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Isn't that the spec that's 6,000+ pages of gems like, "blah blah blah: Display this the way Office 98 did; blah blah blah: Display it the way Office 2K did;..." because Microsoft could not or would not definitively describe the behaviour of their own products?

No. You are applying Hanlon's razor here, which is nice of you. In this case, Anti-Hanlon is called for.

Look who was at the helm when this monstrosity was gestated. Look who this guy spent most of his time?

https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff...

Use your favourite search engine: you'll find more of this. Yes, there's a German pressure group headed by a big German publisher pushing for copyright maximalism. Yes, this is Ye Olde Copyright Maximalism Orks, over and over again.

The Anti-Hanlon:
"Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice"

Is MS is distributing GPLv3 code alongside their proprietary binaries (bash.exe, etc.)? If so, does that grant the recipient protections from patent infringement for those specific products under the terms?

If such a grant is given to a company that is then sued by a Microsoft schill (as determined through the discovery process), can we then use the terms of the GPLv3 as a valid defense against some patent lawsuits? IANAL, but would like to know.

I don't know of anyone who has forgiven them for injecting adware into downloads.

The Legions of Undying Rancour spawned by SourceForge go a lot further back than that.

SourceForge drifting (2001) by Loic Dachary

But when I read the details of their copyright assignment, I saw major problems. I was asked to assign copyright of my work that "is, or may in the future be, utilised in the SourceForge collaborative software development platform". The assignment was not limited to my contribution to the SourceForge code, it potentially covered all my past and future work if it was of some interest to SourceForge.

He tries to help them refine this, and here is what he receives for his efforts:

By signing this agreement, you, the undersigned, hereby assign to VA Linux all right, title and interest in and to the software code described below, and all copyright, patent, proprietary information, trade secret, and other intellectual property rights therein. You also agree to take all actions and sign all documents (such as copyright assignments or registrations) reasonably requested by VA Linux to evidence and record the above assignments.

What do they offer in return for this sweeping, blanket assignment? To enforce the GPL? No. Not a sweet thing.

If it's okay to violate Hollywood movie company copyrights (as is the prevailing view here) because you don't like the terms why are the copyrights to Linux more special?

Licensing differences lead to radically different outcomes. Free software (not just the variants of the Linux kernel containing only free software) is more attractive because the effect of the license on the users. Hollywood movies are licensed restrictively even disallowing verbatim non-commercial sharing (in other words, treating friends like friends). In addition, Hollywood movies often use digital restrictions management (a proper expansion of "DRM" from the majority standpoint, that of the viewer) to enforce more than the license restricts. DRM means non-free software control over one's computer since all DRM software is proprietary. Proprietary software is inherently unethical no matter its purpose. As people put more sensitive data on their computers, more use of proprietary software means predictably uglier outcomes even for those who participated fully in a DRM scheme.

Free software implements an environment of sharing and cooperation as well as individual control over one's computer (to the limits of one's interest and skill). These are good unto themselves but also have good consequences for businesses (which is a nice consequence but not chief goal of the free software movement). I trust I don't have to review how many commercial developers and distributors benefit from the Linux kernel. Commercial distribution of Hollywood movies as we currently see, by contrast, implements control over the viewer, fund an increasingly punitive copyright regime, and fund an unjustifiably long term of copyright. /.ers who pay to see the Star Wars movies would be wise to recall this; they're directly funding the organization most widely associated with the last copyright term expansion—Disney, for example.

Violating a free software license means mistreating a person or organization that was respecting a user's software freedom. But violating a proprietary license can be the "lesser evil" as Richard Stallman once put it in his talk about why society needs free software and why we should value software freedom for its own sake: Someone who had a useful nonfree program under a license that prohibited non-commercial verbatim copies had to choose between obeying the license of that program (and denying their friend a copy of the program) versus helping their friend who wanted a copy of a program by distributing a copy. This came up in the context of discussing free software freedom #2: "the freedom to help your neighbour. That's the freedom to make copies and distribute them to others, when you wish":

Freedom two is essential on fundamental ethical grounds, so that you can live an upright, ethical life as a member of your community. If you use a program that does not give you freedom number two, you're in danger of falling at any moment into a moral dilemma. When your friend says "that's a nice program, could I have a copy?" At that moment, you will have to choose between two evils. One evil is: give your friend a copy and violate the licence of the program. The other evil is: deny your friend a copy and comply with the licence of the program.

Once you are in that situation, you should choose the lesser evil. The lesser evil is to give your friend a copy and violate the licence of the program.

He goes on to explain that picking the lesser evil is not good, but one should aim the harm at the party that did harm (those that publish useful proprietary software) not to an innocent party (the friend). So the solution is to only have free software so you never get into this dilemma in the first place because all of the software you have you're free to share. Here we can see that the same copyright scheme grants power to radically different lic

> an anti-trust investigator wokeup.

Don't believe that. The EU commission is, alas, as lobby-infested as everywhere else:

    http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/...
    https://corporateeurope.org/po...

They watch their rethoric, and from time to time they burn a sacrificial lamb, because they are shitless scared by growing popular (and sadly also populist) animosity against the EU. But if you think they're actually interested in change, I've got a (cheap) bridge around here...

If by "rules" you mean "got a EEE pulled on them by a megacorp that turned Linux into a proprietary OS they control by cutting off support for ASOP, locking crucial APIs behind a playwall, and making GPL V3 verbotten because they can't pull a TiVo with it?" then yeah I suppose it "won" but if that is "winning" I'd sure as fuck hate to see what you would consider a loss.,/p>

Lets see if Android behaves anything like actual Linux, shall we? So you can just replace Android with any old vanilla ARM Linux build, right? Nope and in fact with each passing quarter less and less phones are able to be "rooted" (which is and of itself an insult to Linux, as having to jailbreak your own hardware is the exact opposite of open) unless you use malware like Kingoroot. You can fix it yourself, right? Nope the drivers are all black boxed and again your changes to the Android source certainly isn't gonna run on that phone you pick up in Walmart. How about the community controlling the direction of the OS, where any coder can supply changes for consideration and possibly get them integrated upstream? Bwa ha ha ha ha...not a chance in hell, Google has exactly zero fuck to give about your code or that of the community, especially since it'll probably be GPL V3 which again is verbotten precisely because they can't TiVo it.

Yeah you "won" alright, you won about as much as that Rube trying to beat the hustler playing third card monty in Times Square. Lets face it you got scammed, had, ripped off, and the truly sad part? You are actually cheering for the guy that fucked you! But don't take MY word for it, lets see what RMS and the FSF has to say...yeah not so good, unless you want to run one of only 2 now out of date phones, otherwise you might as well just be on iOS....yeah you "won" there sparky, you are just full of "win".

ah NO. please do some research BEFORE recommending fairphone to people. you'll notice that Fairphone has REMOVED (reneged on) their promise to provide a "Fair OS". their naivety (and the fact that they haven't listened to extremely experienced software libre developers) is well-documented - a good example is here: http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/...

the Fairphone is only "modular" if you are mechanically-minded. i know of people who are competent engineers who, in attempting to repair a laptop, have managed accidentally to destroy FPC12 connectors because they weren't anticipating quite how tiny and fragile they would be.

"Modularity" also doesn't really solve the problem of chipsets being proprietary *and* insecure - google "900 million qualcomm android security vulnerability". you have to actually *design* the phone in *advance* to take into account these sorts of things. Neither google nor Fairphone have done that.

https://davehakkens.nl/news/re...

dave hakkens is the person who really inspired the modular smartphone movement and brought it to prominence (buglabs was the first to really implement the concept, almost a decade ago). however we don't really have an actual explanation of what went wrong with project ara. here's some hints (search in this document for "ara" obviously): http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep...

basically it's down to the fact that google has more money than they have creative sense. they therefore tried to use "financial brute force" to solve problems. the summary is: with their financial resources they created a "backbone standard" called MIPI UniPro... forgetting that in the process it would be patented by the partners, thus AUTOMATICALLY locking out ANY kind of interoperability and competition for the next 20 years. how, exactly, is that supposed to be "open"???

if we want modular smartphones to be successful, we need PROPERLY OPEN STANDARDs that have no vendor lock-in, but that are also properly protected by a Certification Mark (the standards-equivalent of a Trademark) and a Foundation (or CIC or Benefit Corporation), which is given the financial clout by its sponsors to jump on anyone who wrongly implements the standard in such a way as to cause short-circuits (and end up killing someone due to lithium battery fires for example). it's not like a software standard, where interoperability failures cause a segfault: a HARDWARE fault can genuinely be dangerous.

also the standard needs to be made up of *other* standards that are unencumbered and royalty-free, so that companies and makers alike are incentivised to create modules (using 3D printers and low-cost off-the-shelf circuits), for example this one, under development: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Ope... . Google *literally* did the total opposite of this strategy in every single conceivable way. paying companies to develop new chipsets (patented, proprietary) and saying "here! it's open! sign our NDA, agree to our policy, and you'll be fiiiine!" i'm just staggered by the naivety of a billion-dollar company that had to add me to a special list "stop phoning this person to invite them to interview, you've called them five times already over the past 10 years".

the other thing is, whilst i am delighted at dave's success in bringing the benefits of modularity to a wider audience, he doesn't have any technical knowledge. he views an *increase* in the number of companies on the phonebloks.com front page as being a good thing. the key question which illustrates the point without having to spell it out: are any of the products listed on the phonebloks page interoperable in *any* way?

so. if there is anybody who would like to see this done properly - in an open fashion so that the mistakes of both google and fairphone are not repeated (see http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/...) do reach out on the arm-netbook mailing list http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mail... i've been investigating and researching this for years and waiting for the right opportunity. often it's good to wait for "big" corporations to fail to deliver, because it means that the hugely-public lessons sink in. a "small person" saying "this ain't gonna work no matter how much money they throw at it" tends not to be believed until the predicted failure comes about.

just as i did with the successfully-crowd-funded modular libre eco-laptop i've set up a stub page (for now) http://rhombus-tech.net/commun... which is a hybrid phone that acts "dumb" and may be upgraded to "smart" by plugging in a computer-on-a-module in Compact-Flash form-factor. "peripher

So why not encourage GPL violators ("pirates" too)? Instead we seem to cheer whenever we find a GPL violator.

First, we should understand what the propagandistic term "piracy" really means and understand that meaning as separate from sharing—a friendly, neighborly thing to do. As the GNU Project points out in it's list of terms to avoid on "theft": "In general, laws don't define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If the laws (the implementation) don't fit our ideas of right and wrong (the spec), the laws are what should change. A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that "piracy" and "theft" are smear-words.". This difference gets to the heart of the problem in your point—you're conflating the legal with the ethical and then trying to get others to view all sharing as copyright infringement and all copyright infringement as equivalent because the law frames things in that way.

We should recognize that the terms of the licenses involved between, say, the GNU General Public License (GPL) and a typical Hollywood movie, are radically different when it comes to doing what friends do: share. One can and should share copies of GPL'd programs. It's easy to do, the GPL is easy to comply with simply by also sharing a copy of the complete corresponding source code of the program at the same time as one shares the binary. By contrast, other famously shared copyrighted items (such as most Hollywood movies) aren't legal to share even if done non-commercially and verbatim. So doing the thing that comes naturally with friends, non-commercial and verbatim sharing, is likely not allowed by that movie's license.

Since you mention the GPL, a free software license written by Richard Stallman, this is somewhat akin to what Stallman describes in his talks about the freedoms of free software specifically freedom #2: the freedom to help your neighbour. That's the freedom to make copies and distribute them to others, when you wish. This comes from a 2006-03-09 talk and you can see how the consideration here is akin to the dilemma one faces should a friend ask for a copy of a Hollywood movie:

Freedom two is essential on fundamental ethical grounds, so that you can live an upright, ethical life as a member of your community. If you use a program that does not give you freedom number two, you're in danger of falling at any moment into a moral dilemma. When your friend says "that's a nice program, could I have a copy?" At that moment, you will have to choose between two evils. One evil is: give your friend a copy and violate the licence of the program. The other evil is: deny your friend a copy and comply with the licence of the program.

Once you are in that situation, you should choose the lesser evil. The lesser evil is to give your friend a copy and violate the licence of the program.

[laughter]

Now, why is that the lesser evil? The reason is that we can assume that your friend has treated you well and has been a good person and deserves your cooperation. The reason we can assume this is that in the other case, if a nasty person you don't really like asked you for help, of course you can say "Why should I help you?" So that's an easy case. The hard case is the case where that person has been a good person to you and other people and you would want to help him normally.

Whereas, the developer of the program has deliberately attacked the social solidarity of your community. Deliberately tried to separate you from everyone else in the World. So if you can't help doing wrong in some direction or other, better to aim the wrong at somebody who deserves it, who has done something wrong, rather than at somebody who hasn't done anything wrong.

Howe

To quote the Free Software Foundation Europe...

"There is no cloud...

...just other people's computers."

So what if loading a kernel module makes a single binary? Nobody is distributing the combined binary.

Somebody up above said "no one is combining Linux + ZFS into a single binary", which is just stupid because somebody is obviously doing exactly that, as I pointed out. I did not comment on the actual issue, but I will now. The issue, if you've being paying attention, is that Canonical is distributing a derived work of the Linux kernel that they do not have the right to distribute. Don't argue with me about that, I'm just the messenger. If you have your own opinions about what constitutes a derived work or what rights Canonical actually has in this matter, then RTFA.

Then maybe go read this page. Here's an excerpt: "U.S.D.J. Scheindlin found Westinghouse’s infringement to be willful and therefore awarded treble statutory damages of $90,000. The court also entered a permanent injunction prohibiting distribution of HDTV products with the BusyBox software and further ordered all infringing HDTVs to be forfeited to the plaintiff"

So far, the GPL has stood up in court every time it has been tested, which by now is quite a few times all around the world, including the good old US of A. Most violators aren't dumb enough to take it to court, they either get into compliance sensibly or settle early.

Don't worry. Corporate is being listened to: http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/...

The European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society will surely do the right thing.

Whoever thought democracy is about the unwashed masses, tsk.

It *does* matter what the government is using it means that private companies won't be forced to use proprietary Windows applications to communicate with the government.

You do know it's possible to embed binary formats in XML, right?

Someone obviously didn't do their homework...

For those interested, phatomfive is referring to this: http://fsfe.org/campaigns/gplv3/patents-and-gplv3.en.html#Explicit-patent-grant in regards to GPLv3 and patents.

European Parliament adopts deeply flawed unitary patent, gives up power over innovation policy

Have you ever encountered one of the Free Software Foundation's articles about a particular software topic, like copyright or patents or the advantages of free software? Ever notice that, typically, at least 80% of the citations in the article are to other articles by Richard Stallman? Like this one? The only opinion Richard Stallman really recognizes as objective or authoritative is his own earlier opinion.

Then link to an artikle written bij Stallman, which contains at least "posted by" and a "copyright" text including his name. The Free Software Foundation Europe is a separate entity from the Free Software Foundation.

More information about your use of open source instead of free software: Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software - written by Richard Stallman, it even contains links to other online media.

His big mouth is a counterweight.

No, his big mouth is a liability for the open-source community. He is not a passionate but outspoken advocate of a movement; he is a single-minded, uncompromising advocate for his own opinions at the expense of everyone else's. Either you agree with him, or you are wrong.

Have you ever encountered one of the Free Software Foundation's articles about a particular software topic, like copyright or patents or the advantages of free software? Ever notice that, typically, at least 80% of the citations in the article are to other articles by Richard Stallman? Like this one? The only opinion Richard Stallman really recognizes as objective or authoritative is his own earlier opinion.

Although it was obvious the FSF would take this position, as it should, isn't it strategically wise to have multiple solutions for users to load a (mostly) free software OS on hardware with UEFI? For similar reasons, I think it's good to have Android devices running ClockworkMod so that they may boot CyanogenMod/Replicant. I understand that we (free software advocates) should always be encouraging consumers to make smart choices and purchase devices that will run free software (and a complete free software stack, when that's possible).

However, free software would become an "oasis in a desert", rather than a large and thriving ecosystem, if binary blobs, non-free drivers, non-free BIOS's, firmware hacks, etc. weren't around. It would become increasingly difficult to bring in more users. Those who have developed free software implementations to replace proprietary ones originate from all over the free software spectrum, so the pool of developers would also shrink.

I think you always want both: the hardcores who will run free software and free software only, and those who will make compromises on devices until (if/when) stable free software is developed for those devices. The FSFE's advice on installing CyanogenMod seems like a sensible approach that takes this into consideration. Likewise, why not help someone install as much free software as possible on a device with a non-free BIOS/bootloader?

It seems to me that UEFI will die a quick death if we A) fight very vocally against it, B) convince powerful corporations and governments that it's bad for them, C) ignore it where/when we can, and D) help others to circumvent it when necessary. It doesn't seem much different than the DRM problem in that way.

I would be very happy with Canonical's UEFI strategy if the following from this past /. comment can be done:

- Canonical will get efilinux signed with microsoft keys. So GRUB2 has to be made bootable from efillinux (efilinux is rather primitive, it just loads a kernel from a set collection of blocks from the device and run it. It shouldn't be too much difficult to have efilinux load and execute a GRUB2's "stage 1.5" or "stage 2"). Thus efilinux is the part that needs to be signed with microsoft's key (and efilinux's license makes it possible. Although that also means that you won't be able to hack it).

...

- GRUB2 can load coreboot (an opensource firmware) payloads, so it could also load SeaBIOS (a legacy BIOS implementation as a coreboot payload). - GRUB2 can also load windows XP's boot loader. So if any of the above is possible (either chainloading efilinux to grub2, or signing grub2 in a gplv3 compatible way). That means that grub2 could be used to boot windows XP on secure-boot hardware. (with seabios providing the legacy bios compatibility, and windows XP's ntldfr being loaded from grub2).

That unfortunately-complex method of chaining together multiple bootloaders seems to allow for any OS, even legacy ones, to boot (or at least attempt to boot) on UEFI hardware. Such a door might be closed if Canonical decides it won't play ball with Microsoft, and that seems like a door worth having open. However, I welcome any rebuttals...I don't know nearly enough about the issue.

Although it was obvious the FSF would take this position, as it should, isn't it strategically wise to have multiple solutions for users to load a (mostly) free software OS on hardware with UEFI? For similar reasons, I think it's good to have Android devices running ClockworkMod so that they may boot CyanogenMod/Replicant. I understand that we (free software advocates) should always be encouraging consumers to make smart choices and purchase devices that will run free software (and a complete free software stack, when that's possible).

However, free software would become an "oasis in a desert", rather than a large and thriving ecosystem, if binary blobs, non-free drivers, non-free BIOS's, firmware hacks, etc. weren't around. It would become increasingly difficult to bring in more users. Those who have developed free software implementations to replace proprietary ones originate from all over the free software spectrum, so the pool of developers would also shrink.

I think you always want both: the hardcores who will run free software and free software only, and those who will make compromises on devices until (if/when) stable free software is developed for those devices. The FSFE's advice on installing CyanogenMod seems like a sensible approach that takes this into consideration. Likewise, why not help someone install as much free software as possible on a device with a non-free BIOS/bootloader?

It seems to me that UEFI will die a quick death if we A) fight very vocally against it, B) convince powerful corporations and governments that it's bad for them, C) ignore it where/when we can, and D) help others to circumvent it when necessary. It doesn't seem much different than the DRM problem in that way.

I would be very happy with Canonical's UEFI strategy if the following from this past /. comment can be done:

- Canonical will get efilinux signed with microsoft keys. So GRUB2 has to be made bootable from efillinux (efilinux is rather primitive, it just loads a kernel from a set collection of blocks from the device and run it. It shouldn't be too much difficult to have efilinux load and execute a GRUB2's "stage 1.5" or "stage 2").
Thus efilinux is the part that needs to be signed with microsoft's key (and efilinux's license makes it possible. Although that also means that you won't be able to hack it).

...

- GRUB2 can load coreboot (an opensource firmware) payloads, so it could also load SeaBIOS (a legacy BIOS implementation as a coreboot payload).
- GRUB2 can also load windows XP's boot loader.
So if any of the above is possible (either chainloading efilinux to grub2, or signing grub2 in a gplv3 compatible way). That means that grub2 could be used to boot windows XP on secure-boot hardware. (with seabios providing the legacy bios compatibility, and windows XP's ntldfr being loaded from grub2).

That unfortunately-complex method of chaining together multiple bootloaders seems to allow for any OS, even legacy ones, to boot (or at least attempt to boot) on UEFI hardware. Such a door might be closed if Canonical decides it won't play ball with Microsoft, and that seems like a door worth having open. However, I welcome any rebuttals...I don't know nearly enough about the issue.

First, if this were the Debian bug, I feel like they would have said so. I assume there is some other issue. I could be wrong though.

My understanding of the Debian bug was that the OpenSSL key generation code had a bug where /dev/random (or /dev/urandom, whichever it actually used) was being read incorrectly but in a way that happened to work. The line that read the random seed appeared to be dead code despite happening to accidentally read in the random seed, so the Debian maintainer for the package deleted the line. The randomizer was also seeded with the PID of the process, so there was still some randomness (i.e. the bug was not made obvious by the exact same key getting generated every time), but little enough that brute forcing all of the keys became trivial.

See this blog article for a description of the events. Another blog post linked to this bug report in which the OpenSSL team claims the bug is in Valgrind/Purify, not in OpenSSL. I have not recently tried to read the code in detail, so I do not remember if there is actually a right way to fix the Valgrind/Purify warnings.

However you can't argue with his consistency.

Sure you can. He has made many speeches where he says that pirating copyright software is the right thing to do, because you're sticking it to the evil people who write such software, while he demands that his own copyright license (the GPL) be respected.

He's also a whack-job. His latest "campaign" is brain-dead Who in their right mind would think that writing a letter to, for example, IBM, offering to help them with open source, is anything but an insult and a waste of time? Or mailing it to Best Buy after the lawsuits? What a dope!

The fact is that he hasn't been able to write code in decades (the current gnu emacs is actually an import of the xemacs code, ditto for gcc being an import of egcs, because he totally screwed up both). So of course, he now makes his money bashing those who can.

His Steve Jobs remarks put him on the same level as Fred Phelps (perhaps even lower - I don't think even Phelps is going to eat his boogers and foot cheese in front of people because it's "finger-licking good", or tell women to "remove their spawn").

He's the guy putting "Open Sores" in open source.

The "risk" of Android and other non-GPLv3 software is that someone can take it and wrap it up in DRM and make sure you don't have control over your computing. That is not a lie: it is quite clearly true that that is possible, as it happens all the time. If you don't think this is a problem, then you are not required to listen to Stallman, but that does not make what he said a lie.

First, it does not "happen all the time". And if it did, really, who cares. Stallman has already gone on record that it's okay to steal software and violate licenses because those developers are doing evil and deserve it. So what's good for the goose ... (and you're going to have a hard time complaining that your rights are violated when you publicly say that others should have their same rights violated). The man is a big stinking steaming pile of hypocrisy.

Second, let's take a little test.

Do you believe that you should control your own data? Yes or no?

If yes, then how do you justify your wanting the right to manage your digital information, whilst condemning others (such as programmers) for wanting the same rights for their work product?

In the future, we're all going to demand that we have complete DRM over our own data. There's a market for that, and the first one to offer it will be rich. Privacy legislation isn't enough.

Screw the WIPO.

Be sure to use the GPLv3 license if your primary goal is to perpetuate the openness of the patentable attributes of the work you release and its derivatives.

<nit-picky>
not only US regulators were involved but also the Bundeskartellamt, pushed by the lobbying efforts of the FSFE (see press release).
</nit-picky>

The president of the German agency stated that "in individual cases, the acquisition of patents can also result in significant anticompetitive effects" (source).

OSS came a long way - the decision was not based on some ethical "free software is a value itself" reasons but showed the commercial impact and relevance of open source. Great!

Well, it wasn't mentioned here in RMS's 2006 lecture. It is here with "free/libre" in 2007.

Your scenario depends on two things.

1 - Microsoft would make so much money suing you that it would be in their best interest to halt all sales of their products in the EU, and pay another half a billion dollar fine. Do you have half a billion dollars that Microsoft can sue you for?

2 - Microsoft would win their court case against you when they worked with the Mono team, and allowed them to license the Mono code GPLv3.

http://www.fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/patents-and-gplv3.en.html

Too bad this endorsement mark is really about promoting FSF and settling old scores, rather than being about promoting users' freedom.

Negative, it is about being true to the FSF ideals and not old scores. His reason for saying it is GNU/Linux is due to the harms to software freedom that just saying Linux has caused, and forsaking the hard work the GNU project has done. Please read the lecture by him below for details...

http://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html

I don't think he bows a gasket when someone says Linux. (I have seen him respond to someone who just said Linux and didn't mention their saying GNU.) He accepts people will say what they want, he just asks they call it GNU/Linux due to the harm he sees in just calling it Linux. As for the "Works with BSD", I would say he may be against it. The reason being related to the advertising clause that is in the original (ironically also) BSD license. As he explained in a lecture (linked below) many software authors using different code with different advertising clauses would mean upteen (I think he says one would had 76) different adverts in it, which is a silly requirement. Of course, he may be just fine as long as it is a FSF endorsed license (which the original BSD license was not, for the reasons explained I think), since it really is all about the four software freedoms and if it is FSF endorse it avoids those issues... That information is also explained in the link below.

http://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html

As CyprusBlue stated above you, they would probably be fine with a compatibility table. The badges represent locking you into proprietary software. The FSF believes that one should avoid proprietary software period. That isn't to say that they want to tell someone they "can't" use Winblows, but they will not endorse anything that promotes using closed software. I see their point, and whole heatedly agree. If you haven't seen it, reading this lecture by Richard Stallman may help you see it from their point of view.

http://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html

I've worked on loooads of transcripts. I did most of these:

* http://wiki.fsfe.org/Transcripts

The best technique I've found is to have mplayer play the audio at 60% normal speed and have a text editor (emacs is my preference) in another window, flick between them with alt-TAB and hit Space to start and pause mplayer.

The DMCA may not exist in many countries, but it is what 'DVD Jon' was initially accused of violating though Norway is neither in the US or in the EU. That's how far out there the Microsoft / RIAA lobby is. The EU countries have since suffered the nastier DMCA equivalent, the EUCD.

You liars are annoying. H.264 is still a closed standard and it does not matter how many Microsoft Partners tell you that closed is open or that open means "buy our stuff". H.264 fails on points 2, 3, and 4 of the formal definition of open standard:

1. The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
2. The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
3. The relevant copyright and patents for the standard are made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
4. There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard

Canonical is free to re-sell proprietary standards, but let's not pretend that helping establish vendor lock-in was or is a goal of Free and Open Source Software. Oh, wait, Canonical is not re-selling H.264 except for the OEM editions. The rest of you are still on the hook for the bill because it is merely a distributor. I notice that the enGadget article on H.264 patents leaves out the price for the third category obligated to pay under patent law: the user. GIF should have been a lesson about software patents.

Obviously the Microsoft Party and its members have problems with the above definition and seek to disparage it and the process itself. Keeping the second version of the European Interoperability Framework clean, free from M$ damage, takes work.

I've watched television for decades and funnily enough I don't even know half of the people responsible for it. Oh well, I guess that means that they aren't important then!

http://fsfe.org/

"A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other 'open source' codecs now." - Steve Jobs

Apple and Microsoft, working together against open source. How delicious.

you can't remove source code access to something once it's been released via GPL. Even when forked. You can remove source code access to things that have been released via BSD.

You don't know what you're talking about. If you own the copyright to the software, you can do whatever the heck you want to with it, up to and including creating a closed-source fork. Nothing in the GPL prevents a copyright owner from creating one set of source code and dual-licensing it. MySQL AB made a business out of doing just that.

In your opinion, you're not a lawyer, and you can read the rest off of http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/patents-and-gplv3.en.html if you bother to read it (which I know you wont). Your interpretations are incorrect, and you don't even have any standing in any way to imply otherwise.

I read all the way through it and I see nothing on that page that contradicts my opinion. Indeed, that doesn't even talk about patents filed by the creator of the GPLed work itself. The entire page talks about licensed patents and compatibility with licenses that contain patent retaliation clauses, neither of which has anything to do with the problem I was talking about.

According to GPLv3, if the company that created the intellectual property (at the time, unpatented) stops distributing the GPLed software as a piece of GPLed software, they no longer have any obligations to license any future patents that they may file, and because the GPLv3 does not state otherwise, this presumably includes patents on technologies that were previously embodied in that GPLed software. Further, as the original inventor of those technologies, the GPLed software cannot be considered prior art. I'm not saying it would be an airtight case against continued distribution of the GPLed software, but it certainly wouldn't be airtight the other way.

Patent retaliation means, if you sue somebody for patent infringement, then you lose the right to use this code.

A patent retaliation clause is only relevant if the code was written by someone else. If your company is the sole copyright holder, these clauses do not apply to you in any way. A software license cannot put any restrictions on the original authors' right to use their own code. Period. The original author is not a licensee of the software under the terms of the GPL unless the software contains code whose copyright has not been assigned to them. Further, because the original author is not a licensee, it is doubtful that the license clause that covers licensees who convey the software would apply to them at all even for existing patents, much less for future patents.

you can't remove source code access to something once it's been released via GPL. Even when forked. You can remove source code access to things that have been released via BSD.

If you obtain patents at any time and sue with them is different. You can obtain patents until you are blue in the face, but enforcing them is different altogether. How do you fail to understand this distinction? There is a significant difference between saber rattling and taking someone to court. Also, what does it matter? Bilski's about to invalidate most software patents, hopefully/thankfully.

In your opinion, you're not a lawyer, and you can read the rest off of http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/patents-and-gplv3.en.html if you bother to read it (which I know you wont). Your interpretations are incorrect, and you don't even have any standing in any way to imply otherwise.

Maybe a few quotes help. from the link above:

Patent retaliation means, if you sue somebody for patent infringement, then you lose the right to use this code.

BSA tries to ensure that EU bureaucracy would use the software of the companies it represents, in the case mainly Microsoft and namely M$Office. Wanna send a paper to a ministry electronically? Gotta buy the WinWord.

One has to carefully weigh all the factors: bribes one can get off M$ right now + bribes one can get off M$ later vs. ... On second thought, forget about the open thing we have discussed before.

P.S. FSFE take on the case.

Audience member: [...] in this new World, and you're talking about GPL going over to the next version, how do you see proprietary software businesses making a profit?

Richard Stallman: That's unethical, they shouldn't be making any money. I hope to see all proprietary software wiped out. That's what I aim for. That would be a World in which our freedom is respected. A proprietary program is a program that is not free. That is to say, a program that does respect the user's essential rights. That's evil. A proprietary program is part of a predatory scheme where people who don't value their freedom are drawn into giving it up in order to gain some kind of practical convenience. And then once they're there, it's harder and harder to get out. Our goal is to rescue people from this.

Audience member: [...] in this new World, and you're talking about GPL going over to the next version, how do you see proprietary software businesses making a profit?

Richard Stallman: That's unethical, they shouldn't be making any money. I hope to see all proprietary software wiped out. That's what I aim for. That would be a World in which our freedom is respected. A proprietary program is a program that is not free. That is to say, a program that does respect the user's essential rights. That's evil. A proprietary program is part of a predatory scheme where people who don't value their freedom are drawn into giving it up in order to gain some kind of practical convenience. And then once they're there, it's harder and harder to get out. Our goal is to rescue people from this.

So, I'm an unethical evil person because I make money writing proprietary software. However, it's a requirement that MySQL be sold to a different big evil corporation that doesn't already have a database offering and that can make money off it, else they might not support it.

Sorry, my brain isn't big enough to hold the cognitive dissonance that is Stallman -- he gives me a headache.

And Shane Coughlan has also been doing this for years: shane's page on fsfe.org. His work was previously discussed on Slashdot: Tasks of a Free Software Legal Department.

    When people have to campaign for their freedom to share and change recipes, they can simply reverse Stallman's recipe example:

  But these freedoms should not be strange to you. At least, not if you cook, because people who cook enjoy the same four freedoms in using recipes.

The freedom to cook the recipe when you want. Thatâ(TM)s freedom zero. The freedom to study the ingredients and how itâ(TM)s done, and then change it. Thatâ(TM)s freedom one. Cooks frequently change recipes. And then the freedom to copy it and hand copies to your friends. Thatâ(TM)s freedom two. And then, freedom three is less frequently exercised because itâ(TM)s more work, but if you cook your version of the recipes for a dinner with your friends, and a friend says "that was great, can I have the recipe?" you can write down your version of the recipe and make a copy for your friend.

You may have time to read this Windows 7 review [fsfe.org] while doing that and deciding if you really want to finish that installation... unless can't browse internet while upgrading windows.

No thanks, I'm trying to cut back on my sodium intake.

You may have time to read this Windows 7 review while doing that and deciding if you really want to finish that installation... unless can't browse internet while upgrading windows.

Haircuts, shaving, dieting, and exercise.

Interesting, compared to this which has been his comment earlier. Nice to see RMS give the Mono haters more fuel to their flame wars, so that developers can get tangled up in endless discussions about this in stead of actually hacking away. Again, this is one of the reasons GNU/Linux is not gaining more than it does. All MS needs to do in order to keep hackers busy not making great software (and cloning already great C# apps instead), is issue some kind of new vague statement on the nature of .NET. Then, we all lose. Like we've been doing since day 1. Nice. Thanks. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Stallman did comment on Mono, and it's not necessarily what one would expect: See?

As far as I can tell, the problem here is that the article is not bending the truth to match the usual reality-distorted pro-ODF bias expected by slashdot users and other FSF goons.

Let's start with this statement:

In the ODF article, Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like no one is supporting ODF, and that it is a flawed and incomplete standard.

It seems to be like he doesn't fail to bend the truth. It's a flawed and incomplete standard, in some ways it is vague, in others it's simply inconsistent.

Let's take tracked changes for instance, a feature in ODF 1.1 which pretends to be complete. The reality is that the standard is so vague and broken that the most popular implementation, Google Docs, ignores the standard entirely, implementing changes in their proprietary system. Microsoft simply solves the problem by disabling the functionality in order to avoid future breaking.

http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/13/tracked-changes.aspx

Let's not talk about ODF 1.2 either, since its only a working draft.

So Microsoft was somehow able to do a perfect by the letter implementation of the ODF 1.1 (the current standard) spec, and yet they haven't got full interoperability with OpenOffice? It sounds an awful lot like Sun took a very liberal interpretation of their vague standard and are now standing by their wonky mess of source code (Ooo) as the standard-- similar to Solaris and POSIX. Thats unacceptable, ODF passed the standards bodies, not OpenOffice.org.

The fact that Microsoft could create one of the only correct implementations of the ODF standard and still break interoperability suggests that the ubiquity of this standard is largely overstated:

http://adjb.net/post/Notes-on-Document-Conformance-and-Portability-4.aspx

There are arguments to be made on the subject of digging through Sun's source code to make this vague standard work, but then ODF violates the FSF's very quote bashing MS-OOXML:

"For any standard it is essential that it is implementable by any third party without necessity of cooperation by another company"

Source: http://fsfe.org/documents/msooxml-questions

So, you can't make interoperable ODF without referencing OpenOffice because it is vague and incomplete... but it's not a complete standard unless you don't have to rely on the assistance of a certain corporation (Sun) to implement it properly?

It sounds to me like ODF is locking functionality to Sun's software the same way DOC locks functionality to Microsoft Office. MS-OOXML may be wordy, but it turns out that you need a lot of words to make a complete office standard. ODF is a paper tiger, end of story. The problem slashdot points out here is simply a lack of reality-distorting pro-ODF bias... this "whisper campaign" might be the seeping shadow of "reality" in the reality of writing a complete and interoperable standard escapes Sun--leaving them with something terse but heavily marketed with a vicious and aggressive activist campaign by angel advertisers who fancy themselves freedom fighters.