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The article you cite is pure FUD. The GPL is a contract. Moglin is deliberately confusing the term "license" with the term "grant". A contract is any agreement, typically written, in which two parties agree to take certain actions in a reciprocal exchange of value or commitment to act. A grant is an agreement between any two parties in which one gives the other value or service, in an express hope of a return. (A gift is yet something again.)

If you go look at the GPL itself, you'll see a bunch of clauses of the form "you may do...provided...". You won't see clauses of the form "You may do...unconditionally". (For comparison, the three-clause BSD license is a grant -- you are literally allowed to do anything you like with the code. The four-clause BSD is a contract, since you must preserve the attribution of the original code in all derived works.)

More clearly, you cannot "violate" or "fail to comply" with the terms of a grant. You can only "violate" or "fail to comply with" the terms of a contract. Since Eban Moglin seeks to see the terms of the GPL "enforced", as he himself publicly states, in his view, it is a contract, subject to court ordered enforcement.

Opensource is useless when it's patent encumbered.

The GPL states the following...

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

I thought that if the patent holder distributes patented material under the GPL, it is a declaration that the holder has relinquished control over the patented material for as long as it is applied under the GPL.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

The C++ ABI is *always* incompatible between different versions of gcc.

Not since Gcc 3.0 was released and G++ started to use the cross-vendor C++ ABI. Since then the G++ developers have had to make minor fixes to the ABI to bring G++ into line with the standard. If you check the changelog for 3.4 you'll see that the only ABI changes are for MIPS and SPARC, and those changes are very specific. ABI changes in G++ only cause breakage if you have code which uses the functionality which has been changed; 99% of code will generally still work across an ABI change in G++ 3.x

Illegal Copyright Infringement it may be, but if the laws are wrong it's our civic duty to try and change them.

All of us are highly sensitized to this issue and have emphasized that these concerns must be addressed," said Geoffrey Strongin, platform security architect for AMD. Strongin argued that, far from undermining privacy, hardware-based security will improve user protections. "What we are doing here is a tremendous enhancement to privacy. Without adequate security, privacy protections is impossible. ( ZDNet)

Is that American for GMT?

I assume this is a joke, but for anyone actually interested in time standards (or for those of you who think GMT and UTC mean the same thing), there was a really good discussion in the gnu arch mailing list about this recently. It's a pretty long thread, but very insightful.

s/GMT/UTC/.

Short answer: UTC is based on an atomic clock while GMT is based on the speed of earth rotation (which apparently varies). UTC adds and omits leap seconds to stay within about 0.9 seconds of GMT.

RMS speaks quite carefully with respect to focusing on patents that cover algorithms used in computer software. If you read what RMS says about software patents, you'll see that he recognizes how, for example, automobile patents don't have the same social effect as software patents. Software programmers don't have to deal with all the complexities of physical product designers all the time.

Part of what he says about patents in other fields versus software patents:

The reason is that in other fields people have to deal with the propensity of matter. When you are designing circuits or cars or chemicals, you have to face the fact that these physical substances will do what they do, not what they are supposed to do. We in software don't have that problem and that makes it tremendously easier. We are designing a collection of idealised mathematical parts which have definitions. They do exactly what they are defined to do.

He doesn't think the same things about all patents. Read more or hear him talk about patents in other fields and you'll find that he focuses on his expertise.

RMS speaks quite carefully with respect to focusing on patents that cover algorithms used in computer software. If you read what RMS says about software patents, you'll see that he recognizes how, for example, automobile patents don't have the same social effect as software patents. Software programmers don't have to deal with all the complexities of physical product designers all the time.

Part of what he says about patents in other fields versus software patents:

The reason is that in other fields people have to deal with the propensity of matter. When you are designing circuits or cars or chemicals, you have to face the fact that these physical substances will do what they do, not what they are supposed to do. We in software don't have that problem and that makes it tremendously easier. We are designing a collection of idealised mathematical parts which have definitions. They do exactly what they are defined to do.

He doesn't think the same things about all patents. Read more or hear him talk about patents in other fields and you'll find that he focuses on his expertise.

RMS wrote (or had EM write) the GPL at a time that I and many other techies thought it was just a bunch of lawyering interfering with code fragments we were just posting on usenet with no copyright/license info. Now the GPL probably helped Linux beat BSD (since companies wouldn't have shared as much if the GPL didn't encourage them to), and may be important to protecting Linux survive.

RMS wrote The Right To Read back in 1997 at a time when DRM was a relatively new technology, and I dismissed him as being paranoid again. Note this was before the DMCA (1998). Long after, when the e-book DRM issues started I remembered his article. Now in the day of the increasing RIAA and MPAA presence, his article is more scarry than ludicrous.

If I were to read this article, I'm sure I'd think he's paranoid again; only to once again see 5 years later that he was actually just years ahead of me again.

Amail, Bmail, Cmail, Dmail, Email, Fmail, Gmail, Hmail, Imail, Jmail, Kmail, Lmail, Mmail, Nmail, Omail, Pmail, Qmail, Rmail, Smail, Tmail, Umail, Vmail, Wmail, Xmail, Ymail, and Zmail

Sorry.

I find it interesting that no one cares about the rights of the creator.

The rights of the Creator include the right to ban gay marriage, as expressed in Leviticus 20:13 and elsewhere in scripture.

RMS says don't use "creator" to mean what copyright law calls an "author".

RMS isn't just a famous singer; he has written some excellent documentation for some of his important software. This is a talent that's sorely lacking in the entire software industry.

Well as it's said on the hurd-devel page:

To see the collection of prior postings to the list, visit the Hurd-devel-readers Archives. (The current archive is only available to the list members.)

I guess that's why you don't see anything after april here.

But the Hurd is definitely alive. See:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/l4-hurd/
http ://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/
http://li sts.gnu.org/archive/html/help-hurd/
http://lists. debian.org/debian-hurd/

Well as it's said on the hurd-devel page:

To see the collection of prior postings to the list, visit the Hurd-devel-readers Archives. (The current archive is only available to the list members.)

I guess that's why you don't see anything after april here.

But the Hurd is definitely alive. See:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/l4-hurd/
http ://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/
http://li sts.gnu.org/archive/html/help-hurd/
http://lists. debian.org/debian-hurd/

I'd say there's a bigger problem than that. I was hoping to spend some time becoming familiar with the HURD as I recall it had a decent design for hacking on last time I checked.

I went to Google and put in "gnu hurd", and found this website. I clicked on the "changelog" link, and found that the last change was in March, and that was just a readme update. The last significant change (i.e. excluding things like "add a space between a function and its arguments") was back in 2002.

Okay, so I figure the changelog is stale. So I check out the mailing list archives for commit-hurd. There's a header file update for this month (so the mailing list is working). Last month, there was a single spam email. In fact, all the other emails to that list this year were spam.

So now, I'm thinking "surely this project has been abandoned", so I go back to the main page, and click on "status". It says the last release was 0.2. Looking at the changelog, I find out that the last release of HURD was in June 1997!

Now I'm thinking that perhaps I've just got an outdated website, but this is on the main gnu.org domain, it's the top result in Google, the mailing list seems to be operational, it's just that nobody has done anything significant for years!

I was quite disappointed to find out that the HURD was dead, but from what you are saying, I gather that it is actually being worked on? If so, can you point me in the right direction, because everything else I can find tells me the project is deader than a parrot in a Monty Python sketch.

Read the announcement. No mention of kernel architecture. Nor is there any in the Manifesto.

Now, if you want to say HURD is the equivalent of WinFS, I'd be inclined to grant the point. But the original goals of the GNU Project are fulfilled by Linux. Except maybe the Chaosnet thing.

*I* already do this every day, using a GNU screen. Thanks to GNU, of course, not X, or X.org. :-)

Like it or not, RMS is a sung hero of OSS.

You're making erroneous assumptions, but don't feel bad, because GNU makes the same ones. The first bad assumption is that the reality follows theory. The second is that you're selling software.

Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.

With free software, users don't have to pay the distribution fee in order to use the software.

You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy.

However, when people think of ``selling software'', they usually imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software proprietary rather than free.

So unless you're going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term ``selling software'' and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say ``distributing free software for a fee''--that is unambiguous.

What I find strange is that it seems to be ok for some licenses to add restrictions not in the GPL, but not for others.

The GPL (in section 6) disallows posing additional restrictions on
redistribution etc. of GPLed software (including combined works consisting of some GPLed and some non-GPLed software). This means that software under a license that poses restrictions that are not in the GPL can be combined with GPLed software, but the result may not be redistributed.

Now consider, the Artistic License, Version 2.0. This is listed under GPL-compatible licenses.

Consider, also, the XFree86 License, Version 1.1. This license is listed under GPL-incompatible free software licenses.

The XFree86 License 1.1 is deemed incompatible, because it requires that the software includes an acknowledgment of XFree86 in the same place as other such acknowledgments.

The Artistic License 2.0 allows redistribution of a modified version only if it is clearly marked as such. The GPL contains no such requirement to my knowledge.

So, the question is, why is the AL2.0 considered GPL compatible, but not the XF1.1?

What I find strange is that it seems to be ok for some licenses to add restrictions not in the GPL, but not for others.

The GPL (in section 6) disallows posing additional restrictions on
redistribution etc. of GPLed software (including combined works consisting of some GPLed and some non-GPLed software). This means that software under a license that poses restrictions that are not in the GPL can be combined with GPLed software, but the result may not be redistributed.

Now consider, the Artistic License, Version 2.0. This is listed under GPL-compatible licenses.

Consider, also, the XFree86 License, Version 1.1. This license is listed under GPL-incompatible free software licenses.

The XFree86 License 1.1 is deemed incompatible, because it requires that the software includes an acknowledgment of XFree86 in the same place as other such acknowledgments.

The Artistic License 2.0 allows redistribution of a modified version only if it is clearly marked as such. The GPL contains no such requirement to my knowledge.

So, the question is, why is the AL2.0 considered GPL compatible, but not the XF1.1?

Free Software Song:

[To the melody of Sadi Moma:]

Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
x2

Hoarders may get piles of money,
That is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot help their neighbors;
That's not good, hackers, that's not good.

When we have enough free software
At our call, hackers, at our call,
We'll throw out those dirty licenses
Ever more, hackers, ever more.

Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
x2

It makes me think a wee bit..

The web service descriptions will probably be sufficient to reimplement protocols by just running stub generators.

Some things that you can do:

1. Support free (as in freedom) software, open-source software, and software such as shareware or freeware, produced by individuals.
   
2. Support open standards that are not patent-encumbered i.e. HTML, Ogg Vorbis (audio), and PNG (graphics.) Discourage MS Word attachments for e-mail.
   
3. In addition to the EFF, there is the League for Programming Freedom. They have a paper opposing software patents.
4. For engineers and software developers, it may actually be better to not search for or examine software patents. Willfully infringing a patent is said to be much more serious than innocently infringing a patent. See this article on patents. It was written by an attorney who comments that he can no longer deal with patents in good conscience. The article mentions that the risk of examining software patents serves to defeat the supposed advantage that patents increase public knowledge of technology. Also see this article about Linus Torvalds; he comments on the idea of not looking for software patents.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

And how is this different from source code patches? It seems to me that they'll only provide patches from version to version, like they do with GNU Emacs. If you need to update multiple versions then you have to make a decision about going through 10 patches, or doing a full download of the desired version.

I have first hand experience that piracy DOES effect [sic]the software developer

Oh, you're a sailor are you? Either that, or you're just demonstrating the kind of simplistic thinking that tries to use pejorative language to muddy the issues.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

The advocates of ``open source software'' tried to make it a trademark, saying this would enable them to prevent misuse. This initiative was later dropped, the term being too descriptive to qualify as a trademark; thus, the legal status of ``open source'' is the same as that of ``free software'': there is no legal constraint on using it. I have heard reports of a number of companies' calling software packages ``open source'' even though they did not fit the official definition; I have observed some instances myself.

I learned that denying people an inherently sharable commodity was hoarding and selfish. So when I brought something to school, I had to bring enough to share. Later when I learned about computers, I learned that it's unusual to "take" data; typically data is copied, not moved, from one computer to another. Still later, when I read more about the history of various media businesses, I learned that they got started doing what today they call "piracy" (even though, ironically, that term in the illicit copying sense was once used by authors to describe what publishers sometimes did).

I think all of these lessons and many others have made me increasingly appreciate free software over the years.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

They should know how to protect the system from disaster and attack. Tips on hardening should include:

• Hardening a new install with the Bastille Linux scripts. What these are and what they do.
• IP tables configuration. What IP tables is, why it's important, and how to configure it. This may or may not be in relation to Bastille.
• Tripwire. A PITA to configure, but *really* useful in knowing what is happening on the server.
• Kernel options. Do you need loadable modules on a production server? Disable them if not. Do you need USB or CDROM access? Remove them from the kernel. If it's not needed, don't include it.
• Kernel upgrades. When and why. Just because the latest 2.6.87 kernel has been released is no reason to put it in. However, if there is a remote root 'sploit posted to Bugtraq for the current kernel, everything else is a lower priority.
• BugTraq and other security lists. What they are and why they should be monitored.
• Application security patches. Like kernel upgrades, guidelines on why and when production apps should or should not (or must) be upgraded.

• tar, and it's more esoteric options, such as multi-volume tarfiles, dump levels, etc.
• Rotation schemes. What is Grandfather, Father, Son? Why is it important to do this? What is the difference between a differential and an incremental backup?
• Backup media. Redundant hard drive? CDR? DVD-R? Tape? Onsite vs offsite?
• Recovery procedures. Ok, you've got a backup. What do you do if you need it? You have tested the tapes, right? :)

grnbrg.

For me the T3 and Linux combination is perfect.

Why?

Because it's the best platform for running Plucker and Jpluck. For those who don't know, Plucker is without doubt the best offline reader for any PDA platform. Features include:

Anti aliased custom fonts.
DIA support on T3.
Newsfeed support via Jpluck.
Easy to use one handed operation.

Jpluck pulls down whatever I want every morning and the T3 syncs it before I commute to work. All I have to do is remember to remove it from the cradle. Of course the other good reason to use Plucker is because it's free.

But seriously folks... Is a grammar checker really that important a feature? I find that in Word, I turn it off because it drives me crazy.

It doesn't seem to be common among slashdot readers at least, but personally I've found that the grammar checker is one of the features that I really miss since moving away from Windows.

Certainly it makes mistakes, and I turn it off when I'm working on some text where Word's grammar isn't particularly important. It'd be silly to trust it with pirate grammar. But when I'm proofreading a large document, I've found it very useful, just for its ability to locate places where there might be problems.

I can check them and I don't have to agree with them, it's often found things that I agree with in hindsight but wouldn't have noticed otherwise. In my case it's especially good for things like locating passive statements where active ones would do a better job, and so on. On many occasions it really has helped me to improve my writing style.

If OpenOffice or AbiWord had a grammar checker at least as good as MS Word, I'd use them all the time. The closest I've managed to find in the open source world is style and diction. They find a few things, but are relatively primitive to what Word does.

Not with the GPL:

"To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all."

Hate is unproductive. Thus you need not to hate it but it would be good if you were aware of all the consequences of using Word or similarly licenced products. It is basically YOUR goods (data) closed in SOMEONE ELSE's lockbox (data format). To open the lockbox you have to pay SOMEONE ELSE only to get YOUR goods back. This may or may not be bad, depending on the point of view. You may also have a look for example here for some other explanations. If then, being fully aware of all the aspects you consciously choose that Word is your product of choice - YOUR (not SOMEONE ELSE's) will and choice.

When you buy a DVD you are buying the media AND the right to watch it. [emphasis added]

You have been apparently indoctrinated with a great success, but the fact is that you don't need any special "right to watch" a movie, like you don't need any "right to read" a book, at least not yet. The only thing that the copyright law regulates is the right to publish and distribute, not any magical "right to see" which would somehow make illegal the very act of merely looking at publicly available things, which would be completely ridiculous. Please do not spread the FUD. The scums like Jack Valenti want us to think that way, but it does's make it true. Please try to keep that in mind. This is actually extremely important because if all of people think like yourself, then no one will protest when corporations finally put it into law, because everyone will think it has always been that way, which is simply not true. I wouldn't have even answered to this post but it was moderated as Score:5, Insightful so apparently there are more misinformed people here.

Anyone who receives the binaries, whether from the original distributor or not, is entitled to receive source code. [faq link]

While this is "potentially" funny, it only really is if you actually believe something like the GPL isn't clear.

Gnu.org contains much more than just a copy of the GPL, and some of it quite unclear. Such as this, for example.

Which he doesn't.

This means that he can't build in hidden/extra features to the XChat for Windows client without giving them to everyone. That, would be a violation of the GPL.

He has taken the newest contributed code (to a GPL project) and his modifications (for building on win32) and declared it shareware (contrary to the gpl according to GNU) and does not provide source code for this modified version.

The rest of your post seems reasonable, but of course is based on invalid premise (hardly your fault, as the site is STILL slashdotted.)

The distribution of source code must include everything reasonably necessary to build the code as a binary. So, that includes makefiles. See the following from the GPL:

" The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable."

They have no problem with you charging whatever the market will bear, provided you provide the source code, at cost to transmit it, to anyone you give the binary to.

And if you do provide the source code, then somebody else will compile & distribute it, so that pretty soon the market won't bear any cost from you.

So although you can theoretically charge money for GPLed binaries, it'll never work anything like a conventional paid or shareware business model*. Look at the FSF's offer to sell you software. Clearly, that's hardly a sale at all- more just a thinly disguised charitable contribution.

* The only way shareware could work with GPLed software if the actual value comes not from the code, but from other copyrighted datafiles included with it, such as the graphics for a game.

Actually, selling free software is fine. This guy is simply saying that if it bugs an author, he will remove that authors code, even though he is by no means required to.

To fix your analogy,
"This is on the same level as me imitating the landscaping and archetecture my neighbor has. I enjoy the designs, and I hope he doesn't mind. If it bothers him, I will re-do my yard to try to make him feel better, even though I am not legally required to do so".

Gee, isn't that evil. Using someone else's code, under the terms of license he released it under, and even offering to re-do it if the author doesn't like the way he does things.

Why would the FSF step in at all? To quote from their "Selling Free software" page,

"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.

Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on."

They also say, "Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License (20k characters) (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy."

They have no problem with you charging whatever the market will bear, provided you provide the source code, at cost to transmit it, to anyone you give the binary to.

He can charge. He just has to include full source, the text of the GPL, and grant all the rights that the GPL grants.

See Categories of Free and non-Free Software for more details.

imo tbh you can't be GPL compliant, use and compile 3rd party GPL code, and charge people money for it without the expressed consent of the contributing authors.

Your opinion, if I understand this sentence, is incorrect. The only requirement the GPL makes is that you make the source available, with the same rights. Therefore, he can charge all he wants for binaries, as long as he releases the source he used to get them. See the GPL

Don't believe me (and are too lazy to read the GPL)? Here are some "intuitive" proofs:

• RedHat sells linux binaries, along with much much GPL software, without the express consent of every contributor.
• SuSE sells linux binaries, along with much much GPL software, without the express consent of every contributor.
• Transgaming sells specialized Wine binaries on a subscription basis, without the express consent of every contributor. This is perhaps the best example, as they also provide the source in a manner similar to what should (probably) be done with xchat.

In summary: to make the mess go away, Zed can probably just post the xchat windows source tree in CVS, caveat emptor. Won't stop someone else from compiling it, or even selling it, but then same deal with Transgaming, and they're doing pretty well. IANAL and all.

As long as they own the copyright they can license it however they want. They can even dual license it, GPL and/or Firstborn.

GNU argues that when someone contributes code into the code, the original code can no longer relicense it.

personally, i don't think this is ethically acceptable, and probably wouldn't hold up in court, unless the amount of code is substantial

Even the FSF will sell you precompiled versions of all their programs, for $5000.

The equivalent access clause says they can't charge more for the source than for the binaries.

Once someone has a copy of the source, they can easily fork it.