arguments reflect that. Stallman, in particular, gets a chance to explain at length his feelings about software and how these led to the Free Software Foundation and the GNU public license, which may be news to viewers who only know about Linux.

Heavy with interviews, the movie lacks the staple of documentaries: scenes with multiple people that are later analyzed individually by each of the participants. The main characters almost never appear together, and when they discuss the rare events at which two or more were present, they contradict each other as often as not. This is an artifact of distributed development: there are not a lot of scenes where they are together because they do not need to be together a lot.

The movie also lacks a villain, a battle of good vs. evil. Nominally Microsoft is the bad guy, but except for Bill Gates' quarter-century-old "Open Letter to Hobbyists" and a snide comment from Bruce Perens about intellectual property, it isn't clear why Microsoft is disliked. Nobody explains why Windows is worse, or Linux better. In fact, the movie demonstrates that GNU and Linux began as alternatives to expensive and proprietary hardware and software from Sun, not from Intel and Microsoft.

Even the open source vs. free software debate is presented from both sides. Since more people have heard of open source than free software, the fact that Stallman gets equal time is in a sense a victory for him over Raymond and Perens. But all three are shown acting both profound and petty, combining smugness with "aw, shucks" modesty, and attempting to claim their rightful credit without being obvious about it.

* * *

An outsider might come away from the movie with the inaccurate impression that open source is the commercialized cousin of free software. Digging a little deeper, he or she might find the Free Software Foundation's web page that attempts to clarify the issue. "While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas. The term 'open source' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable." However, after kicking the ideas around a bit, the article doesn't come up with any concrete differences. The site also provides a handy chart, but the "free software" and "open source" boxes intersect completely (except for the small space allocated to their names).

The two movements do have different grounding philosophies. Free software is based on four freedoms, open source is based on nine criteria. The freedoms are more general -- they could be applied to almost any creative work -- but in practice, when it comes to software, the four freedoms generate a set of rules very much like the nine criteria. Linux, the standard-bearer for open source, was released under the GPL, a license that came from free software.

While the Free Software Foundation's site devotes significant verbiage to the difference between free software and open source, the Open Source Initiative doesn't talk about free software. Its history begins (somewhat guilelessly) on February 3, 1998, the day the term "open source" was coined (an event whose location is pointed out by Larry Augustin in the movie).

This gives some insight into the difference between the two movements. The Open Source Initiative has a more pragmatic attitude, and I think this rankles the Free Software Foundation. Of course, OSI has to please various people, while the moral compass of the FSF is inseparable from that of Richard Stallman, making it easier for it to stay the true course. In the movie Eric Raymond describes the term "free software" as "lousy marketing," which if it was intended as an insult, I fear will miss the mark. As Stallman puts it, free software is "important for quality of life and the good of society." What worries the FSF about OSI is not so much the nine criteria that exist and whether they conflict with the four freedoms, but whether the tenth criteria would conflict with the fifth freedom.

In computing, with its thousand ways to do the same thing, such arguments are often termed "religious," and the comparison is not inapt. In his book What is a Jew?, Rabbi Morris Kertzer writes, "[Jewish] tradition pictures God as saying, 'It would even be all right if my children forgot me, as long as they keep my commandments.'" That is an open source attitude: who cares what is motivating you to release the source code; just release it. Free software is different. To do free software right, you gotta believe.

In the movie, neither side is completely frank during its interviews. As part of the GNU project, the FSF created every part of a working Unix system except the kernel, a gap that was filled by the Linux kernel. Linux would not exist without the GNU code (particularly the compiler), lending credence to Stallman's claim that the system should be known as "GNU/Linux," but it is disingenuous of Stallman to portray the kernel as just one part of the whole system, on par with a text editor.

Stallman appears annoyed by a lack of purity in the Linux project. Linus Torvalds had the temerity to start writing software without first working out a detailed philosophy that governed all aspects of his life. Furthermore, he used a simpler approach to kernel writing (a monolithic kernel) than what GNU was planning for its Hurd kernel (a microkernel), and more gallingly, got it working sooner and wound up having the name of his kernel be used to refer to the whole thing, a synecdochic slap in the face to Stallman.

Open source has done such a complete job of embracing and extending free software that we are treated to the sight of Richard Stallman receiving an award named after Linus Torvalds, when historical events seem to dictate the other way around as more appropriate. Stallman, to his credit, shows up to accept the award at LinuxWorld, but he cannot resist haranguing the crowd about the GNU/Linux name (a premise that Torvalds elsewhere labels "ridiculous"). Linus gets the last laugh, however, since during Stallman's rant he is being upstaged by Linus' two adorable toddlers, scooting around on the back of the stage.

* * *

Revolution OS does unearth some good background information on a few aspects of open source. We learn about Cygnus and VA Linux, two of the first companies to attempt a business model based on free software. The movie goes into some detail on Netscape's decision to open-source its browser

But Linux itself is rarely seen, missing from its own movie. The product is merely an adjunct, a manifestation of the battle between open source and free software, with both sides claiming moral ownership. When two dogs fight over a bone, you don't see the bone fight. We are never shown anyone using Linux, except for unhappy users at an Installfest. The rise of Linux is chronicled only in occasional titles, superimposed over footage of cars zooming down a road, showing the impressive rise in the numbers of users through the years. Important issues, such as what a distribution is and why there are different ones, are never addressed.

Tiemann and Augustin discuss how Linux can help customers, but they are too polished to make much of an impression amidst the geekosophical debate. Stallman and Raymond and Perens care more about the abstract fight than the market battles, and their passion drives the movie. If they developed their software to scratch an itch, it's clear they gave the interviews for this movie to scratch a different itch, the nagging feeling that someone else was trying to steal their glory.

This leads one to wonder about the movie's target audience. Open source navel gazers will enjoy matching names to faces, but the average non-technical user will probably fail to grasp the significance of most of the issues discussed. They will be left with an entertaining story, peopled by colorful characters who obviously disagree about something they feel passionate about, but the gist of the arguments will likely elude them. An executive watching the movie may also be puzzled; the term "open source" was chosen over "free software" partly to avoid the non-commercial associations that the old name evoked, but watching the internal bickering may cause some to wonder if the software is ready for prime time, or if it is best reserved for zealots willing to accept certain tradeoffs because of the feeling of moral superiority that the software engenders.

The organization that screened the movie in Seattle, the Northwest Film Forum, has two theaters, one seating 70 and one seating 48. They chose to show it in the little theater (called, in fact, the Little Theater), which seemed to me a mistake in tech-savvy Seattle, at a theater just a few miles from the University of Washington campus. Yet, despite being hyped in the Friday "What's Happening" section of the paper, only 19 people showed up for the show on a Saturday night -- mostly Linux users and their tolerant dates, as far as I could tell.

Others may have to wait a while to see the movie. It has been showing at film festivals since last year, and is now starting limited runs in some cities. Luckily, the film is planned for DVD and video release in the second half of 2002.

The filmed part of the movie ends on a positive note, first with LinuxWorld in 1999 coinciding with the Red Hat IPO (featuring Rob Malda commenting on what the unevenly divided influx of money will mean to the Linux community), and then the VA Linux IPO in December 1999, where the stock rose 698% the first day, a record. Check out the NASDAQ stock ticker crawling by on the CNBC footage from that period! Of course in retrospect we know what is coming, and the movie finishes with a couple of intertitles explaining that VA Linux and Red Hat are now trading below $5 a share.

I think this leaves the average viewer a little puzzled. Did Linux peak in 1999? Now that the money that fluxed in to Linux has fluxed out again, is the community closer to its pure roots, moving away from the open source movement and back towards free software? The movie doesn't say, but you get the feeling that somewhere, Richard Stallman is smiling.

abartlet writes "As described in this Advogato entry, MS is trying to pull a swifty with their latest 'release' of their CIFS (the networked filesystem Samba implements) Technical Reference. The licence specifically prohibits any GPLed or (or LGPLed) program from implementing it, defining it as an 'IPR Impairing Licence'! Fortunately the CIFS community is about to release its own Technical Reference based on earlier MS documents and long experience in attempting to interoperate with the MS product." Microsoft's claim is completely ungrounded - nothing written by a third-party can take away Microsoft's intellectual property rights. But it makes a good (read: confusing to the general public) justification for preventing others from interoperating with their software.

abartlet writes "As described in this Advogato entry, MS is trying to pull a swifty with their latest 'release' of their CIFS (the networked filesystem Samba implements) Technical Reference. The licence specifically prohibits any GPLed or (or LGPLed) program from implementing it, defining it as an 'IPR Impairing Licence'! Fortunately the CIFS community is about to release its own Technical Reference based on earlier MS documents and long experience in attempting to interoperate with the MS product." Microsoft's claim is completely ungrounded - nothing written by a third-party can take away Microsoft's intellectual property rights. But it makes a good (read: confusing to the general public) justification for preventing others from interoperating with their software.

bkuhn writes: "The Free Software Foundation and Affero announced today the Affero General Public License (AGPL), a modified version of the GNU GPL. The AGPL includes a provision that protects a feature giving download access to the source code of a web service application. Public comment on the license should be sent to <agpl@fsf.org>."

bkuhn writes: "The Free Software Foundation and Affero announced today the Affero General Public License (AGPL), a modified version of the GNU GPL. The AGPL includes a provision that protects a feature giving download access to the source code of a web service application. Public comment on the license should be sent to <agpl@fsf.org>."

bkuhn writes: "The Free Software Foundation and Affero announced today the Affero General Public License (AGPL), a modified version of the GNU GPL. The AGPL includes a provision that protects a feature giving download access to the source code of a web service application. Public comment on the license should be sent to <agpl@fsf.org>."

bkuhn writes: "The Free Software Foundation and Affero announced today the Affero General Public License (AGPL), a modified version of the GNU GPL. The AGPL includes a provision that protects a feature giving download access to the source code of a web service application. Public comment on the license should be sent to <agpl@fsf.org>."

Bradley M. Kuhn writes "The Free Software Foundation is offering resources, including an staff organizer, to the Digital Speech Project. This project seeks to organize people against technology control laws, like the DMCA and the proposed SSSCA. The Digital Speech Project has a website here."

Bradley M. Kuhn writes "The Free Software Foundation is offering resources, including an staff organizer, to the Digital Speech Project. This project seeks to organize people against technology control laws, like the DMCA and the proposed SSSCA. The Digital Speech Project has a website here."

Mark Cappel writes "According to PCWorld, RMS said in an interview in India that Hurd will see the light of day this year."

bkuhn writes: "Judge Saris has ruled on the preliminary injunction motion. The Court recognizes in today's order that MySQL AB "seems to have the better argument" on the GNU GPL matter. The Court fully recognized the need for expert testimony at trial about the GNU GPL and the technical facts at hand, particularly as to why static linking of software components into a single, unified, compiled binary forms a derivative work of the original components."

bkuhn writes: "Judge Saris has ruled on the preliminary injunction motion. The Court recognizes in today's order that MySQL AB "seems to have the better argument" on the GNU GPL matter. The Court fully recognized the need for expert testimony at trial about the GNU GPL and the technical facts at hand, particularly as to why static linking of software components into a single, unified, compiled binary forms a derivative work of the original components."