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To play Devil's Advocate ...

> What qualifies Stallman as an expert on ethics?

First, well when you invent a new kind of license that thousands of people use in their projects that gives him some validity based on experience. What new paradigm of license have you invented and given away? And how does it help guarantee freedom?

Second, he has been correct about warning how companies can misuse licenses.

i.e. "Right to Read" and how Amazon deleted copies of 1984 on people's Kindles.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

> This guy is full of rhetoric and I'm not sure why he would still be considered a leader in this movement.
And your personal ideology is any better? Because you haven't posted anything why we should follow yours ...

Lastly, are you familiar with this George Bernard Shaw's quote?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

I may not agree with RMS on everything but I admire and respect his dedication to an ideology.

If he simply tries to convince people that it is best for them to use "free as in RMS" licenses, then I would have no issue with it, but he here is actually advocating changing copyright law to coerce people into using them.

I think this is exactly his position. Feel free to cite me something that says otherwise.

Here are the gnu.org suggestions for government action to promote free software.

That's not what Tivoization is. Tivoization is when you put copyleft software on a piece of hardware, but then lock down the hardware so that the users can modify the software in practise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

What you are describing is legal even under GPLv3. You can distribute non-free programs along with free ones: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

It very specifically says that you MAY NOT charge for the software.

You mean where it says in section 4: "You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee."

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Android device manufacturers could just as easily include (a link to) an ext2/3 driver to be installed on the Windows box.

I'll agree with you if you can come up with viable solutions to these four problems:

1. The official implementation of Ext2/3 is under the GNU General Public License version 2, which would require that all copyright owners of the implementation grant an exception for use as a plug-in to a non-free program. Unlike GNU, Linux itself does not use copyright assignment, and I don't see how one could practically obtain permission from everybody who has contributed to Ext2/3, especially if at least one of them strongly disagrees with Microsoft's business practices.
2. As I understand it, installable file systems on Windows run in kernel mode, and all kernel-mode code running in on 64-bit Windows must be digitally signed with a commercial code signing certificate whose root is trusted by Microsoft. GPLv2 requires distribution of "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable." Is adding a signature at link time not counted as "compilation and installation"?
3. There would be no way for the device to prompt the user to visit a particular web site on the Windows machine to download the driver. Anybody who is not aware of the file system problem would end up accidentally reformatting the SD card.
4. The user would have to be a member of the Administrators group to install it. Not everybody who uses a given computer is the computer's owner.

The only way to block this is to make it illegal. But I cannot imagine how you can make microcontrollers illegal today. Would I need a license to own a debugger or a soldering iron?

Maybe you can't imagine it, but RMS imagined it a decade and a half ago.

Much like 1984, it was scary then, but scarier now.

shares virtually nothing with the common Linux environment encountered everywhere

Here's my usual plug; quote by Richard Stallman:

“Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel. People who erroneously think “Linux” refers to the entire GNU/Linux combination get tied in knots by these facts, and make paradoxical statements such as “Android contains Linux, but it isn’t Linux”. If we avoid starting from the confusion, the situation is simple: Android contains Linux, but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different.“

Linux has always been, and will always be just the kernel. Although the kernel is at the core of an operating system, it is not the complete OS. It sounds what you are looking for is the rest of the OS, typically the GNU tools. We can all save a lot of text and sweat by using the those three letters when discussing OS specific topics.

What you call it when talking to non-technical people does not matter that much. However, here on Slashdot everybody will understand "Android is not GNU/Linux".

Seriously. Do they require any actual work? Or are they just upgrading the features to the point where they can read email and browse the web?

You can trivially find out precisely what work is going on (i.e. from the bug queue from grep) and see that it's generally maintenance. You could trivially have found this out by searching for "gnu grep bugs", e.g. with google.

My usual routine when a drive starts to go back is to back its data up using dd

ddrescue is the tool for backing up a failing drive unless you really want to manually check every failed sector read then restart a new dd (skipping to the next sector).

dd_rescue

on the MFS Live cd v1.4 has saved me in the past after freezing the bad drive and then running with the -r switch and a default of 512 and a fallback of 1.

...More like the barber shows you the cool new shaver that you didn't understand and that he helped design.

An interesting exercise is to compare the internals of Clang, written in more modern C++ versus gcc, written in C, and to decide for yourself which one you'd rather maintain.

http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/cfe/trunk/

http://gcc.gnu.org/viewcvs/trunk/gcc/

Note that Clang is written in modern C++ and is also faster than GCC.

One benchmark shown is that clang loading a parse tree of 'precompiled headers' is almost the same time as it takes to just compile the headers.

FWIW, I'm switching to Clang wherever it is supported because of all of the regressions in GCC for vectorization in C and C++ since GCC 4.2

This gives some ways to accomplish the same thing.

My usual routine when a drive starts to go back is to back its data up using dd

ddrescue is the tool for backing up a failing drive unless you really want to manually check every failed sector read then restart a new dd (skipping to the next sector).

I've spent two years porting Ada code from VMS to Linux. Overall it was a nice experience but compile times were horrible on our VMS system. Getting a syntax error after 15 minutes of waiting is kind of frustrating :)

GDB support for Ada tasks was also pretty bad. I filed several bugs like http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=37245 .

It's not just the name. Most GNU software just sucks ass. Just go to the GNU software page, and look at all the stuff that's there. Most of them are just too basic to be useful. As it is, the 'libre' philosophy means that there usually ain't the drivers to enable most of the stuff, making it a non-starter. Much of it is made usable by projects such as Debian, which RMS has needlessly vilified.

As a brand name, Linux has a mixed reputation - partly due to GNU, and partly due to the extremely fragmented nature of this kernel.

It's the same argument as the FSF's indictment of software as a service. And frankly, they're right.

Software delivered "as a service" is much, much more closed than even closed source software. Closed source software can be pirated, reverse engineered, decompiled, run on machines sufficiently isolated that they can't call home, ... you have none of those options with software as a service. You cannot prevent those companies spying on you by any means at all.

So yes, the facebook/dropbox/office 360/google world is worse than the closed-source microsoft monopoly.

Why does EFF never oppose software patents as a concept?

They always want to eliminate the 10 worst software patents, but they have enough educated/informed people to know that the world isn't plagued by 10 lousy software patents. It's thickets like the 346 US patents exploited by MPEG LA.

Or the thousands of patents held by Intellectual Ventures, Apple, and Microsoft.

C'mon EFF. You have the cash and the lawyers. Give us a hand fixing the problem (legislation, court briefs) and stop trying to wipe out malaria by swatting mosquitoes! You know that doesn't work.

Stop associating open source with buzzwords

Ha! You realize "open source" itself is nothing but a buzzword to market free software? Do some reading.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Or for those already familiar with the Matlab language (or who know they'll need to become familiar with it): Octave.

I'd recommend GNU Octave at http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/: it can deal with matrices and thus let you build up tables of functions. It also uses radians as the default angular measure for the trigonometric function, just as Xmaxima/Maxima does on Linux. However, you can easily write a function to convert degrees into radians:
For Octave:
function rads=ofdegrees(deg)
rads=deg/180*pi;

and similarly, in XMaxima, you can do the conversion as a function definition also:
indegrees(x) := x/180*pi;

Then, in either case, call the trig functions as sin(indegrees(45)) and your $indegree$ function will convert your degrees into radians.

I also give my backing to R. There are other packages which look more like integrated though like Octave or Euler. You can even get Mathematica for Linux but it is somewhat expensive.

GNU Octave is a very handy program to know: http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

Alright, here's my shtick... It's a great race between two open source software ecosystems: copyLEFT and copyFREE.

The copyFREE side is a more amicable pacifist bunch, with more freedoms and more choices, and it has been gaining ground in the last decade in all software categories but one - the kernels. The copyLEFT side was founded by a bunch of militant hippies trying to destroy capitalism, and it had several years' head start, so its viral licenses were grandfathered into some of the most important pieces of open source software. The OS projects within each team like to share code, and the copyLEFT team can also mooch copyFREE code as well, but not the other way around...

This race is contested on many fronts, and one obscure comparison (that I just came up with) is: while running the race forward, to still maintain support for the 80386 platform. Only UNIX systems (sorry, sorry, sorry) that can run on a 80386 PC (sorry, sorry) with actively maintained current versions (sorry) are to be included. Let's see how the two teams compare:

THE COPYLEFT TEAM:

(1) Linux - now i486, as mentioned in this article.

THE COPYFREE TEAM:

(1) FreeBSD - i486 since 2005.

(2) OpenBSD - i486 since 2007.

(3) NetBSD - i486, "80386 support removed" in 2007.

(4) MINIX 3 - i586, 32mb RAM, 635mb HD.

So it looks like the copyLEFT camp had this little "current UNIX on 80386" advantage, and now lost it...

--libman

Palladium allowed for data security. It wasn't about restricting applications at all it was about allowing PCs to have trusted computing. That's not something Apple to this day really offers, though they've put in place a lot of it.

It was about the programs too.
From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work.

RMS was right as usual, but he was wrong about which company would implement and probably utterly surprised how the tech savvy crowd drooled over Apple's shiny cage and couldn't buy and recommend them fast enough over more open PCs.

The issue of freedom is quite simple: do you care about your sovereignty (freedom) OR are you going to let companies take control over your life and your community? Note that the issue of freedom has NOTHING to do with the development method used in developing software, the issue is the social impact of exchanging one's own freedom. For most of society, they are happy to exchange their freedom in for software. Most of society are also ignorant about the personal and social consequences of this exchange of freedom. Most of society are ignorant about the existence of freedom in the first place.

RMS completely understands these consequences and that's why he started the free software movement to educate society of this social problem as well as the ethical solution. Nobody needs to be a geek to understand these issues, but it requires some education to appreciate it.

When comparing the iPhone and the FreeRunner by technical merits, the iPhone will win in all aspects. When comparing the two by how abusive it is to the user's sovereignty, the iPhone is the most abusive. The people who are ignorant of the consequences of this abuse will choose the iPhone every time. Every single time, they will not live as a free and upstanding citizen but as a helpless subject who is forever appeasing to their master's good will.

While it is easy to dismiss our message as hyperbolic rhetoric, please note that there really isn't a kinder way to deliver this message, "When users don't control the program, the program controls the users. The developer controls the program, and through it controls the users".

Unfortunately secure booting is linked so tightly with vendor lockdown, tracking, and DRM concerns that I never expect it to be embraced by any open-source community. Hysteria over treacherous computing so far has been overblown. For example, the potential abuse of the unique ID features of the TPM chips were not sufficient reason for the boycott against using them when available they generated--especially if you're booting into an open-source OS.

It's pretty ridiculous that software like trusted grub isn't in mainstream Linux distributions, while Windows booting is easy to protect using the TPM with BitLocker. I boot my Linux/Windows Thinkpad using the Windows boot loader specifically because it resists evil maid attacks better when I'm traveling. The hysteria isn't limited to Linux; the same indefensible arguments are made by TrueCrypt. That acts as if TPM provides no protection against physical attacks, which is ridiculous if you look at how much work it takes to hack one.

With all due respect to your unixbeardedness, your statement has very little to do with the point I was making. We are comparing open source UNIX to open source UNIX, and what factors influenced the relative success of one OS over an other. The roots of the early success of Linux were the i386 "home users" with some blank floppies, who were far more numerous than people with access to corporate mainframes or university labs. I am explaining why those early adopters of Linux didn't go for BSD instead - BSD simply wasn't on their radar. Linux got there first, and when you've got one kernel you don't need another. (GNU's favoritism of Linux over BSD due to licensing bias is a separate issue.)

GNU was open-source (though restrictively-licensed) since its inception in 1983/4, and Linux from 1991. BSD was entangled in legal FUD until January 1994 , by which time we had not only Linux but also Slackware, Debian, etc. (To some people BSD's "obnoxious advertising clause" was even more of a turn-off than Linux's copyLEFT, and BSD didn't become fully compliant with copyFREE standards until 1999, but that's a side-issue.) So it was in January of 1994 when BSD became a contender, while Linux "went viral" among the home geek crowd in 1993.

Linus himself had said that if 386BSD had been available (i.e. free of AT&T legal uncertainty) at the time, he probably would not have created Linux. (And it didn't become fully free of legal FUD until a few months after that interview was published.) In that same interview, Linus also mentions other reasons that worked against BSD: higher hardware requirements, "lack of co-ordination", bad approach to release engineering, etc.

Switching kernels (which also meant switching file-systems, kernel-dependent system components, etc) has always been very difficult. Switching Web browsers is much easier, and its (mostly) BSD license didn't keep Chromium from leapfrogging over Firefox. Apache httpd wasn't the least bit handicapped by its non-copyLEFT (though not entirely copyFREE) license (in fact the "got there first" advantage of Apache has kept out decent GPL'ed Web servers like Cherokee), and it's now gradually yielding ground to the fully-copyFREE nginx. Among scripting languages, lisp (the most popular scripting language of the 80s, also Stallman's favorite) was overshadowed by weaker-copyLEFT perl, which in turn was leapfrogged by even-less-uncopyFREE python / php, and which are now being leapfrogged by fully-copyFREE node.js / ruby / etc. Apple's recent choices leave no doubt that GPL has handicapped the popularity of mysql and gcc.

Conclusion: The conjecture that FreeBSD was hurt by its license is baseless, buried under a mountain of more plausible handicaps in the history of FreeBSD's development, and is utterly contradicted in most other software categories!

--libman

It really is impossible to legally combine GPL and original BSD licensed software. See Why is the original BSD license incompatible with the GPL?.

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

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. This is a misunderstanding.

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

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

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

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

You might consider Trisquel...it is FSF endorsed as a distribution that meets its guidelines: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html Trisquel is akin to a Ubuntu with the non-free elements removed so it shouldn't be too much of a culture shock for you should you opt to use it. Further distributions with FSF approval are on the following link as is the link to obtain Trisquel: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

You might consider Trisquel...it is FSF endorsed as a distribution that meets its guidelines: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html Trisquel is akin to a Ubuntu with the non-free elements removed so it shouldn't be too much of a culture shock for you should you opt to use it. Further distributions with FSF approval are on the following link as is the link to obtain Trisquel: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

You sound like you are trying to be reasonable in all of this - you're trying to work with upstreams, you haven't said no to source requests, your pricing is not high etc. However there's a risk you'll run into issues:

It may be worth including the source to inside the apk - that way you can head off any requests for the source with a response that they are distributed alongside the binaries (which is close to what you want to do - distribute to those who financially contribute) and you should buy the binary to get the source :-). As it stands (unless you are already including the source in the apk), someone who hasn't purchased the binary can ask you for the source and you're obliged to fulfil the request (for a reasonable fee). The 0.74 DosBox source compresses down to under 900Kbytes with xz but I don't know how big your apk is.

Further, it seems that at the moment the DosBox Turbo subversion repo on Google code is empty. It doesn't do your reputation any good - it would be better if that area didn't exist or had instructions on where to find the real source.

The DosBox devs don't appear militant (the issue id's use of DosBox on Steam was settled amicably) so it's unlikely you will be hit by a GPL violation from someone with real copyright on DosBox.

You should be able to charge for the work you do but make sure you get snagged on licence gotchas.

The DOSBox Turbo web page says that it is licensed under the GPL, and also has a FAQ explaining why it is "not free".

In that context 'free' is clearly in reference to the monetary cost.

That does not seem like compliance with the spirit of the GPL.

Actually it most certainly is DoesTheGPLAllowMoney.

If you think he does complying with either the spirit or the letter of the GPL, why don't you pay $3.99 to confirm your guess?

Because it certainly appears to be, there's no evidence to suggest it isn't so if you're going to suggest that it isn't then come up with some proof.

I don't want to spend $3.99 because it seems too likely -- based on what others have done in similar situations in the past -- that he would not provide complete corresponding source code for his version and/or he would claim that some of his extensions are under GPL-incompatible licenses (such as "all rights reserved")

That doesn't seem likely at all, in fact if he were complying with the GPL to the letter this is exactly how it could be done, so your comments are baseless conjecture, nothing more.

The DOSBox Turbo web page says that it is licensed under the GPL, and also has a FAQ explaining why it is "not free".

In that context 'free' is clearly in reference to the monetary cost.

That does not seem like compliance with the spirit of the GPL.

Actually it most certainly is DoesTheGPLAllowMoney.

If you think he does complying with either the spirit or the letter of the GPL, why don't you pay $3.99 to confirm your guess?

Because it certainly appears to be, there's no evidence to suggest it isn't so if you're going to suggest that it isn't then come up with some proof.

I don't want to spend $3.99 because it seems too likely -- based on what others have done in similar situations in the past -- that he would not provide complete corresponding source code for his version and/or he would claim that some of his extensions are under GPL-incompatible licenses (such as "all rights reserved")

That doesn't seem likely at all, in fact if he were complying with the GPL to the letter this is exactly how it could be done, so your comments are baseless conjecture, nothing more.

If you choose to provide source through a written offer, then anybody who requests the source from you is entitled to receive it.

If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.

The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.

-- http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#WhatDoesWrittenOfferValid

Which makes sense, since the first two parties are the two involved in the license, "any third party" is anyone else.

No. If the binary doesn't come with the source, he does have to give the source to anyone in the world who got a binary, even if it wasn't him who gave them the copy. From the GPLv2 FAQ:

What does this âoewritten offer valid for any third partyâ mean? Does that mean everyone in the world can get the source to any GPL'ed program no matter what?

        If you choose to provide source through a written offer, then anybody who requests the source from you is entitled to receive it.

        If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.

        The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#WhatDoesWrittenOfferValid

Did you even read the GPL text?
I think you are referring to the to the section 3) of the GPL license?

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

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

There it states that You may copy and distribute the Program ... if you follow the terms a), b) and c). That means if you are not copy and not distribute the Program you are in no obligation to offer anyone the source code (under the terms a), b) or c)).

I think a lot of people misunderstand the GPL. The GPL is a license that is protecting the user and grands the user rights (to study the code, to modify the code and to re-distribute the code). If you are using the application and you are not distributing it to others then the GPL gives you rights that you normally would not have.

Only if you are distributing the GPL'd application you have to grand your users the same rights that you have previously enjoined. That means you have to give them the source code with any modifications you have made.

So, to answer your question: if you are not buying the application you are not a user, the developer is not distributing the application to you and the developer is under no obligation to give you the source code.

Apparently a common misconception, but a misconception nonetheless. If you read the GPL v2 section 3 on distribution in object-code form, you'll find you have 3 options:

• A: Distribute the source code along with the binaries.
• B: Make a written offer to distribute the source code to any third party.
• C: Pass along the written offer you received for source code. Available only for non-commercial distribution where you received the software under option B.

If you're distributing the source along with the binaries you aren't obliged to make the source available independently at all (anyone who got a binary also got the source code, your obligations are fulfilled). But if you're distributing the binaries without source the GPL v2 doesn't permit you to only give source code to people who have the binaries, you have to give it to anyone who asks.

GPL v3 would allow you to only give source code to people who have the binaries. Beware, though, because it doesn't allow you to only give source code to people who got the binaries from you. If they got the binaries from someone who got them from someone who got them from someone who got them from you, you're still on the hook to provide source code.

Unless I'm misreading the text of GPL v2, a fee can only be charged to cover the cost of the distribution of a program or derived work, not the cost of development.

You are misreading the GPL. There's nothing stopping the author selling the product for £1,000,000.

Of course he's obliged to give the source code away - but only to people he distributes the application to. He's not obliged to make the source code available to anyone who wants a copy, and he's not obliged to distribute it to people who haven't got a copy of the binary.

Thing is, he's not allowed to impose any onerous conditions on you. He could sell it for, say, £1,000,000; you could buy it and then sell it yourself for £100. If you can persuade more than ten thousand people to buy it, you'd make a profit overall. If you could persuade 10,001 people to pay £100 for every one person who pays £1,000,000 to the original author, you'd make more money than them!

This means that it's pretty rare for commercial software to be sold under the GPL; usually it's dual-licensed. But it's not unknown, and as more hobbyist developers start looking at selling packaged apps on platforms like Google Play, I think it may even become more common.

The GPL doesn't mandate that the software/source code be released for free, it mandates that the source code MUST accompany the binary if (and only if) the binary is distributed.

Yes and no. Source code only has to be made available if the binaries are distributed, that much is correct. But the GPL v2 does not mandate that the source code must accompany the binaries. For commercial distribution, what it mandates (down in section 3, paragraphis A and B) is that either:

• The source code must be distributed along with the binaries, or
• You must offer the source code, at a cost of no more than the cost of your making and delivering the copy, to any third party who asks for it.

So yes, if you put up a port of DOSBox in the app store and don't include source code in the package, I can indeed come along and demand the source code from you without ever buying a copy of your app. If you refuse to provide it, you're in breach of your license to distribute the DOSBox code because you're failing to comply with section 3 regarding availability of the source code (no source in the binary package means paragraph A doesn't apply, your failure to make it available to any third party means paragraph B doesn't apply, and since you're distributing commercially through the app store paragraph C doesn't apply).

More stupid anti-GPL FUD. It doesn't even make sense that you would have to be responsible for the acts of others. I posted the actual clause from the GPL-v2 in a recent post above this one.

FUD much?

You took clause 3(b) completely out of context. Here is the full context from GPL-v2:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

1. a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

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

   c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

What emurphy42 said was correct. Clause 3(b) is an option, not an absolute requirement like you made it seem. The suggestion by emurphy42 is an equally viable option.

In fact, isn't RMS violating Freedom 3 of GNU - freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits? Obviously, whether what Ubuntu is doing is an improvement that benefits the community is a subjective term, but Canonical is exactly following freedom 3 of the GNU manifesto.

In fact, even before Canonical made this deal w/ Amazon - which RMS has always hated, but then, name me a major company that he doesn't hate? - he still did not endorse Ubuntu, and had this to say about them

Ubuntu provides specific repositories of nonfree software, and Canonical expressly promotes and recommends nonfree software under the Ubuntu name in some of their distribution channels. Ubuntu offers the option to install only free packages, which means it also offers the option to install nonfree packages too. In addition, the version of Linux, the kernel, included in Ubuntu contains firmware blobs.

Ubuntu's trademark policy prohibits commercial redistribution of exact copies of Ubuntu, denying an important freedom.

So I fail to see how RMS is doing anything new against them - it's not like they were in his good books before.

Most people working with C-derived languages use some form of block indentation, and large shops usually have coding standards that insist you stick to it rigorously. This means most people already have the tooling in place to enforce indentation

for some reason:
if I use the ecode tag in Slashdot:
it doesn't always preserve indentation

Anyway, my point is that code in languages that use braces for blocks can be sent through lossy channels that collapse whitespace and then reconstructed using an automated tool that applies these coding standards you mention.

Indeed, the word "privacy" does not appear in the gnu manifesto.

You are confused. Barring a couple of obscure exceptions, all licenses that are considered open source (by the OSI definition) are also considered Free Software; there's no such thing as open source licenses. In fact, rms' own license -the GPL- is also considered open source.

Now, I'm not saying he is a fan of the Open Source movement. But unlike what you said, he doesn't consider Open Source developers or non-copyleft licensing immoral; as he said, "We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software". What he believes is that the developers are doing a good thing but for misguided reasons (technical instead of ethical), and as such they'll switch to non-free software if it's technically superior.

As an analogy, it's like someone arguing for the end of child labor because it's less efficient. They're still arguing for a good thing, but they miss the point, and will argue for child labor if it becomes more efficient, which would be harmful if you think child labor is immoral.

Likewise, rms thinks Open Source misses the point.

You criticize Mr Stallman and don't even know what free software is. Free software give the user the four freedoms http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

There are already two GNU recommended forks of Ubuntu, gNewSense and Trisquel.

The list of all the distros is in the GNU site: http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

Either you agree with him and follow his set rules, in which cases he recommends and endorses you, or you disagree with his position (in any way no matter how slight), in which case he rejects you completely. There is really no intermediate ground for a person like him.

This isn't actually true, you made it up, or heard it somewhere, but didn't come to this conclusion based on a careful analysis of his character. You need to spend some time on the FSF philosophy page if you want to actually understand his viewpoints. When he disagrees with someone, he gives a logical explanation of why, and it's something you can reason about.

Here is a clear example of where he disagreed with people, but didn't reject them completely.

That will unfortunately not solve most of Ubuntu's problems. http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Ubuntu

Using Trisquel however does. https://trisquel.info/