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Once code is released under the GPL it is public domain

;;; doxymacs.el --- ELisp package for making doxygen related stuff easier.
;;
;; Copyright (C) 2001 Ryan T. Sammartino
;;
;; This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
;; modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
;; ...

and guess what, if GPLed code was included in his code then he can't even do that [sell the code for profit].

I've seen the beta ships with gcc 3.1.1. If this holds for the release, that means there's going to be yet another C++ ABI incompatibility when gcc 3.2 comes out. I just hope RedHat 8.0 and Mandrake 9.0 both ship with the same compiler.

Oh, here's the quote from GCC's page about 3.2 incompatibility:

GCC 3.1 [sic, should be 3.2] has a number of C++ ABI fixes in it which make its C++ compiler binary incompatible with the C++ compilers found in earlier GCC releases, including GCC 3.1 and GCC 3.1.1

Oh, here's the quote from GCC's page about 3.2 incompatibility:

GCC 3.1 [sic, should be 3.2] has a number of C++ ABI fixes in it which make its C++ compiler binary incompatible with the C++ compilers found in earlier GCC releases, including GCC 3.1 and GCC 3.1.1

In versions up to the present for the past few years they have compiled with gcc 2.96.x which if you read the docs on the gnu gcc web site specifically stated that it was developement and SHOULD NOT BE USED FOR PRODUCTION

Although this is better since 3.1 is not a developement build. It doesn't surprise me in the least.

Mandrake has done a great job of creating a nice looking interface,but I have refused to use them (or redhat) because of their compiler.

Huh? How is Troll Tech evil? People wanted QT under the GPL, and lo and behold, they released it under the GPL. Seems like a nice bunch of folks to me.

Not quite. People really wanted it under the LGPL or BSD licenses, just like GTK+, FLTK, FOX, wxWindows, etc.

One of the problems (unless you follow Stallman's manifesto) is that although the Free version is free for open-source, their commercial licenses are structured so that if at any point in time your software project is touched by a free (free, non-commercial, acedemic, etc) version of Qt, you may never at any later time buy a commercial license and release your software commercially.

A search of google did reveal however that there is a shocking number of companies who seem to believe that there is something called "GNU Perl" including apparently IBM. I'm not holding my breath for RMS to spend any of his time correcting this widespread inaccurate credit of Perl to the GNU project.

A search of google did reveal however that there is a shocking number of companies who seem to believe that there is something called "GNU Perl" including apparently IBM. I'm not holding my breath for RMS to spend any of his time correcting this widespread inaccurate credit of Perl to the GNU project.

Apple's license is OSI Certified, and is quite close to being "Free Software" as defined by the FSF with the only "flaw" according to the FSF being "any modified version "deployed" in an organization must be published". I don't really understand why so many seem to be bothered by the APSL.

"All code under the GPL is copyrighted (owned) by the person (or group, or organisation) that wrote the code. GPLed code has owners. Why is this so hard for people to understand?"

There is a tangled web here to trap people trying to grapple this argument. I'm not sure if I can unravel it myself, but I will try.

It is true that code under the GPL is copyrighted, but does that necessarily mean it is owned? Of course, this depends on what you mean by ownership or even if ownership has any validity with intellectual works. This is all deeply philosophical, but its perhaps useful to know that Stallman (who launched the GNU Project) has an essay online called Why Software Should Not Have Owners. Its worth reading to understand the free software philosophy.

And this is the tangle. It seems the GPL was written to explicitly to write software that doesn't have owners, basically software that even the original hackers don't have any explicit control over.

This is far from being property-stripping (the right to license software is still exclusive to the writer of the code). But saying that copyright means ownership isn't always true in the sense that copyright means an exclusive right to copy. Since the GPL and other well known licenses explicitly allow you to distribute the software, the notion of copyright has been turned upside down--rather than preventing distribution copyright has been used to explicitly allow it. Some people use the term copyleft. And if ownership can be said to mean an exclusive right to distribute, then GPLed software isn't owned at all. Its public software (which is what the P in GPL stands for, after all) and much better than public domain for all but the more trivial works.

But it is true that any claims of "property-stripping" is just pure FUD.

Cheer up folks... DotGNU, the GNU project's complete replacement for MS.NET, is the answer.

DotGNU's Portable.NET provides support for C# development and a CLR to run the IL bytecodes with. The compiler is written in C, meaning that its performance is far better than the Mono and MS.NET compilers. Also, it can bootstrap off of gcc (side-stepping many legal issues with MS that Mono will probably have to deal with).

The DotGNU SEE provides the framework for data marshalling and security of downloaded components. The plugin architecture of the SEE provides the ability to run a JVM (or Perl's Parrot vm, for that matter) as easily as the pnet CLR; plugins should also be able to provide data marshalling between the runtimes as well as between runtimes and native code. The DotGNU DEE (a distributed collection of SEEs) provides the server side support.

The DotGNU Virtual Identities system provides a passport/hailstorm replacement that is secure, decentralized, and even allows the individual to serve up their own info. instead of relying on a third party.

The DotGNU project is also a GNU/FSF project; most of the code is owned by the Free Software Foundation, and is therefore permanently GPL protected.

DotGNU is also aiming for full ECMA compliance, while still providing an ever-growing collection of GNU extensions which are available via the non-standard DotGNU namespace.

Within a year, DotGNU will be a superior and fully working replacement for MS.NET, and if the folks at Apache have any sense, they'll leave the darkside and join us back in the light.

Cheer up folks... DotGNU, the GNU project's complete replacement for MS.NET, is the answer.

DotGNU's Portable.NET provides support for C# development and a CLR to run the IL bytecodes with. The compiler is written in C, meaning that its performance is far better than the Mono and MS.NET compilers. Also, it can bootstrap off of gcc (side-stepping many legal issues with MS that Mono will probably have to deal with).

The DotGNU SEE provides the framework for data marshalling and security of downloaded components. The plugin architecture of the SEE provides the ability to run a JVM (or Perl's Parrot vm, for that matter) as easily as the pnet CLR; plugins should also be able to provide data marshalling between the runtimes as well as between runtimes and native code. The DotGNU DEE (a distributed collection of SEEs) provides the server side support.

The DotGNU Virtual Identities system provides a passport/hailstorm replacement that is secure, decentralized, and even allows the individual to serve up their own info. instead of relying on a third party.

The DotGNU project is also a GNU/FSF project; most of the code is owned by the Free Software Foundation, and is therefore permanently GPL protected.

DotGNU is also aiming for full ECMA compliance, while still providing an ever-growing collection of GNU extensions which are available via the non-standard DotGNU namespace.

Within a year, DotGNU will be a superior and fully working replacement for MS.NET, and if the folks at Apache have any sense, they'll leave the darkside and join us back in the light.

Cheer up folks... DotGNU, the GNU project's complete replacement for MS.NET, is the answer.

DotGNU's Portable.NET provides support for C# development and a CLR to run the IL bytecodes with. The compiler is written in C, meaning that its performance is far better than the Mono and MS.NET compilers. Also, it can bootstrap off of gcc (side-stepping many legal issues with MS that Mono will probably have to deal with).

The DotGNU SEE provides the framework for data marshalling and security of downloaded components. The plugin architecture of the SEE provides the ability to run a JVM (or Perl's Parrot vm, for that matter) as easily as the pnet CLR; plugins should also be able to provide data marshalling between the runtimes as well as between runtimes and native code. The DotGNU DEE (a distributed collection of SEEs) provides the server side support.

The DotGNU Virtual Identities system provides a passport/hailstorm replacement that is secure, decentralized, and even allows the individual to serve up their own info. instead of relying on a third party.

The DotGNU project is also a GNU/FSF project; most of the code is owned by the Free Software Foundation, and is therefore permanently GPL protected.

DotGNU is also aiming for full ECMA compliance, while still providing an ever-growing collection of GNU extensions which are available via the non-standard DotGNU namespace.

Within a year, DotGNU will be a superior and fully working replacement for MS.NET, and if the folks at Apache have any sense, they'll leave the darkside and join us back in the light.

I don't think Bochs can or will do it, but Plex86 (old site) might if it ever gets finished.

This page is a paper by the creator of Plex86 (also the creator of Bochs, I think) explaining pure (machine) emulation, OS/API emulation and virtualization. None of these seem to be exactly what you mentioned, but they're close. By the way, Bochs is pure (machine) emulation and Plex86 uses (will use) virtualization like VMWare. Wine is an example of OS/API emulation.

Some peope would rather listen to marketroids than read the actual fricking license, that's why. Chalk it up to basic laziness, or to ignorant prejudice, whichever.

I don't accept any patches that I don't understand, or that I think will make the project harder to direct, maintain, or to make additions. If somebody wants to fork it is almost never a problem. If you think their patches will have problems, so will their version. If they want to do something different with it, then it really isn't competition. Why is competition bad anyway? Its not like you expect to make more money the more customers you get.

Read the cathedral and the bazaar if you have not already done so. You think like a cathedral programmer: your program should be directed from on high. A bazaar programmer will coerce others into feeling good about making contributions and release early and often.

Furthermore, you need to look at your motivations for producing open source software. You sound like you want the user base and the name recognition. It doesn't happen to all of us. I code open source because I want to make cool things happen and I want to force other people to let me experience the cool things that they make happen (for free!) So one of my favorites is why not lgpl?

If you want a successful (popular) open source project, the ones that make it big fall into two categories as I see it:
1) The ones that are big: mozilla, the gimp, they take a lot of open source programmers working together to produce something that paid developers would have a hard time doing.
2) Projects that let other developers build from them: linux, libraries, that fuel innovation in other open source developers.

If you work on something that falls in both those categories (like linux and mozilla) you are all set. But you can't do it alone. And unless you release early, and often, you can't get help.

AdaPower

AdaIC

GNAT, free GNU Ada)

GNU Ada in gcc

I am sorry, but how can you start a Linux timeline in 1991? I would have started much earlier on MIT's lab for artificial intelligence. Does anyone really believe that Linux would have been such a success story without its license?

Regards

Mikael

That's an interesting theory, and might be true of other areas like in industry, but in creative endeavours, the prospect of becoming rich does not lead to better art.

motivation

Of course, as with everything, you should consider the source.

The Alphora Dataphor DAE is the first relational database management system since IBM BS12 and the QUEL version of Postgres.

It was coded for MS .Net, thus it should be readily portable to Ximian Mono or GNUs & Southern Storms DotGNU Portable.Net.

If such a potentially useful software became publicized and free software, we could have a really innovating no Marketspeak intended , probably killer application the proprietary vendors would have a hard time scrambling after.

And that with unreprochable theoretical foundations attested by the luminars of the field.

The Alphora Dataphor DAE is the first relational database management system since IBM BS12 and the QUEL version of Postgres.

It was coded for MS .Net, thus it should be readily portable to Ximian Mono or GNUs & Southern Storms DotGNU Portable.Net.

If such a potentially useful software became publicized and free software, we could have a really innovating no Marketspeak intended , probably killer application the proprietary vendors would have a hard time scrambling after.

And that with unreprochable theoretical foundations attested by the luminars of the field.

People

Richard Stallman -
Eric S. Raymond -
Larry Wall

Linux Programming

Unix

Programming Methodologies

C Programming

C++ Programming

Perl Programming

Network Programming

Open Source

I find it ironic that "a lot of managers are going to equate free with a lack of quality" when, in 1998 and 1999, ither terms "open source" or "Linux" would be considered a good enough reason to invest in an IPO. I think what is occurring now is the shock of waking up from the snow jobs of the Dot[expletive deleted]ed era, which, just to be geeky, would be much like actually waking up in the world of "The Matrix" where the reality is so massively different from the dream. The major difference is the reality now fully exists.

I have read in the past week, through a series of coincidences, various reviews and thoughts about many aspects of Linux once thought unlikely. These various mentions include the easy to install Mandrake, the really decent ongoing support from RedHat and the fully developed applications from, well, too, too many to actually list, but any Linux user would probably recognise them, ranging from Nautilus to GNU Cash.

What I'm more interested in knowing, with the phrase "Linux is a gateway OS" still in my mind, how many more doors will this open as Free/Free and Open Source software and full operating systems develop. What's the GNU OS? Will that be its name? Will its mind-blowing innovations (you really should pop over to the hurd site) result in people giving it a decent eyeballing? With this and Macintosh Darwin Operating System in place, will people give another go at the BSD world?

If investigations into more than just one OS were to begin, Microsoft might be forced to consider POSIX-Compliance and a new business model (Why pay for a crash prone, resource hogging operating system when you can literally pickup a stable, goes almost anywhere operating system for free). In the end, I suppose this part won't happen to soon with the foolish notion of "The Operating System for the Internet." You can have "one degree of separation" in your own environments and joint ventures, why invest even more money into a third party that uses questionable and historically unsafe technology? I do believe third parties will cater to smaller groups (small business and schools) but Microsoft will probably lose a definitive hold on this market quite quickly (despite an inevitable lawsuit).

Of course, these are just my own ramblings; feel free to ignore them as you wish. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, yadda yadda yadda, history of GNU here, bio of Stallman here, marijuana was outlawed by request of cotton farmers, moderation of this topic will result in losing your soul and all that other stuff. VA this, that and the other are/is in no way responsible for how I code the HTML, as long as it doesn't crash slashbot.

I don't know how you got moderated up. Perhaps this misconception is more prevalent than I thought.

If I actually buy a copy of Linux I can tear it apart and modify it, but I don't have the rights to simply resell my new creation.

If you are speaking about the GNU GPL, lets take a look at a part of the actual license:

The actual license: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

(emphasis is mine)

Let me hit you over the head with it one more time. You can sell GPLed software for any cost you like, any cost that you think the market will allow.

The difference is that you don't get any exclusive right to the software. And that is what the Free Software Foundation means by freedom. That everyone who gets a copy of the software gets the right to copy, modify, redistribute, and even sell the software. These rights shouldn't be exclusive.

I have to essentially provide a free copy of my changes in raw form to Big Brother and everyone else in order to do that.

This is also wrong, simply with the quote from the GNU GPL above. The word "may" is important, it means you have the freedom to "may" or "may not" distribute the software. That means, I can't tell you to give me a copy of your GPLed web browser off your computer, even if you modified it. Its called privacy.

In fact, no respect for privacy was one of the original reasons the FSF considered the original version of the APSL as non-free.

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html

After studying Apple's new source code license, the APSL, I have concluded that it falls short of being a free software license. It has three fatal flaws, any of which would be sufficient to make the software less than free.

Disrespect for privacy

The APSL does not allow you to make a modified version and use it for your own private purposes, without publishing your changes.

I don't know how you got moderated up. Perhaps this misconception is more prevalent than I thought.

If I actually buy a copy of Linux I can tear it apart and modify it, but I don't have the rights to simply resell my new creation.

If you are speaking about the GNU GPL, lets take a look at a part of the actual license:

The actual license: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

(emphasis is mine)

Let me hit you over the head with it one more time. You can sell GPLed software for any cost you like, any cost that you think the market will allow.

The difference is that you don't get any exclusive right to the software. And that is what the Free Software Foundation means by freedom. That everyone who gets a copy of the software gets the right to copy, modify, redistribute, and even sell the software. These rights shouldn't be exclusive.

I have to essentially provide a free copy of my changes in raw form to Big Brother and everyone else in order to do that.

This is also wrong, simply with the quote from the GNU GPL above. The word "may" is important, it means you have the freedom to "may" or "may not" distribute the software. That means, I can't tell you to give me a copy of your GPLed web browser off your computer, even if you modified it. Its called privacy.

In fact, no respect for privacy was one of the original reasons the FSF considered the original version of the APSL as non-free.

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html

After studying Apple's new source code license, the APSL, I have concluded that it falls short of being a free software license. It has three fatal flaws, any of which would be sufficient to make the software less than free.

Disrespect for privacy

The APSL does not allow you to make a modified version and use it for your own private purposes, without publishing your changes.

A nice, and a propos story by RMS, called The Right to Read, can be found here. Definitely worth the read.

However, if you actually bother reading the licenses on the code that gets embedded by bison and gcc, special excemptions are made --

Thus, code compiled with gcc may be distributed under any license you want. Sorry, thanks for playing.

I reccomend this FAQ entry for a practical explanation of the LGPL.

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thankyou very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. To put it bluntly, Perl scripts will still look less beautiful than our friend Mr Goatse. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^HPerl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

Write more good software instead, adoption by the mainstream and the industry will follow automatically.

Allow me to rant for a while.

For example, if I were to make music, I'm stuck with Microsoft or Apple. Yeah yeah now people will say, there is software X and software Y which you should use. But guess what! The user interfaces generally suck, or the program is some 0.0.5 beta. So with a crashing beta you're better off using the other solutions explained earlier.

Something like Buzz for linux would be the ultimate bomb. Unfortunately GNU Octal seems to have died, at least the web site hasn't been updated for ages. CheeseTracker is good, but there aren't enough effects available. Also, it is mono.

So, for example those software look promising. But they really don't help you if you need the solution TODAY and not next year.

"the ill-fated 3.0 compiler"

I think that's too negative. 3.0 might not have been 'redhat-approved', but it definitely was an important milestone for gcc and represented large improvements.

There have been some really nice changes from 2.95 to 3.0, such as the inliner.

Plus there have been many releases since: 3.0.1, 3.0.2, 3.0.3, 3.0.4, and 3.1 release since 3.0. And 3.1 is as much faster than 3.0 as 3.0 is faster than 2.95.

"the ill-fated 3.0 compiler"

I think that's too negative. 3.0 might not have been 'redhat-approved', but it definitely was an important milestone for gcc and represented large improvements.

There have been some really nice changes from 2.95 to 3.0, such as the inliner.

Plus there have been many releases since: 3.0.1, 3.0.2, 3.0.3, 3.0.4, and 3.1 release since 3.0. And 3.1 is as much faster than 3.0 as 3.0 is faster than 2.95.

"the ill-fated 3.0 compiler"

I think that's too negative. 3.0 might not have been 'redhat-approved', but it definitely was an important milestone for gcc and represented large improvements.

There have been some really nice changes from 2.95 to 3.0, such as the inliner.

Plus there have been many releases since: 3.0.1, 3.0.2, 3.0.3, 3.0.4, and 3.1 release since 3.0. And 3.1 is as much faster than 3.0 as 3.0 is faster than 2.95.

Why there are no GIF files on GNU web pages

Will this be changed to say:
Why there are no JPEG or GIF files on GNU web pages?

Do these pattents also apply for Europe? Are they world-wide? Because I don't remember having seen this type of things in The Netherlands.

It won't matter if the Hague treaty proceeds, because patents will essentially be global. (Although I'm not sure where the treaty stands at the moment.)

I'm no RMS fan, but he's clearly innocet of your charges. He's not at all confused about IP.
RMS wishes intellectual property did not exist; yet, he is not stupid and has to acknowledge that, as of now, it does exist by law. The GPL is a way to turn the whole notion of copyright around and make it work against itself (hence, its alias, "copyleft").
In other words, the GPL is a way to use copyright law to ensure information is free. If there was no copyright law, the GPL wouldn't be needed and RMS would be much happier.
BTW, what I just said is hardly insider's information, it can be easily learned. Next time, I suggest you do some reading before ranting on a subject. A good place to start is here .

Anyone know what GNU is going to do? I recall reading a section on their site on why they only use jpegs instead of gifs. In fact I think all the logos are only available in jpeg

No, that was UniSys:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html

Apple is strangling Firewire adoption (IEEE 1394) with patent royalty fees.

Moderation is the course to productive change. Extremism can get the issues in the limelight, but extremists are rarely able to compromise enough to make negotiations productive.

This doesn't have to be another Revolutionary War. We may feel like we have taxation without representation, but that's not true. We have advocates in the tech industry, and even sympathy from within the content industry itself. We need to build upon what we have, not bite the hand that feeds us.

You may also want to take a look at the letter Richard Stallman (the hacker who created GNU, wrote GNU Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger, among other things), wrote to the New York Times protesting their misuse of the term "hacker".

You can find his letter at the bottom of this page in The Jargon File.

--Phillip

You may also want to take a look at the letter Richard Stallman (the hacker who created GNU, wrote GNU Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger, among other things), wrote to the New York Times protesting their misuse of the term "hacker".

You can find his letter at the bottom of this page in The Jargon File.

--Phillip

You may also want to take a look at the letter Richard Stallman (the hacker who created GNU, wrote GNU Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger, among other things), wrote to the New York Times protesting their misuse of the term "hacker".

You can find his letter at the bottom of this page in The Jargon File.

--Phillip

You may also want to take a look at the letter Richard Stallman (the hacker who created GNU, wrote GNU Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger, among other things), wrote to the New York Times protesting their misuse of the term "hacker".

You can find his letter at the bottom of this page in The Jargon File.

--Phillip

GPL doesn't have anything to do with the input and output of GLP'ed programs, only with the code.

Absolutely. There used to be an exception: GNU Bison used to require that the yyparse() output files, and thus the libraries/programs which included them, were licensed with the GPL, since most of the contents of the output files are actually distributed with the Bison source. However, this is no longer the case. Check out the licensing.

It sounds like "derived" means you've used GPL source in your program instead of merely using a GPL program to create it.

In case you're interested, feel free to read the GPL itself. It's actually written in very understandable English, unlike most other legal stuff. Or see the GPL FAQ for all your questions.

It sounds like "derived" means you've used GPL source in your program instead of merely using a GPL program to create it.

In case you're interested, feel free to read the GPL itself. It's actually written in very understandable English, unlike most other legal stuff. Or see the GPL FAQ for all your questions.

Would there be a way for non-coders to make a contribution to GNU software?

GNU project has a page on How to Help the GNU Project.

If you want to improve a piece of free software, you can help enormously by reporting bugs, improving artwork, testing bleeding-edge versions.

The KDE project suggests "Go to apps.kde.com and Freshmeat.NET and do a search for the application you are thinking of writing or just browse the lists there. If you find in these lists something of interest to you, you might want to contact the author(s) of the code and offer your help directly."

If you can design websites, offer to become a project's webmaster. If you can write music, find a game to contribute music to.

In short, if you have any skill at all, you can probably find a project on freshmeat you can contribute your spare time to.

Point 'em at the GPL FAQ to clear up these long standing (and baseless) myths.

How did these ideas get started, anyway?

.LIN initiative (TM). It is the only logical next step after .NET and .MAC

They've already thought of that. Here's .GNU

dotgnu is another effort to develope a .net clone under GPL and here is a FAQ

dotgnu is another effort to develope a .net clone under GPL and here is a FAQ