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We shouldn't read Florian Mueller because he takes money from Oracle. OK. Does that mean that we shouldn't listen to the FSF and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society because they take money from Google?

That's bull.

RMS wouldn't approve the Rasperry Pi because it needs the binary blob to boot. (I think regardless of this particular reverse engineering). Yes, RMS pushs for the most free computer he can get.

Here are what the FSF actually uses (they install coreboot themselves when needed, btw), and they do actually exist:
https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/systems

Not sure how serious you are, but as in terms of "dates" the contest dates are set in the rules: http://lpc.opengameart.org/content/lpc-rules

And if you want to "buy it"... well you can donate to us here! :)

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

+1 At least the company benefited by getting a fanatic of their backs. Can't people just use whatever software fits their needs? I understand people who reject things like the iPhone and WP7 because such platforms may prohibit them from loading software they want (see the Google Voice fiasco in iOS for more info), and they may not feel OK by having others decide for them even though they are the ones who pay for the device, but rejecting a piece of software because the author didn't chose to donate (yes, donate, it wasn't his obligation) the code under an OSI license? Also, is it just me, or most of the open source fanatics dream of working for a project like Fedora or Firefox, aka a project that allows them to give code to the community and get paid for it? Unfortunately most of the times "open source jobs" means either configuring some open source software for some corp, or maintaining some internal fork of some open source software, like Google does with Linux in their data center, and none of this benefits the community in any way. PS: Anyway, here is a list stry_cat may be interested in (though i doubt he will read past the first sentence of my post) http://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs

Everyone is very keen on sharing until it is their stuff that is being shared.

I guess he has not heard of these people:

http://www.fsf.org/

I also did something, I wrote to the MEP's in my area, outlining my position and asking their opinion. They need to know this is important. My local government web site had a link to my MEP's.

The Free Software Foundation provides the following page of contact details for all the relevant EU politicians: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2011/acta:-signed,-not-yet-sealed-now-its-up-to-us Those on the Development Committee are the most important and are listed on the following link: https://memopol.lqdn.fr/europe/parliament/committee/DEVE/ For the FSF views on ACTA see: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta

Well, thats kinda what happens when you run untrusted/unchecked source code on your device. No matter if the memo is real or not, and no matter how many times the US/india/apple and so on says its not true, we still won't know

PowerVR drivers anyone?

While Richard Stallman is not paid directly by the Free Software Foundation, they do support his work in numerous ways. You can read some of the ways in which the FSF supports RMS in this recent fundraising appeal published by the FSF.

Good reason to contribute to the FSF fundraiser

Due to the truly amazing amount of information in your post that is inaccurate, I assume that you are either
1) a troll, or
2) 13 years old ...nevertheless, I'll provide some answers. Maybe it will be helpful for the OP.

Did the guy mention that he copyrighted his work? If he put it out there with nothing indicating that, there's an argument that he put it into the public domain,

If you don't trust me, how about the US Copyright Office?

Q: Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
A: No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”

You go on...

If someone is violating the GPL license and selling a modified version of his work, I'd recommend he contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who can help defend him, most likely free of charge.

While the EFF are a bunch of hoopy froods who protect our rights in cyberspace, they are certainly not the first people I'd contact about a GPL infringement. They're not even the 4th or 5th on my list.

Here's my list:
1) GPL-Violations.org - Volunteers, knowledgeable folks who will answer your questions pretty quickly
2) The SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) - Volunteer lawyers (much slower to respond due to demand, but they know their stuff)
3) The Software Freedom Conservancy (if you want to align your FOSS project with a "non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects.")
4) The Free Software Foundation, if you have a specific question about some of their GPLed software
5) Bradley Kuhn, Harald Welte, etc..

Jesus... It's amazing what crap a first poster can say.

Have you even read the text of the GPL(v2) ?

No, you can not sell GPLed software you didn't write, though you may charge a distribution fee, and you must provide a way to access the source code you're distributing. If some a-hole is charging $50-ish bucks for your software, take him down.

Here's an exact quote from the on the FSF's website:

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money? (#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney)

Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

When you mention a "distribution fee," I believe that you're talking about clause 3(b) of the source requirement of the GPLv2 (relevant section italicized):

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

Section 3(b) is talking about a requirement to provide source code to people you've already given binaries. You can still charge them a bunch of money up front for initial access to the program.

It's not always easy to understand parts of the GPL, and the GPLv3 made the whole darn thing a bunch

The GPL was written by RMS and the Free Software Foundation about ten years before the term "Open Source" was coined. The Free Software Definition and Open Source Definition are nearly identical and generally, if something is Free Software, it is Open Source and vice-versa. However, the FSF and OSI have deep philosophical differences. The primary difference is that the FSF considers software freedom to be most important, while the OSI considers the pragmatic value of source code availability to be the most important. I'm convinced that both FSF and OSI have important roles to play, as do permissive and Copyleft licenses. However, I can't agree with the proponents of the term "Open Source" who claimed that it was less confusing than "Free Software," as posts like yours make it clear that two competing terms make things more confusing rather than less.

If the GPL was intended to be temporary, it was only until copyright was no longer relevant to software. If you need an example of the relevance of Copyleft in general and the GPL specifically, you need only look at Android. Google has made it clear that they prefer permissively-licensed software so that they can choose whether or not to release source whenever they want. They exercised that power with Android 3 (Gingerbread) by releasing no source at all with the exception of Linux, which is under the GPL v2. The fact that many companies "take open source seriously" is no reason to abandon Copyleft but rather the exact opposite.

There was an incident with the GPL app GNU Go. Here is the FSF's take on the matter.

I know there's a GPL issue with the Apple app store. I haven't heard about the other licenses but my gut tells me that the more permissive ones are probably okay.

Zittrain and the rest of the Berkman Center are just shills for Google. The FSF isn't far behind. Open source should be about programmers freely sharing knowledge, not about controlling people.

Thanks to the FSF they have decided that somehow the device will be more Free if they add extra hardware to remove the ability load your own firmware for the wifi. I'd rather they threw the wifi chip away and use a worse chip which requires no non-free code or just accepted you need the non-free firmware, don't up the cost to embed the non-free firmware into the board itself and then pretend it doesn't exist, it's just dumb.

rsync has to be reinvented because its license is obnoxious.

$ cat /usr/share/doc/rsync/copyright

COPYRIGHT
---------

Copyright (C) 1996-2011 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.

Rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and is currently
maintained by Wayne Davison. It has been improved by many developers
from around the world.

Rsync may be used, modified and redistributed only under the terms of
the GNU General Public License, found in the file: /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3

on Debian systems, or at

    http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html

Failbook should be legally mandated to provide this information.

http://www.fsf.org/facebook

Firmware runs on a sub-device rather then your cpu and is really more part of the hardware rather then part of the driver. Just look at the mess the FSF are inspiring the OpenMoko guys to make of their next board (adding a chip with a firmware burned in, to remove the possibility of updating the firmware, just to sweep it under the carpet rather then shipping any non-free code).

To me your bug report really has more to say about the level of use of screen rotation rather then the implications of not shipping the firmware by default. It's unfortunate nobody picked up on it before it reached a Debian stable release, but despite being involved in a project where I would have expected to encounter someone hitting such a bug, this is the first I've heard of it.

Sorry if my reply upset you or seemed overly unfriendly, but I've seen far too many baseless slurs on the radeon code here over the years and before the clarification yours pushed my buttons again! Thanks for clarifying what you were really referring to, lack of firmware making things less capable and a bug where you could trigger a crash rather then a "sorry we can't do that without firmware" message. The radeons are one of the worst edge cases for the whole firmware debate as the devices can function without one but gain features with one AND there has been a previous project (radeonhd) that actually provided some of those features without a non-free firmware in the past but pragmatism made the developers decide that using the firmware was a saner long term course of action then maintaining all the extra low-level code for the card themselves in addition to the cpu based driver code.

freetards

At the point that you start picking on the mentally ill to try to divide us up you are beginning to look like a pretty sad and pathetic individual.

The Android headers conform to this.

You know this? You have actually checked them all? I mean, I personally believe this. I think Google is a pretty careful and well resourced company which isn't likely to screw up, but

So, where's the problem? Oh, right ... people who think that EVERYTHING should be protected when it's their code, and NOTHING should be protected if it's someone elses code.

The problem is pretty clear. People signed up to Linux in the belief that they were putting in to a common pot that everybody would have a chance of having a meal from. Now Google is actively looking for ways to split out the meat into a special strainer and eat from those bits of that pot whilst not letting anyone else.

This fud falls into the same category that Stallman and the FSF were engaged in back in August. Lots of "blah-blah-blah" and no substance - just another attempt to get some attention with a baseless attack on Android.

You think that it isn't a problem that there are thousands of people who have the right to terminate my manufacturers license to give me updates to my phone? But then in fact; we see your signature and realise that this wasn't meant as some thinking, logical attack:

RMS is asking police to investigate a murder attempt. Someone slipped Odor-Eaters into his sandals.

The first time you see this, it's pretty funny. Stupid, immature, but then who doesn't occasionally laugh at a "poo" joke? Potty fart.. HA ha haaa... oh. But this isn't just a joke to you. This is your signature which you have now kept for months on end. This is how you define your personality; by a personal attack on someone else's hygiene "opportunities". At the very least it's the theme you would like to use to link your posts together. I mean fuck sake; what is your problem?? Did RMS take you to Catholic church as a child or something?

Freud said it best - he wasn't worried about the nutcases he treated, but the nutcases who were friends.

Freud was a nutcase himself. What an appropriate post.

Pleaso don't continue to make us all look like freetards. This has been done over many times - not everything in the kernel is copyrightable. Linux contains a lot of stuff that you're free to copy. For example, stuff that came from BSD code, stuff that is governed by a public standard, stuff that is "scene a faire" material and therefore not subject to copyright, stuff that is "sweat of the brow" material and as such not subject to copyright.

The Android headers conform to this. So, where's the problem? Oh, right ... people who think that EVERYTHING should be protected when it's their code, and NOTHING should be protected if it's someone elses code.

This fud falls into the same category that Stallman and the FSF were engaged in back in August. Lots of "blah-blah-blah" and no substance - just another attempt to get some attention with a baseless attack on Android.

Freud said it best - he wasn't worried about the nutcases he treated, but the nutcases who were friends.

That video generates more questions in my brain than it answers.

What questions?

"ACTA is bad, nnkay?" it says, which is not enough.

It's enought for the video. Nobody would watch a 30 minutes boring video quoting obfuscated texts refering to more obfuscated texts already signed by countries dozens of years before that.

The point of this video is to try to get the interest of a lot of people. The one who didn't heard of ACTA before. Once these people are interested, they can seek informations by themselves. The link provided in the video, that's a good start. Or see the wikipedia page, seek on the search engine, or seek on their favorite online newspaper.

The extremely one-side view on ACTA the video provides sickens me.

Well, what do you suggest? A more positive approach? Like "Think of the future, nobody will be able to share knowledge, wouldn't that be great?".
What if everything is bad in ACTA?

It doesn't even tell me who "The Negotiators" are.

That's the point. "The Negotiators" are not known. ACTA has been negotiated in secret during the past few years. Withoout the control of the democratically elected parliaments or other institutions. Now the treaty is finalized and signed by some Countries. The other Countries now have a gun pressed against their head "sign it or you're out".

I can't say "No" to ACTA based on this video alone.

Of course you can't.
But maybe you can say no to ACTA based on this video + my comment + few other comments on this news, + on https://www.eff.org/issues/acta + https://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta + http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_tags&task=view&tag=acta&Itemid=408 + http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta/why-acta-declaration + http://www.ffii.org/ + your own sources of information.

And if someday you want to say no, here is how: http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/How_to_act_against_ACTA :)

He says that people should respect HIS copyrights and choice of license, but that nobody should respect mine, or yours, or your employers.

That's the definition of a hypocrite - and it deserves being attacked, because he has continually, and very publicly, called those who disagree with him as "evil" and deserving of being ripped off.

As for IBM, there is no way that they would accept - they have a much better understanding of licensing than he does. Heck, he doesn't even get that the GPL permits someone to resume redistribution after a violation by simply downloading a new copy of the code and conforming to the new license grant because of contra proferentem and clause 6 of the GPLv2 - a position that was ridiculed by some of the freetards when I pointed it out a couple of months ago, but the International Free and Open Source Law Review has just pointed out that contra proferentem applies even to the GPL.

RMS does not offer to "help" unless it benefits him. Look at the lies over the Android GPLv2 termination. Why the lies? Because he wants attention and money! And for him, attention is foremost - it's why he pulled the Steve Jobs slam in the first place. Like many narcissists (and unlike people with Aspergers) he's VERY aware of what people think, and exploits it whenever he can, same as Fred Phelps.

Kind of.
http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Php-Brainfuck

maybe, and only maybe, but saying this in a forum is helping Microsoft and others close future hardware.
So let's focus on making Microsoft, Apple, etc ... not implement freedom restricting measures.
We should not rely on hackers to work around limitations that should not be allowed in the first place.
go to http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement to get your voice heard!

Well this is technology use in politics. Plus how is this not relevant to slashdot! Even the EFF seems to think it's worth trying.

The copyright holders can release a GPL'ed product also under a distribution license that imposes further restrictions

I am not sure this is the case. See http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance

... and I had quoted the definition on the front page, said multiple times that was what I was quoting (""No - look at the definition on the front page of the FSF web site" (which you also quoted, btw), included the link to that page (which you also quoted), and quoted it word for word.

It was on that basis, said that both the FSF and Stallman are being misleading and hypocritical, and don't even meet their standard for what "free software" is.

That they bury a different definition elsewhere on their site that is not as comprehensive as the definition plastered in big letters on their front page is just another example of their misleading tactics. Trying to say "it's a marketing blurb" kind of makes my point for me, doesn't it?

After all, what is marketing, in this particular case, but bait-and-switch?

If it said "distribute" instead of "use" then I could maybe see your point.

Here are the freedoms on the front page (notice the bolded one - it means distribution):

You deserve to use software that is:-
1. free from restriction
2. free to share and copy
3. free to learn and adapt
4. free to work with others
you deserve free software.

See my point? In this case "share" software == "distribute" software.

My point is, again, that they are being hypocrites when they say people "deserve free software", and yet software under the GPL is not free, not for the developer, and not for the user.

It's okay to have licenses that contain restrictions such as the GPL, but to claim that they're "free as in free speech", and to blatantly market them as such is dishonest.

The definition you refer to is NOT on the front page of the fsf.org website.

No it isn't, and I never said it was. What IS on the front page is a line that says (paraphrasing) "this is what we mean by 'free software'" and then a link to that definition, helpfully labelled "The Free Software Definition".

Here's the definition on the front page : http://www.fsf.org/static/nosvn/working/w/deserve.png

It's a marketing blurb. It simplifies things to grab attention, and it doesn't claim to be definitive. As opposed to the Free Software Definition, which does.

Even then, it says "you deserve to use", and from a purely user perspective, nothing it says is incorrect. If it said "distribute" instead of "use" then I could maybe see your point.

As it is, the only way I can imagine this image misleading anyone would be if they spent five seconds looking at the page, and then leave never to return, convinced they knew all there is to know about the FSF. And really, anyone with that strategy is going to get unintentionally misled by a lot of web sites, not just the FSF.

The definition you refer to is NOT on the front page of the fsf.org website.

Here's the definition on the front page : http://www.fsf.org/static/nosvn/working/w/deserve.png

They put it in a png so that it won't be indexed (another example of misleading marketing by Stallman et. al.).

No - look at the definition on the front page of the FSF web site http://fsf.org/.

Well, I did. The one I found said this:

The FSF advocates for free software ideals as outlined in the Free Software Definition

If there's another incompatible definition on the page, please do quote it, because as it is, I'm sorry but I can't see your point at all.

It's just another example of the latest round of hypocrisy from Stallman (or have you forgotten his connection with the FSF?) Two weights, two measures ...

I really don't see a conflict of interest there. Now if he was demanding people use a licence that let him rebrand and sell other people's hard work, all in the name of freedom, that would be hypocrisy. As it is, I don't see it.

The same hypocrisy that says "the GPL extends enough rights to protect developers sharing code and end users ... except for when developers want to add their code to GNU, in which case, a license under the GPL isn't enough - gimme your copyright, b*tch".

Well, it's not as if you need to have your project in GNU in order for it to be Free Software. Sure, you can take issue with the acceptance criteria for GNU, but that's a separate issue to my mind.

He's a control freak

That's quite possible. Certainly he's got one hell of an ego. On the other hand, without that, he'd never have been able stick to his guns for nigh-on 30 years. So I tend to cut him some slack; I think the Free Software movement has done far and away more good than harm.

Apart from that ... I've never met the man, so I can't comment on his personal habits, but nothing that you mention constitutes hypocrisy on his part.

Remember all the complaints about forking in the Unix universe? Now, Unix is pretty much standardized, and it's GPL-based linux that has hundreds of distros with incompatabilities.

Again, an issue separate from Stallman's ethical standing. And really, I think that's something of a paper tiger. I mean, by and large the same software is available and running on distros as diverse as Slackware, Fedora, Debian and Gentoo.

There may be a certain duplication of effort involved, some extra work to handle different layouts ... but what's the alternative? You'd need to have some sort of central controlling body with the authority to tell people what they could and do not do with their distros ... and that doesn't much sound like freedom to me.

It's the same hypocrisy that he's demonstrated for decades. The same hypocrisy that says "the GPL extends enough rights to protect developers sharing code and end users ... except for when developers want to add their code to GNU, in which case, a license under the GPL isn't enough - gimme your copyright, b*tch".

He's a control freak. Just look at the xemacs vs emacs debacle. It's the same as his reputation for being late all the time (passive-aggressive behavior), being blatantly offensive (inappropriately touching his privates, picking his nose, eating boogers, not bathing, etc - again, a pattern of forcing his offensive BO and habits on others as a way of "marking his territory").

He's well past his due date (judging by the smell, that occurred LONG ago). We don't need a "social movement" - we need stable code. The GPL promotes forks rather than getting the fix done at the source.

Remember all the complaints about forking in the Unix universe? Now, Unix is pretty much standardized, and it's GPL-based linux that has hundreds of distros with incompatabilities.

My argument had ZERO to do with the merits (or lack thereof) of the GPL, or copyright law, so there was no reason for you to bring that up.

Your whole argument is one massive straw man. Now, instead of getting angry with me, why not read what I actually wrote, instead of what you thought I was writing, and address that instead, hmm? :-)

Is Stallman being a hypocrite (again)? If not, why not?

What copy restrictions are there? What redistribution restrictions are there?

Please read the GPL. It most certainly has restrictions. BTW, instead of a knee-jerk reaction, why not read what I wrote instead of making a straw-man argument.

I'm not saying (or even implying) that the GPL is evil or the spawn of satan - different licenses for different folks and all that. What I *am* saying is that Stallman is a hypocrite for pointing out the supposed failures of others while claiming on the FSF website to be in favour of free software, but his own license (the GPL) doesn't meet the definition on the FSF front page.

This is far from the first time that the FSF and Stallman have trolled.

Marketing: The art of making something seem better than it really is. And sadly, most people fall for it, which is why they keep using that approach.

... which is what RMS has been doing all along, and continues to do. Marketing.

The fact is that his own software fails to meet the ideals laid down on the front page of the fsf website:

1. "free from restriction"? The GPL license is full of restrictions, on copying, on redistribution, etc. That's not "free as in free speech".

2. "free to share and copy"? ... but only within the restrictions of the GPL. That's not free as in "free speech" either.

3. "free to learn and adapt?" While you're free to learn, you are NOT free to adapt, except within the restrictions of the GPL. Once again, that's not free as in "free speech" either.

4. "free to work with others"? Have you seen the restrictions on linking in the GPL? Or the list of licenses that it's not compatible with? That's not free as in "free speech" either.

Stallman is a hypocrite to be taking pokes at Google, while claiming his own license is "free as in free speech". Most licenses, by their nature, impose restrictions. Nothing wrong with that - but don't claim that yours doesn't when it does, and then be a bigger hypocrite by claiming others aren't "free".

Maybe it's another side effect of eating too much foot cheese, just like the FSF pushing anti-google / anti-linux FUD last month in a lame effort to get some attention for that ugly stepchild, the GPLv3, as reported on slashdot.

I'd suggest Stallman first clean up his own act, except that his apparent disdain for the frequent use of soap and water makes that unlikely.

DON'T BUY FROM ATI enemy of your freedom


That picture is looking sillier and sillier as time goes on.

you have much more ways to use the compiler. it still is on your desktop, still 100% in your control. but it's not a blackbox anymore, it's now something you can plug in own stuff, extend, reuse, etc.

Hmmm, I wonder where have I seen this before?

• Xorg needs plenty of help that could be influencial. I heard it's more difficult than Kernel development ;-)
• You can pick a project from https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/
• You can also look at the projects of other well-known organisations (smaller projects by Mozilla, VLC, GNU, Wine), but it's best to work on a software you use and like. For instance, I tried to extend evince with a dual-screen presentation capability.
• I can also put forth my project, JakeApp that needs developing of a GUI (Java or Python or Ruby, whichever you like), and testing. It's about distributed P2P folder synchronization and hopefully soon also P2P TCP tunnelling, for small workgroups or companies.

So in other words, yes, you have to release the user name and password, since it's part of the source and compiled into the binary, and the AGPLv3 requires that it all be released.

The GNUstapo strikes again. Last week it was FUD to try to get people to encourage Linux to move to the AGPLv3, which would kill Android on mobile devices, and now this. No thanks. Keep chipping away at the various freedoms - you just end up making the *BSDs look better and better.

Dude.

AGPL3 != GPL3

I mean, yes, the difference in name is slight, the difference in license is not. Indeed, the difference between the two is essentially what is being discussed here.

If you are actually interested and not simply *BSD license trolling, you can read about it here.

The GNUstapo strikes again. Last week it was FUD to try to get people to encourage Linux to move to the AGPLv3, which would kill Android on mobile devices, and now this. No thanks. Keep chipping away at the various freedoms - you just end up making the *BSDs look better and better.

Required reading to be minimally informed:

• GPL v3 faq
• tivoization
• GPL
• the tivo series 2 upgrade

Before the FSF site went down temporarily, I read the original news article, (Android GPLv2 termination worries: one more reason to upgrade to GPLv3 and sure enough, the last line currently says "Companies that sell products that use Android can help out by encouraging the developers of Linux to make the switch to GPLv3."

Linux is licensed solely under GPLv2, not "GPLv2 or later", so switching is not a question of Linus deciding to change (which he wouldn't agree to anyway) - all the other contributors would have to agree as well.

I emailed Brett Smith (copy in my journal) to point this out, as well as point out that the GPLv2 allows for distribution as long as you are CURRENTLY in compliance. There is no "you lose your rights forever" clause in the GPLv2 license.

Lesson: Never assign your code to someone who says "trust me." Not even the FSF. And be wary of clauses that allow them to change the license at will to a future version that may not be to your liking, or that they may interpret to say something it doesn't say.

Ask the GPL Compliance Lab. That's what they do.

Not really... Google is in trouble right now mainly for having made a clean-room implementation(Dalvik) of Java VM. But much of Java is already available under GPL. The GPL is designed to give protection from patent claims by the author of the code.
From the GPLv2 :

...Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

Like the FSF said Google could have avoided much of this by just building Dalvik over Oracle's GPL code, or a derivative of it such as IcedTea.
Why didn't they do so?
Probably to release Dalvik under the more permissive Apache license which allows for proprietary modifcations by handset manufacturers.

Other companies in the future (in case Oracle wins; lets pray it doesn't) are just probably going to
(1) license Java, or
(2) license the patents allegedly infringed by Dalvik or
(3) just use a derivative of Oracle's GPL'd code such as IcedTea.

http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. "

Spam is ironic too in this way, with some few destroying email in order to make some small (relative to global scale) profit on it, and meanwhile making it harder to use email to bring abundance to everyone.

There needs to be a general term for this. Selfishness disease? Or is is better to just call it a "Racket"?
    http://warisaracket.org/racket.html

The biggest crime is not even in the theft -- it is in forcing everyone to spend a lot of time worrying about theft,.

We could build much more secure systems, especially based on free and open systems like GNU/Linux, and we had the opportunity, but the US Congress made it hard twenty years ago to build good encryption into everything and bad standards stuck, and now with effectively infinite copyrights and overly broad patents, cooperation has been made harder to make good systems for everyone. Richard Stallman's points on freedom are making more and more sense every day.
    http://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society-2/

So we see another arms race sucking up so much time and energy and the lives of smart people to produce what? Meanwhile the singularity (if it is to happen) draws nearer every day.

Richard Stallman will give the keynote speech at the OKCon11 on June 30. http://www.fsf.org/events/20110630-fsod-berlin

> How does Stallman pay his bills, anyway?

(For a detailed answer, you could read a biography about him: http://static.fsf.org/nosvn/faif-2.0.pdf )

Some organisations pay him for the talks he gives. He also won some awards in the 90s which came with chunky cash prizes which he said he would invest.

His bills probably aren't too big anyway. He asks his hosts to pay his travel and accommodation (usually staying with someone in their house rather than in a hotel). He has no kids, which saves him a lot of money.

FSF doesn't pay him any salary.

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