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The actual BSD licenses being GPL compatible is a red herring. The reason they are GPL-compatible is because you can take that code and release it under a different license with different terms... such as the GPL. Contributions to the GPL version of the project then can't be licensed back into the original project. (Later BSD-style licenses have protections against this.)

You could host the multimedia files on your own website, which would let you move your domain and/or provider to an amenable ISP whenever needed while retaining the same URLs for your visitors. There are ISPs such as Dreamhost.com that will host email and websites and their accompanying data files at reasonable costs with lots of bandwidth should your show become popular. I don't work for them but I've worked with their hosting and found it to be reasonable.

You could host files on archive.org (the Internet Archive) for no fee which will deliver files to all comers also gratis. I'm not aware of IA discriminating against people doing what you're doing.

You could consider delivering pointers to your shows delivered cooperatively via BitTorrent with magnet URLs posted to popular BitTorrent-based sharing sites so the public can keep your shows downloadable even if you find hosting hard to come by.

You could combine these ideas, they're not mutually exclusive. And I hope you'll consider distributing your multimedia in formats that favor free software such as WebM. Finally, be wary of any provider's changing terms of service should you start talking about something they someday consider important. Commercial organizations and nations don't have permanent friends, they have interests which change.

The FSF is against "open source software." They're for "free software," which is what the GPL gets you. BSD Licenses generally get you "open source software." The disticton is that Free Software licenses force developers of derivative works to license under a Free Software license. Open Source licenses do not.

Please stop repeating this. The FSF is for Free Software, defined as software that respects the FSF's Four Freedoms. These are respected by the BSD licenses and any other FSF approved license (of which there were around 20-30 last time I checked). Many of them are GPL incompatible.

I'm on a cell phone, so I'm not going to link you to Stallman's essay on the difference, but some rudimentary Googling will find it if you don't think I'm treating the FSF's position fairly.

Since I'm not too lazy, I'll do you a favour and link to where the BSD license is on the FSF's list of GPL-Compatible Free Software Licenses.

Most of the apps for the phone are just basic forms that then connect to the Internet and get data back.

And many are not. For example, how easy is it to use a web app on an iPod touch or iPad mini that is away from its Wi-Fi connection? An offline-capable application can wait for an Internet connection to become momentarily available, sync, and then let the user view the data later even after going offline again. The HTML5 platform supports features for offline use, such as application cache, local storage, and IndexedDB, but I was under the impression that these were limited to some stupidly small size like 5 MB.

The neat thing about web apps are the following.
1. They work on multable mobile devices.

Unless Apple refuses to implement a feature of the web platform that is vital to your application. Users of Safari couldn't upload pictures or video until iOS 6, Safari had no WebGL support until iOS 8, and IndexedDB is horribly broken. Even in the current version, does it support uploads of data types other than pictures and video?

2. You can update and upgrade automatically.

Which isn't always a good thing. They might want to use the old version in order to avoid defects that the new version introduced. Or they might want to run their own copy of an application in order to avoid sending their confidential data to a web application operator in a different jurisdiction. See also "Who Does That Server Really Serve?".*

* The author and publisher of that essay find iOS abhorrent for other reasons.

EndSoftPatents.org makes multiple relevant points very clear in their warning against relying on Microsoft's "promise" for .NET core listing the limits and foreseeable risks in Microsoft's offer. It seems to me there's enough there to make anyone wary of relying on .NET and instead heed what the Free Software Foundation said in 2009 warning against developing in C#.

You asked:

Burz, I wonder if you'd say the same about all OSS software that's licensed under MIT or BSD but which lacks a patent promise? Because such software would be in an even weaker state from your perspective than Microsoft's OSS .NET.

I don't speak for Burz and I don't argue for anything "OSS", in fact this issue is one reason why looking at this from the perspective of the open source movement is so dangerous. But it seems to me that the FSF has explained this well as they point out in their aforementioned article, Microsoft is "the only major software company that has declared itself the enemy of GNU/Linux and stated its intention to attack our community with patents" which makes Microsoft more of a threat. Also, there's more than one BSD license and it's better to be clear about what you're referring to.

EndSoftPatents.org and the FSF both manage to make their points referring to specifics, linking to their sources, and without using the word "Chinese" to denote confusion or incomprehensibility. So it seems to me that EndSoftPatents.org's conclusion, "This patent licence looks fine for users of the code published by Microsoft, but its protections disappear very quickly for those who wish to modify or re-use the code." is entirely sensible and hardly worthy of your offensive dismissal.

Correct. This is the commit that fixes the problem. The patch actually goes back farther than it was merged, and then after merge it was two years until another stable release that had it appeared. And still many distros use a version of parted that predates this patch including RHEL 7 and openSUSE 13.2. The only distro I know off hand that uses the correct GUID is Fedora.

I don't know why it took so long. My soapbox version is I think there's a history of partition types being unreliable and pointless because in the MBR scheme there were so few of them that collisions were a given. So on Linux there's the expectation to check the actual contents of the partition to know what it is. libblkid can identify practically anything, and it doesn't care what the partition type is. Because of this, I think the Linux ecosystem has just gotten lazy. And so now on GPT scheme, they just grabbed the existing "basic data" GUID, rather than follow the UEFI spec which says "Each filesystem must publish its unique GUID." So technically the Linux ecosystem still has it wrong by using one Linux partition type GUID rather than one per filesystem; whether using GUIDs in such a granular fashion is helpful, I'm not sure.

Anyway, given the essentially infinite number of GUIDs available, using an existing one was just an extension of this mind set. Plus, parted isn't well suited for being patched to enable arbitrary GUIDs. So anytime there's a new GUID it's like pulling teeth to get the parted folks to add it, and often they actively resist while claiming there's no use case for X GUID.

-ftrapv hasn't worked since at least 2008.

...but you're right, the logical thing to do would be to just check for this shit at runtime. Do you want fast code or do you want secure code? I can buy a faster computer, but I can't buy a more secure one.

clang -fsanitize=undefined, since signed integer overflow is formally undefined.

-ftrapv hasn't worked since at least 2008.

...but you're right, the logical thing to do would be to just check for this shit at runtime. Do you want fast code or do you want secure code? I can buy a faster computer, but I can't buy a more secure one.

Don't delete anything, comment it out! You never know, you might need to put it back.

https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/...

Ed is a command line editor.

Heathen. Ed is the standard text editor.

Being unreleased, it doesn't have any distribution license, so one else can do anything with it, so it's not "free software."

No, you are ignorant of What is free software. I repeat: It's about freedom.

The users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist.

(Note that such a rule still leaves you the choice of whether to distribute your version at all.)

I think this applies to my script, for which I am the only user and the only person who has a copy.

Looking at the kerfuffle around LLVM/Clang you can find more of the same attitude from RMS—he doesn't have the ego invested in the work as his detractors claim he does (often without examples cited at all, sometimes as with the grandparent poster with wrong examples cited):

For GCC to be replaced by another technically superior compiler that defended freedom equally well would cause me some personal regret, but I would rejoice for the community's advance. The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers -- so that all contribution to LLVM directly helps proprietary software as much as it helps us.

Those aren't the words of someone who places ego above the good of the project or the public. For software freedom seekers, software freedom and defense of software freedom is the goal and good for the public.

RMS did not invent free software. But he was the first to espouse the philosophy of free software, and argue that it was an ethical and moral issue.

That's really the part that hasn't taken off though. Even Linux - Free Software's biggest claim to fame - is about open source and code sharing rather than the ethics and morals of the FSF.

This is something they knew, GCC could have easily had a license term (just like the GPL has with library linkage) that the input to it must be GPL-compatible and as such could only be used for Free Software but they didn't because people are more interested in getting things done than aligning with the FSF's philosophical point of view. This gives developers who use GCC the ability to not give the Free Software freedoms to other people and that is exactly the thing the FSF's restrictive licenses exist to prevent.

If you run Linux, you are likely using a lot more code written by RMS than by Linus.

Not really, this is where the distinction is important. If you run GNU/Linux then maybe, but if you run another Linux - like Android for example - you may find there is very little GNU in there.

For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have no net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a daemon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.

... or this rant. Since most sites no longer work without javascript, hahahaha. He's still, for all intents and purposes, stuck in the last century.

If you want to say that RMS's position is pedantic, that's fine. Just understand that RMS has slightly different values than open source advocates and he works to keep those values. RMS views open source as dangerous to the freedom to have all changes made available because open source does not make any guarantee about it. Others, like ESR, aren't quite as concerned about that as long as some version of the source is available. Thus, you get open source. Free and open source software are not exactly the same thing though.

Open source advocates think that proprietary software is acceptable and free software advocates don't think proprietary software is ever acceptable, as RMS points out in his essays and talks dating back many years (1, 2). I'd hardly call that difference pedantic—being overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning like a pedant. And the preservation of software freedom copyleft makes real can sometimes be okay to forgo but only after careful consideration. But the open source movement doesn't distinguish among licenses based on copyleft because that would draw attention to the very thing that movement was designed to silence and distract discussion away from talk of—software freedom.

If you want to say that RMS's position is pedantic, that's fine. Just understand that RMS has slightly different values than open source advocates and he works to keep those values. RMS views open source as dangerous to the freedom to have all changes made available because open source does not make any guarantee about it. Others, like ESR, aren't quite as concerned about that as long as some version of the source is available. Thus, you get open source. Free and open source software are not exactly the same thing though.

Open source advocates think that proprietary software is acceptable and free software advocates don't think proprietary software is ever acceptable, as RMS points out in his essays and talks dating back many years (1, 2). I'd hardly call that difference pedantic—being overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning like a pedant. And the preservation of software freedom copyleft makes real can sometimes be okay to forgo but only after careful consideration. But the open source movement doesn't distinguish among licenses based on copyleft because that would draw attention to the very thing that movement was designed to silence and distract discussion away from talk of—software freedom.

If you want to say that RMS's position is pedantic, that's fine. Just understand that RMS has slightly different values than open source advocates and he works to keep those values. RMS views open source as dangerous to the freedom to have all changes made available because open source does not make any guarantee about it. Others, like ESR, aren't quite as concerned about that as long as some version of the source is available. Thus, you get open source. Free and open source software are not exactly the same thing though.

Open source advocates think that proprietary software is acceptable and free software advocates don't think proprietary software is ever acceptable, as RMS points out in his essays and talks dating back many years (1, 2). I'd hardly call that difference pedantic—being overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning like a pedant. And the preservation of software freedom copyleft makes real can sometimes be okay to forgo but only after careful consideration. But the open source movement doesn't distinguish among licenses based on copyleft because that would draw attention to the very thing that movement was designed to silence and distract discussion away from talk of—software freedom.

That's because there's close relationships between "free (as in freedom) software" and "open-source." Neither is a proper sub-set of the other though.

Bolded part has me curious. What sort "free software" would not fall under the looser defintion of "open source" at the same time?

My recollection is that there's some edge case non-GPL stuff that FSF is ok with, but OSI had issues with, but I don't recall exact examples, and my google-fu is failing. I did find this from the FSF: The term “open source” software is used by some people to mean more or less the same category as free software. It is not exactly the same class of software: they accept some licenses that we consider too restrictive, and there are free software licenses they have not accepted. However, the differences in extension of the category are small: nearly all free software is open source, and nearly all open source software is free.

So for the most part the free software stuff should fall under open source, but the FSF clearly feel that there's some subtle cases out there.

Just to remind everyone about Symbolics' place in history. Symbolics was founded by a bunch of Richard Stallman's co-workers from the MIT AI lab, and Symbolics' business tactics provided the primary motivatation for the Stallman's creation of the Free Software movement. See

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html

You need to learn your history - gcc was so bad that it was scrapped. EGCS was renamed GCC and took it's place. What you call GCC today is actually EGCS.

The logic is so tortured there that I don't even know where to begin! So basically GCC went down a bad path, then corrected itself. So yes gcc WAS a bad compiler. Macs USED to have no memory protection and no multitasking. The premiere version of Windows WAS Windows ME.

Do you see the common thing there? They're all in the past and have no bearing on what the current situation is now.

Arguing that GCC is bad because it adopted EGCS (which was actually a fork of GCC) is like arguing that Window 8.1 is bad because Windows ME sucked. That's a pointless and completely worthless argument and I chose those two because the timeframes are about the same.

The GCC/EGGS thing is not ancient history,

Um, yes it is. It finished in 1999.

RMS is becoming more of a roadblock (and embarrassment) as time goes on.

Except he's not because he doesn't control GCC, that's up to the steering committee of which he is a single member. He wanted to steer clear of modularity because of proprietary software risks. Ultimately the GCC people disagreed and are working towards making cleaner interfaces and more sensible modules:

https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Modul...

BTW - After years of pushing games for linux users, steam only has 1% of their user base using linux. Linux isn't dying in the gaming world, simply because it was never really alive. And the hugely overpriced steambox isn't going to change that.

Um, OK... And by "years" of course, steambox hasn't even been released in my country yet.

Playstation and Apple use FreeBSD for a reason. So there are literally orders of magnitude more gamers using FreeBSD than linux, and that's not going to change.

Yeah and there are more android phones out there than those two combined. So there's probably more games running on a Linux kernel than a BSD based one. Either way it's close.

I don't use templates, I don't use the STL

Shall we agree to keep this particluar line of arguing back over on the C++ thread where we're also dukeing it out? It makes much more sense there.

Ignoring the assholes making fun of you for being interested and explaining why, you can start learning right now:

igs: http://pandanet-igs.com/commun...
kgs: https://www.gokgs.com/

I know you can play the Gnu Go Server on kgs, if you want to avoid playing with a person for a while. You can also install it on your computer: https://www.gnu.org/software/g...

From TFA:

Glue a Stallman beard on me and call me an idealist, but I actually believe there’s no stopping open source (in game development) at this point.

Compare that to Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software, by The Bearded Charmer himself.

Sure, the ability to develop and play AAA games for free is all well and good. But exactly where and how is our freedom to develop and play these games protected?

(Posting this as AC since any satire of the holy cause of Free Software is tolerated here no better than ancient statues of extinct pagan gods are tolerated by ISIS.)

Doesn't this violate the terms of GPL?

Bundles of multiple independent programs are an "aggregate" which specifically does not extend GPL obligations to other parts of the bundle:

A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.

This protects both the innocent distro builder and the not-so-innocent download monetizer.

The FSF disagrees with you:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...

I'm uninterested in DRM'd e-readers or any e-reader that reveals my location, refuses to let me copy, quote, print, and do other things I do with books. I'm unwilling to sacrifice my rights because some publisher wants a rent scheme on books or wants me to constantly feed them information on my whereabouts, what I'm reading, logging my name with what I read (which even my local library only does as long as the loan), and other privacy violations that simply aren't possible with books. Calling DRM "digital restrictions management" is right and proper because that frames the debate where it belongs—around user's rights.

I'm not so sure that's true because the relevant laws are set such that the penalties are so light for the wealthy violators and virtually non-existant for the most powerful participants in the system. First, the organization with the most patents is not in a position to "feel pain" as you say; IBM's power is (as they've said long ago) in cross-licensing. They said they get an order of magnitude more benefit by leveraging the power the patent scheme was built to exert (which is also part of the problem of calling organizations "patent trolls" as if leveraging that power is somehow not to be expected, or an abuse of an otherwise upright system, when in fact that power is just part of the system operating as designed). As a result, losing patent infringement lawsuits is not common for IBM. Richard Stallman laid out how this works in his patent talks many years ago:

IBM got two kinds of benefit from its 9000 US patents. I believe the number is larger today. These were first, collecting royalties and second, getting access to the patents of others. They said that the latter benefit is an order of magnitude greater. So the benefit that IBM got from being allowed to use the ideas that were patented by others was 10 times the direct benefit IBM could get from licensing patents. What does this really mean?

What is the benefit that IBM gets from this access to the patents of others? It is basically the benefit of being excused from the trouble that the patent system can cause you. The patent system is like a lottery. What happens with any given patent could be nothing, could be a windfall for some patent holder or a disaster for everyone else. But IBM being so big, for them, it averages out. They get to measure the average harm and good of the patent system. For them, the trouble of the patent system would have been 10 times the good. I say would have been because IBM through cross-licensing avoids experiencing that trouble. That trouble is only potential. It doesn't really happen to them. But when they measure the benefits of avoiding that trouble, they estimate it as 10 times the value of the money they collect from their patents.

With regard to Apple specifically, it's not that difficult to see that they get by in part by violating government-granted monopoly and they're wealthy enough to be able to afford to do it repeatedly. The people who run Apple now ran NeXT years ago. NeXT infringed the FSF's license (GPLv2) in NeXT's initially unauthorized GCC derivative in which NeXT added Objective-C support. NeXT and the FSF settled out of court when the FSF got them to comply with the terms of the GPL (lesson learned here: stand up for your strong copylefted free software licenses and the bullies will meet your terms). Apple would again violate the GPLv2 later by distributing an infringing copy of VideoLAN Client. VLC co-author Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote critically of Apple's choice to let the program through it's app store saying "Those terms are contradicted by the products usage rules of the AppStore through which Apple delivers applications to users of its mobile devices." Apple infringed upon 3 Chinese writer's copyrights and were ordered to pay 730,000 yuan ($118,000), hardly a sum that would stop Apple from doing this again. But the pattern seems clear: Apple violates laws it doesn't like and never really meets a punishment that will make the leaders of the organization question whether to do it again. Apple isn't unique in this but that is a detail; we need punishments for the wealthy and powerful that make them take the law more seriously. But most importantly for endeavors practiced by the general public, such as computer programming, we need to fight in an organized and political way to end software idea patents. Mere patent reform is a delaying tactic that benefits the powerful.

I'm not so sure that's true because the relevant laws are set such that the penalties are so light for the wealthy violators and virtually non-existant for the most powerful participants in the system. First, the organization with the most patents is not in a position to "feel pain" as you say; IBM's power is (as they've said long ago) in cross-licensing. They said they get an order of magnitude more benefit by leveraging the power the patent scheme was built to exert (which is also part of the problem of calling organizations "patent trolls" as if leveraging that power is somehow not to be expected, or an abuse of an otherwise upright system, when in fact that power is just part of the system operating as designed). As a result, losing patent infringement lawsuits is not common for IBM. Richard Stallman laid out how this works in his patent talks many years ago:

IBM got two kinds of benefit from its 9000 US patents. I believe the number is larger today. These were first, collecting royalties and second, getting access to the patents of others. They said that the latter benefit is an order of magnitude greater. So the benefit that IBM got from being allowed to use the ideas that were patented by others was 10 times the direct benefit IBM could get from licensing patents. What does this really mean?

What is the benefit that IBM gets from this access to the patents of others? It is basically the benefit of being excused from the trouble that the patent system can cause you. The patent system is like a lottery. What happens with any given patent could be nothing, could be a windfall for some patent holder or a disaster for everyone else. But IBM being so big, for them, it averages out. They get to measure the average harm and good of the patent system. For them, the trouble of the patent system would have been 10 times the good. I say would have been because IBM through cross-licensing avoids experiencing that trouble. That trouble is only potential. It doesn't really happen to them. But when they measure the benefits of avoiding that trouble, they estimate it as 10 times the value of the money they collect from their patents.

With regard to Apple specifically, it's not that difficult to see that they get by in part by violating government-granted monopoly and they're wealthy enough to be able to afford to do it repeatedly. The people who run Apple now ran NeXT years ago. NeXT infringed the FSF's license (GPLv2) in NeXT's initially unauthorized GCC derivative in which NeXT added Objective-C support. NeXT and the FSF settled out of court when the FSF got them to comply with the terms of the GPL (lesson learned here: stand up for your strong copylefted free software licenses and the bullies will meet your terms). Apple would again violate the GPLv2 later by distributing an infringing copy of VideoLAN Client. VLC co-author Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote critically of Apple's choice to let the program through it's app store saying "Those terms are contradicted by the products usage rules of the AppStore through which Apple delivers applications to users of its mobile devices." Apple infringed upon 3 Chinese writer's copyrights and were ordered to pay 730,000 yuan ($118,000), hardly a sum that would stop Apple from doing this again. But the pattern seems clear: Apple violates laws it doesn't like and never really meets a punishment that will make the leaders of the organization question whether to do it again. Apple isn't unique in this but that is a detail; we need punishments for the wealthy and powerful that make them take the law more seriously. But most importantly for endeavors practiced by the general public, such as computer programming, we need to fight in an organized and political way to end software idea patents. Mere patent reform is a delaying tactic that benefits the powerful.

After the book "1984" was recalled and erased from my ebook reader without my authorization, I took that as a clear warning that ebook readers are not ready or safe for prime time.

I'll be reading on paper until I get root by default. I won't vote with my wallet for things to keep heading in this direction.

This is the top of the superfish.js listing. Not that I understand Javascript very well (where are the line numbers?) but it seems fairly innocuous...

*
  * Superfish v1.4.8 - jQuery menu widget
  * Copyright (c) 2008 Joel Birch
  *
  * Dual licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses:
  * http://www.opensource.org/lice...
  * http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gp...
  *
  * CHANGELOG: http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birc...
  */ ;(function($){
        $.fn.superfish = function(op){

                var sf = $.fn.superfish,
                        c = sf.c,
                        $arrow = $([' '].join('')),
                        over = function(){
                                var $$ = $(this), menu = getMenu($$);
                                clearTimeout(menu.sfTimer);
                                $$.showSuperfishUl().siblings().hideSuperfishUl();
                        }, .....

And I pay someone to understand closed source code for me, as well: the company that produces it.

Not if the company has a conflict of interest and either A. is incompetent at understanding the whole thing, whether due to underfunding or mismanagement, or B. intentionally wants to hide undesirable aspects from its clients. See The Bug Nobody is Allowed to Understand.

There is NO practical difference

In the case of free software, you're free to get a second opinion. You're also free to fix defects that the publisher acknowledges but declines to fix.

Ah, the flames from someone without much finesse: Premature declaration of failure to discourage further examination ("The masses have spoken..."), misidentification of fault ("If Apple could have continued using gcc...", "[The FSF] should have gone into the hardware business..."), citing trends with no backing and overvaluing business interests ("...then corporations wouldn't have run away from any GPLv3 software..."), and outright lying about intention and execution ("...weighing the costs of the walled garden (censorship etc) vs the benefits (no viruses)...", "...the attempt to take over the Linux kernel by renaming GNU/Linux..."), your post has so much flamebait to choose from it's almost as if you were taking instruction from an open source proponent who is eager to convince licensors to pick non-copylefted software licenses so they see their work become charitable contributions to software proprietors.

If there's so little interest in protecting oneself from international spying, malware, and other forms of user abuse Glenn Greenwald and other journalists would find it hard to get articles on the Snowden revelations published anywhere, world leaders wouldn't be holding meetings about the Snowden revelations, and people/organizations around the world wouldn't care about encryption. Don't confuse a non-technical user's inability to do better than running proprietary apps from a walled garden with not caring about these issues. They get both no software freedom and plenty of malware in their choice. Most computer users are weighing options where freedom is not available; they're suffering from the myth of choice where all of the readily-available options they know about deny them loyal computers.

Speaking of proprietors, Apple is no victim here. Apple wasn't forced to switch to LLVM and Clang, they chose to because they're proprietors eager to rob users of their software freedom in derivative works. If any organization with the means can be accurately accused of not writing their own stuff, it's Apple not writing their own compilers but instead relying on other compilers. This goes back to NeXT which was the first big GPL copyright infringement case (according to Brad Kuhn, former Executive Director of the FSF which holds the copyright on GCC in his discussion on his OggCast "Free as in Freedom"). NeXT got caught distributing a proprietary derivative of GCC which contained code to compile Objective-C. When Jobs spoke with the FSF about the matter, the FSF informed him that they would enforce their license (GPLv2). Jobs never liked that and never forgot. Apple doesn't mind the GPL they just don't like to be in a position of equality with their users unless they can pull out of that relationship when it suits them (see Apple's purchase of Easy SW which originally developed CUPS).

The FSF never tried to "take over the Linux kernel" and isn't doing so now by properly identifying Linux as a part of an operating system. They have said for years and continue to say they would like the GNU Project to get a share of the credit (1, 2). They also acknowledge that there are systems that don't include GNU and therefore should not be called "GNU slash" anything. No doubt, it would be equally unfair and erroneous to call GNU/kFreeBSD or GNU/HURD a "Linux" system when Linux isn't a part of that. This has nothing to do with capability of writing a kernel; a Linux kernel without the blobs is available so there's no pressing need for a fully-free system to have its own original kernel written by the FSF or the GNU Project. The core of the issue was and is

Ah, the flames from someone without much finesse: Premature declaration of failure to discourage further examination ("The masses have spoken..."), misidentification of fault ("If Apple could have continued using gcc...", "[The FSF] should have gone into the hardware business..."), citing trends with no backing and overvaluing business interests ("...then corporations wouldn't have run away from any GPLv3 software..."), and outright lying about intention and execution ("...weighing the costs of the walled garden (censorship etc) vs the benefits (no viruses)...", "...the attempt to take over the Linux kernel by renaming GNU/Linux..."), your post has so much flamebait to choose from it's almost as if you were taking instruction from an open source proponent who is eager to convince licensors to pick non-copylefted software licenses so they see their work become charitable contributions to software proprietors.

If there's so little interest in protecting oneself from international spying, malware, and other forms of user abuse Glenn Greenwald and other journalists would find it hard to get articles on the Snowden revelations published anywhere, world leaders wouldn't be holding meetings about the Snowden revelations, and people/organizations around the world wouldn't care about encryption. Don't confuse a non-technical user's inability to do better than running proprietary apps from a walled garden with not caring about these issues. They get both no software freedom and plenty of malware in their choice. Most computer users are weighing options where freedom is not available; they're suffering from the myth of choice where all of the readily-available options they know about deny them loyal computers.

Speaking of proprietors, Apple is no victim here. Apple wasn't forced to switch to LLVM and Clang, they chose to because they're proprietors eager to rob users of their software freedom in derivative works. If any organization with the means can be accurately accused of not writing their own stuff, it's Apple not writing their own compilers but instead relying on other compilers. This goes back to NeXT which was the first big GPL copyright infringement case (according to Brad Kuhn, former Executive Director of the FSF which holds the copyright on GCC in his discussion on his OggCast "Free as in Freedom"). NeXT got caught distributing a proprietary derivative of GCC which contained code to compile Objective-C. When Jobs spoke with the FSF about the matter, the FSF informed him that they would enforce their license (GPLv2). Jobs never liked that and never forgot. Apple doesn't mind the GPL they just don't like to be in a position of equality with their users unless they can pull out of that relationship when it suits them (see Apple's purchase of Easy SW which originally developed CUPS).

The FSF never tried to "take over the Linux kernel" and isn't doing so now by properly identifying Linux as a part of an operating system. They have said for years and continue to say they would like the GNU Project to get a share of the credit (1, 2). They also acknowledge that there are systems that don't include GNU and therefore should not be called "GNU slash" anything. No doubt, it would be equally unfair and erroneous to call GNU/kFreeBSD or GNU/HURD a "Linux" system when Linux isn't a part of that. This has nothing to do with capability of writing a kernel; a Linux kernel without the blobs is available so there's no pressing need for a fully-free system to have its own original kernel written by the FSF or the GNU Project. The core of the issue was and is

Ah, the flames from someone without much finesse: Premature declaration of failure to discourage further examination ("The masses have spoken..."), misidentification of fault ("If Apple could have continued using gcc...", "[The FSF] should have gone into the hardware business..."), citing trends with no backing and overvaluing business interests ("...then corporations wouldn't have run away from any GPLv3 software..."), and outright lying about intention and execution ("...weighing the costs of the walled garden (censorship etc) vs the benefits (no viruses)...", "...the attempt to take over the Linux kernel by renaming GNU/Linux..."), your post has so much flamebait to choose from it's almost as if you were taking instruction from an open source proponent who is eager to convince licensors to pick non-copylefted software licenses so they see their work become charitable contributions to software proprietors.

If there's so little interest in protecting oneself from international spying, malware, and other forms of user abuse Glenn Greenwald and other journalists would find it hard to get articles on the Snowden revelations published anywhere, world leaders wouldn't be holding meetings about the Snowden revelations, and people/organizations around the world wouldn't care about encryption. Don't confuse a non-technical user's inability to do better than running proprietary apps from a walled garden with not caring about these issues. They get both no software freedom and plenty of malware in their choice. Most computer users are weighing options where freedom is not available; they're suffering from the myth of choice where all of the readily-available options they know about deny them loyal computers.

Speaking of proprietors, Apple is no victim here. Apple wasn't forced to switch to LLVM and Clang, they chose to because they're proprietors eager to rob users of their software freedom in derivative works. If any organization with the means can be accurately accused of not writing their own stuff, it's Apple not writing their own compilers but instead relying on other compilers. This goes back to NeXT which was the first big GPL copyright infringement case (according to Brad Kuhn, former Executive Director of the FSF which holds the copyright on GCC in his discussion on his OggCast "Free as in Freedom"). NeXT got caught distributing a proprietary derivative of GCC which contained code to compile Objective-C. When Jobs spoke with the FSF about the matter, the FSF informed him that they would enforce their license (GPLv2). Jobs never liked that and never forgot. Apple doesn't mind the GPL they just don't like to be in a position of equality with their users unless they can pull out of that relationship when it suits them (see Apple's purchase of Easy SW which originally developed CUPS).

The FSF never tried to "take over the Linux kernel" and isn't doing so now by properly identifying Linux as a part of an operating system. They have said for years and continue to say they would like the GNU Project to get a share of the credit (1, 2). They also acknowledge that there are systems that don't include GNU and therefore should not be called "GNU slash" anything. No doubt, it would be equally unfair and erroneous to call GNU/kFreeBSD or GNU/HURD a "Linux" system when Linux isn't a part of that. This has nothing to do with capability of writing a kernel; a Linux kernel without the blobs is available so there's no pressing need for a fully-free system to have its own original kernel written by the FSF or the GNU Project. The core of the issue was and is

Ah, the flames from someone without much finesse: Premature declaration of failure to discourage further examination ("The masses have spoken..."), misidentification of fault ("If Apple could have continued using gcc...", "[The FSF] should have gone into the hardware business..."), citing trends with no backing and overvaluing business interests ("...then corporations wouldn't have run away from any GPLv3 software..."), and outright lying about intention and execution ("...weighing the costs of the walled garden (censorship etc) vs the benefits (no viruses)...", "...the attempt to take over the Linux kernel by renaming GNU/Linux..."), your post has so much flamebait to choose from it's almost as if you were taking instruction from an open source proponent who is eager to convince licensors to pick non-copylefted software licenses so they see their work become charitable contributions to software proprietors.

If there's so little interest in protecting oneself from international spying, malware, and other forms of user abuse Glenn Greenwald and other journalists would find it hard to get articles on the Snowden revelations published anywhere, world leaders wouldn't be holding meetings about the Snowden revelations, and people/organizations around the world wouldn't care about encryption. Don't confuse a non-technical user's inability to do better than running proprietary apps from a walled garden with not caring about these issues. They get both no software freedom and plenty of malware in their choice. Most computer users are weighing options where freedom is not available; they're suffering from the myth of choice where all of the readily-available options they know about deny them loyal computers.

Speaking of proprietors, Apple is no victim here. Apple wasn't forced to switch to LLVM and Clang, they chose to because they're proprietors eager to rob users of their software freedom in derivative works. If any organization with the means can be accurately accused of not writing their own stuff, it's Apple not writing their own compilers but instead relying on other compilers. This goes back to NeXT which was the first big GPL copyright infringement case (according to Brad Kuhn, former Executive Director of the FSF which holds the copyright on GCC in his discussion on his OggCast "Free as in Freedom"). NeXT got caught distributing a proprietary derivative of GCC which contained code to compile Objective-C. When Jobs spoke with the FSF about the matter, the FSF informed him that they would enforce their license (GPLv2). Jobs never liked that and never forgot. Apple doesn't mind the GPL they just don't like to be in a position of equality with their users unless they can pull out of that relationship when it suits them (see Apple's purchase of Easy SW which originally developed CUPS).

The FSF never tried to "take over the Linux kernel" and isn't doing so now by properly identifying Linux as a part of an operating system. They have said for years and continue to say they would like the GNU Project to get a share of the credit (1, 2). They also acknowledge that there are systems that don't include GNU and therefore should not be called "GNU slash" anything. No doubt, it would be equally unfair and erroneous to call GNU/kFreeBSD or GNU/HURD a "Linux" system when Linux isn't a part of that. This has nothing to do with capability of writing a kernel; a Linux kernel without the blobs is available so there's no pressing need for a fully-free system to have its own original kernel written by the FSF or the GNU Project. The core of the issue was and is

Jailbreaking a device doesn't mean one has software freedom, a critical factor in making sure the device is loyal to its owner. It's good that you donate to the FSF and EFF despite your disagreeing with their goals to let people control their devices. I think people are rightly concerned about global spying and I encourage more learning about software freedom for freedom's sake. People were quick to dismiss the free software movement from the beginning, talking about how it wasn't (to use your words) "realistic or even a good idea" to have software freedom and that we'd never have a completely free OS. We have a lot of free software now (more than anyone can inspect on their own) and we're all better off for it. History shows the doubters were wrong to be dismissive of such concerns back then too. Holding every product to a standard that allows people to fully control their devices is a prerequisite for making software freedom the default in people's lives.

Too bad [AAC is] proprietary

Proprietary in what way? It's an ISO standard

Probably "proprietary" as the antonym of "free software". ISO standards can be encumbered by patents, and these patents can be licensed under either royalty-free or uniform-royalty terms. AAC and other MPEG codecs tend to carry a uniform royalty, and free software cannot implement any process with a nonzero royalty. Opus, on the other hand, is royalty-free.

I believe you're making a gross assumption by picking apart a minor error in my post. Most people use IP as shorthand.

No, I am responding to what you actually said. I do recommend avoiding the term "IP" no matter how popular it is precisely for the reasons I linked to if you wish to avoid the confusions that term raises.

I'm sure we're all grateful for your past and ongoing contributions to our software freedom (I certainly am) but nobody should get a pass for evidenceless assertions such as:

• "The issue with the FSF is that it is a political organization and doesn't give a crap about the quality of the software they release."
• "What RMS doesn't want is a threat to what he sees as his privileged place in the community."

When I hear an RMS talk I hear him give examples of real-world instances to back up his points. He writes with links to news stories to back up his claims. I don't see any pointers to that kind of information in what you write, just your opinion on matters that really need some backing up.

Consider your point about RMS's alleged egotistical involvement in this LLVM issue:

I can't help but hear a note of jealousy in RMS' tone when he fights against tools which are already free for the sake of preserving the FSF's position. The FSF has, quite frankly, sewn the seeds of this for many years by taking the policy that it did with GCC and other projects and making them inferior in order to keep them free. This position BEGS another group to come in and do it right. Some people may argue that he has a problem with the license.... I suspect that even if it were LGPLv3+ or GPLv3+ he would still have an issue since it is NOT gcc. If you make a more useful tool... people will flock to it. This is a lesson that I hope the FSF learns well and takes away from this experience.

I recall RMS saying something to this point:

For GCC to be replaced by another technically superior compiler that defended freedom equally well would cause me some personal regret, but I would rejoice for the community's advance. The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers -- so that all contribution to LLVM directly helps proprietary software as much as it helps us.

In fact much of that post to the gcc@gcc.gnu.org mailing list would be relevant to reply to this story today. And RMS published that post about a year ago.

Quite right, in fact most of what gets posted to /. including this story could be responded to with a phrase Eben Moglen has been saying for years in his talks: "RMS was right". Richard Stallman had it right years ago and, equally importantly, for the right reasons. Not "Open Source" (the younger movement Brad Kuhn rightly points out is built to greenwash proprietary-supporting non-copylefted Free Software (copy 1, copy 2) but strongly copylefted Free Software released and developed for freedom.

The Affero GPL version 3 or later will keep software Free as in freedom and meet the needs of the future. Users will undoubtedly want to know how things work and benefit from software written by programmers allowed to understand how things work. This will help us avoid the very trap the grandparent post referred to (and you wisely advised against).

Humanity shouldn't be in the business of rewriting software hundreds of times over because they can't afford a license that would suit tailored needs. Let's write some good software to solve a problem, then move on and solve some other problem.

Businesses that depend on copyright law abuse need to grow up and contribute some real value to the market and to society.

The incredibly unpopular AGPL addresses the loop hole cloud services found with other open source licenses like GPL. But I'm not too concerned as long as the open community around an open source project is big enough we can still have good work done around Apache even though it doesn't have a strong license like GPL.

The former. RMS/FSF have always been about the freedom to see the workings of and modify your software, not about getting software without paying money. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

I wonder at what point copyright and trademark enforcement diverged

Copyright and trademark law have different origins. They never fully converged in the first place. The fact that there's some sort of unified "intellectual property" to diverge in the first place is a lie of the industry. In any case, copyright and patent law do have the equitable defense of estoppel by laches, which is sort of analogous to genericization of trademark but not nearly as broad in scope.

So he tries to persuade people to agree with him, perhaps passionately, perhaps vehemently, maybe even not so nicely ... but (to my knowledge) he has never used force or fraud to coerce people into behaving the way he thinks they should.

It is pretty obvious that you have not worked for him.

You also seem to ignore how treacherous the GPLv3 is.

Think about this: When RMS wrote the GPLv2, linux didn't exist. RMS thought GNU would always be the main free OS out there, and that he would always be its master. Therefore, he designed the GPLv2 to keep GNU free.

Since linux has become more popular than GNU, RMS is trying to destroy linux. The (L)GPLv3 is designed to be specially incompatible with the GPLv2. The word "reuse" appeared in GPL 1 and 2, but has disappeared from GPLv3. RMS is forbiding people from use GPLv3 libraries in GPLv2 programs.

If you released a program under GPLv2+, it would remain GPLv2+; the GPLv2 forces to "keep intact" license notices (section 1). But GPLv3 allows license notices to be modified (section 5b). Therefore, if you release a program under GPLv3+, RMS can publish a non-free GPLv4, and then change all your license notices to GPLv4+, effectively forking a privative derivative of your work.

The GPLv3 is a trap. Don't use it. You have been warned.

Freedom for software users means that users have the right to live in self-control and the right to share the software with their neighbors. Users who accept proprietary software cannot live in freedom because control over the software belongs to to owner of the proprietary and the owner is not the user.

When we advocate for users to have freedom, we're not asking for users to become IT experts or computer programmers. Please do not conflate technical aptitude with freedom. Users do not need any technical aptitude to practice the freedom that they have. Users (who have freedom) should take responsibility to find a skilled helper to help them with any technical problem. Maybe this means asking a favor from a friend or even paying $300/h for a consultant. No matter how the user finds her help, users do not need to physically perform any skill to have freedom.

I think you're evaluating RMS' argument according to priorities you're imposing on him (such as talking about offering "choice" as if that's always a good thing) rather than trying to understand what software freedom is, how freedom and power differ, and why copyleft is something worth fighting for. That you would actually use the term "IP" as you do (meaning the phantom "intellectual property") suggests you haven't considered that concept very deeply either.

I think you're evaluating RMS' argument according to priorities you're imposing on him (such as talking about offering "choice" as if that's always a good thing) rather than trying to understand what software freedom is, how freedom and power differ, and why copyleft is something worth fighting for. That you would actually use the term "IP" as you do (meaning the phantom "intellectual property") suggests you haven't considered that concept very deeply either.

Freedom and power are not the same thing. When someone distributes a non-free derivative of a Free Software program, the distributors are exercising power over the users of that derivative.

Maybe Stallman seems to be getting more extreme as he gets older. And lots of people and projects choose not to use the GPL v2 over the v3 (Linux is probably the most famous example) because they find the terms unacceptable, but that didn't stop it's introduction. IIRC there were quite a few people who were disappointed that the v3 didn't have a v3-or-newer provision.

My original post was joking, but I hadn't really thought about the implications of loopholes like you just mentioned. With a fairly trivial wrapper, one that could feasibly even be auto-generated, you could reduce any GPL-licensed code to an LGPL library. I'm certain that would piss Stallman off - I think he already regrets the existence of the LGPL: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

Albeit with different intent than commercial exploitation, you'll find that some BSD code was imported in key GNU projects, and the FSF even goes as far as to recommend using the 3-clause BSD license when the additional protection of the GPL isn't desired.

And no, BSD developers don't lose their copyright. They lose, freely, an opportunity to endow the community with the best outcome of their work, which is a fact and not a characterization of mine. If you want we can talk about my opinions on the music industry but then I think we'd be derailing the discussion.

I think you have a confusion about what a license does, and you rambled on about capitalism which I don't think you understand either. In any case, a software license gives you some rights in exchange of some obligations. The GPL itself is not designed to take away interoperability. The belief is that the availability of source code makes the software more interoperable, so GPL promotes interoperability by making it an obligation.

In fact, GNU projects like glibc, coreutils, binutils, gcc, even emacs are all about interoperability. They support various flavors of Unices and even non-Unix operating systems like Windows and BeOS. They support POSIX. Interoperability is so important they have an libiberty library to implement some missing C library functions so their programs could more easily compile on some esoteric operating system. Much of the code still uses ANSI C (C89) so they can be compiled using esoteric compilers.

The GPL itself embraces interoperability. There is this concept of "GPL compatibility" such that if it ever becomes necessary to include non-GPL licensed code in a GPL project, "GPL compatibility" means that GPL already fulfills all the obligations of the existing license. 3-clause BSD as well as MIT are GPL compatible (the 4th-clause of BSD, or the advertisement clause, is not). They have a page listing which licenses are compatible.

In this case, RMS is having a panic attack on more and more projects using a lax license, so he's trying political means to make emacs (the software, not the GPL license) non-interoperable to try to stop it. The maintainer of emacs however is more level headed and said he would not cave in and will defend interoperability. This is the right spirit of Free Software that RMS once believed.

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2005-01/msg00008.html
There you go. Purposely making worse software is not how you make friends.