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They don't have to supply the source until they distribute the binaries. GPL FAQ:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic

Where's the drm tag and trustedcomputing tags?

Read this if you haven't already:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

One more thing to tell and remind us whom we can trust... Isn't it just another "didn't I tell you?", which RMS is classy enough not to spell out?

If the apple is like a car, then the ISS is like a cdr.
HTH.

If the version in question is unpublished and considered by a company to be its trade secret, then publishing it may be a violation of trade secret law, depending on other circumstances. The GPL does not change that. If the company tried to release its version and still treat it as a trade secret, that would violate the GPL, but if the company hasn't released this version, no such violation has occurred.

Make sure to read the bolded section.

You are correct, in-house distribution is defined as "propagation" which does not require the source to be distributed. The "conveying" mentioned in the page is the word that the GPLv3 uses for distribution, as distribution had varying legal meanings in other countries. Also, even if an employee gets their hands on the source code, they do not have the right to distribute it unless the company has officially published the software.

You are correct, in-house distribution is defined as "propagation" which does not require the source to be distributed. The "conveying" mentioned in the page is the word that the GPLv3 uses for distribution, as distribution had varying legal meanings in other countries. Also, even if an employee gets their hands on the source code, they do not have the right to distribute it unless the company has officially published the software.

If I want to watch people running, I can go to my local park and do so for free.

Out of curiosity, does this kind of fallacy have a name yet?

Try this: Why would anyone pay for WoW? If I want to play a game, I can fire up GnuChess for free.

Although, it would still be more interesting to watch what the athletes do in their time off...

there is a better and free way to recover damaged optical disks. http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html "GNU ddrescue is a data recovery tool. It copies data from one file or block device (hard disc, cdrom, etc) to another, trying hard to rescue data in case of read errors. Ddrescue does not truncate the output file if not asked to. So, every time you run it on the same output file, it tries to fill in the gaps. The basic operation of ddrescue is fully automatic. That is, you don't have to wait for an error, stop the program, read the log, run it in reverse mode, etc. If you use the logfile feature of ddrescue, the data is rescued very efficiently (only the needed blocks are read). Also you can interrupt the rescue at any time and resume it later at the same point. Automatic merging of backups: If you have two or more damaged copies of a file, cdrom, etc, and run ddrescue on all of them, one at a time, with the same output file, you will probably obtain a complete and error-free file. This is so because the probability of having damaged areas at the same places on different input files is very low. Using the logfile, only the needed blocks are read from the second and successive copies. The logfile is periodically saved to disc. So in case of a crash you can resume the rescue with little recopying. Also, the same logfile can be used for multiple commands that copy different areas of the file, and for multiple recovery attempts over different subsets. Ddrescue aligns its I/O buffer to the sector size so that it can be used to read from raw devices. For efficiency reasons, also aligns it to the memory page size if page size is a multiple of sector size. " I've used it successfully to create perfect iso images of original CDs from damaged physical media. It's better than using EAC or similar secure mode rippers because ddrescue can run on any platform, it doesn't require windows or wine, there's no limit to how many runs it can make, and it doesn't matter if the process is interrupted.

Written over ten years ago, but oh so foretelling of things to come

You are right.

I point your attention to "Microsoft Giving Campaign" on this page.

If everyone at Microsoft were evil, we wouldn't be seeing that name there (unless it's some sort of a practical joke).

But at some point, we have to weigh the evil (things and people) of a company against the good (things and people). When that point comes, where will Microsoft lie?

It is time to take note that Red Hat, SuSe and Ubuntu are still using legacy GRUB since the new GRUB 2 does not seem to be ready for prime time.

Legacy GRUB is not being developed any longer, even patches are not accepted. The project had no developers working on it for the past 3-4 years. The major distros have just forked it without saying so. And it is a company fork, each distro has its own conconction.

QUOTE: GRUB Legacy has become unmaintainable, due to messy code and design failures. :UNQUOTE

Who said that? Not Microsoft, check here: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-2-faq.en.html

it's odd that they charge for the binaries, but not the source. That's the odd thing.

That's not odd at all. Many companies do that, and it's even mentioned in the GPL.

Where the code is available, it looks like those buffer overflows are in C code of the Java implementation. Glue code between Java and some C component usually seems to be the problem.

That's flamebait but nonetheless...

It's not as if Java never had any buffer overflows.

As for C/C++, with great power comes great responsibility, either that or for the love of Pete use an std::vector.

The next thing you know someone will ask for a replacement for vi.

Psh, yeah, like there's still people who haven't heard about this!

First of all, you have zero chance of finding anything better than LaTeX for mathematical/scientific typesetting. However, there are ways of solving lots of the problems you mention without chucking LaTeX out the window.

1. Frustrated that you're constantly having to download and install new packages, fonts, etc.? Try the everything-including-the-kitchen-sink distribution, TeX Live. If you're running Mac OS X, there's a great Mac-specific version of TeX Live called MacTeX, which also includes a number of front-end apps for editing, managing bibliographies, spell-checking, etc.
2. Hate the standard (La)TeX font, Computer Modern? You're not alone. For free, math-capable fonts (most of which are included in TeX Live/MacTeX), check out this illustrated survey. If you want the ability to use OpenType and other installed fonts on your system, as well as foreign language scripts, unicode, and other modern font features, check out the wonderful Xe(La)TeX and its fontspec package, both included in TeX Live/MacTeX (of course)
3. Want the ability to do real programming in (La)TeX, with a full scripting language? Check out LuaTeX (although it's still very much a work in progress).
4. Want a good LaTeX front-end/editor? IMHO, Scientific Word and Lyx try to hide the complexity behind a WYSIWYG interface -- but this makes things even more confusing, because the complexity is still there, but now it's invisible, so it's impossible to diagnose why your document doesn't look the way you want. What you really want is a text-editor with built-in templates, push-button PDF compiling, and other TeX-specific features. One of the most popular editors (justly so) is TeXShop, for Mac OS X. A cross-platform program called TeXWorks is in development (led by Jonathan Kew, who developed XeTeX), and promises to bring TeXShop's advantages to all platforms. If (like me) you're wedded to Emacs, there's the fantastic AUCTeX editing mode for all things TeX-related.
5. Read LaTeX books designed for users, not developers or those interested in the "theory" of typesetting. This means, in my opinion, to stay away from anything with "Knuth" in the byline. I really like Leslie Lamport's introductory book on LaTeX, which you should be able to track down at almost any university library if you don't want to buy it.

Above all, be patient, and be open to learning. It's understandable that you want to do powerful and flexible document processing, without having to learn a whole bunch of commands. Unfortunately, this has a lot of similarity with people who want to program computers without learning a programming language. ("Why can't the computer just understand what I want it to do, in plain English?") Any program powerful enough to do everything you want is also powerful enough to do lots of things you don't want -- and because the computer can't read your mind, you have to learn how to tell it exactly what you want.

Cheers,
IT

The media isn't the issue.

Fine, then the software does not require any license to use, any more than a book or a shirt or a lawnmower does.

Because no court has ever agreed with your statement. There has never been a ruling that EULAs are categorically unenforceable

I don't give a shit what the courts have said; I care about what the courts should say based on the fundamental principles of property, copyright, and common sense!

The cashier doesn't care. They're selling you a box. What it contains is immaterial to a merchant.

Ah, good point! I'd forgotten about that; it means that no contract exists between Apple and the buyer at all, and there's even less reason for the license to mean anything!

Exactly. And Apple, being the owner of the copyrights, patents, and trademarks, gets to determine how, when, and to what extent it allows you access to them.

No, it doesn't. It gets to decide what access you get only above and beyond the rights that you already have by law. For example, copyright law does not apply unless and until you make copies. If you don't make a copy, then you haven't violated copyright law. If you haven't violated copyright law, then you don't need any extra permissions that might be conveyed by a license!

In other words, the underlying principle here is that if a holder of copyrights, patents, or trademarks sells you a thing that embodies those monopolies, then they necessarily give you implicit permission to use the thing! Nike cannot sell me a trademarked logo shirt and disallow me from wearing it. Ford cannot sell me a car containing a patented component and disallow me from driving it. Apple cannot sell me a copyrighted piece of software and prevent me from using it! This doesn't require any kind of legal theory; anything else is simply an absurd affront to common sense!

You can do whatever you want with the actual, physical plastic disc.

And I can do whatever I want within the bounds of copyright law with the information on it! If I don't violate copyright law, then I don't need any additional license!

They give you a copy contingent on your using it in accordance with the terms under which they're selling it.

Apple's right to impose terms ended at the point that money was exchanged. The terms in the EULA were not disclosed prior to that point, so they are null and void.

Your blustery argument invalidates the GPL...

Oh, boy. Please tell me you did not just say that, because I'm infinitely weary of explaining this yet again, for the fifty-million and first time!

The argument I'm using to invalidate EULAs is exactly the same as the argument that upholds licenses like the GPL: the GPL actually gives you privileges you did not have before, namely, the ability to modify, copy, and distribute the software without violating copyright law if you meet certain other conditions. This provides the equitable consideration that is missing from EULAs. Furthermore, you are not required to accept the license in order to use the software. You only have to accept it if you want to do something that plain old copyright law otherwise doesn't allow. This means that, unlike EULAs, it does not violate the UCC and is not a contract of adhesion. And if you don't believe me, then read the damn thing:

9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.

You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. An

That's a great idea!

Please meet us in the Hurd Mailinglists:

- http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/mailing_lists/

For some reason, bug-hurd became the main development list, where discussions run about any topic, including Summer of Code projects:

- http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-hurd

We'd love to see you try out the Hurd and to hear about your experiences. Maybe you'd like to host a Wiki on a Hurd Installation, like bddebian does with the the Hurd wiki:

- http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/

Apart from mailing lists you can also use IRC to get in contact with Hurd developers:

- http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/irc/

And if you'd like to know, if your code can make a difference, please have a look at the tschwinge - sthibaul effect in our gnumach codeswarm video:

- http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/community/weblogs/ArneBab/2008-07-12-codeswarm-movies-for-the-hurd/

I hope to read you soon!

I prefer GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv thanks...

/sarcasm

To confirm this you can do as I do and send emails offering to take over a defunct project. See if you get a reply in less than three months and you will be doing better than I did. I did get a reply, and it went along the lines of nobody being bothered enough to see if they could track down one of the many gnu CDROMS with the original code.

Which defunct project? I don't know of any---it's true many of the software releases haven't been as often as, e.g. Firefox, but I suspect that's more because most of GNU tools have matured and bug-fix releases haven't been necessary for a while. Newer projects, such as GNU Octave, are very actively developed.

And, pray tell me, why would they need to track down "one of the many GNU CD-ROMs with the original code", when the whole program, with its source code, in its entirety, is available on their FTP server?

Unless your anecdote is from before the age of Internet (which is never, since free software movement was practically born with the Internet), I highly doubt that there is any truth to it.

It is an end-user license agreement. It's designed to give the user the right to install, modify, and redistribute. Like any license, it comes with some restrictions and protections for the authors of the original work. In the case of the GPL, the restrictions center largely around redistribution.

In fact, the whole intent of the GPL is written largely with the end-user in mind.

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

The GPL exploits a loophole in copyright law that allows software to be licensed to begin with. I call it a loophole because the whole licensing nonsense circumvents much of copyright law, allowing copyright owners control over their works far exceeding that of all other forms of media.

Also I guess your point also makes it ok to steal the code of any open source project and release it in your own closed product

That is not even slightly true. There is a fundamental difference between any EULA and a copyright license like the GPL. In fact, the difference is indicated by the name itself: an EULA, or End User License Agreement, is designed to apply to the end user. There is no copying or distribution involved; copyright law does not apply. In contrast, a license like the GPL is a distribution license. It only kicks in when a person tries to perform an act, such as copying or distribution, that would otherwise violate copyright law. You can legally use GPL software without agreeing to the GPL at all; if you perform an act that would require agreeing to the GPL, then that act wasn't mere "use."

Incidentally, this exact issue is explained in the GPL FAQ. To wit:

Can software installers ask people to click to agree to the GPL? If I get some software under the GPL, do I have to agree to anything?

Some software packaging systems have a place which requires you to click through or otherwise indicate assent to the terms of the GPL. This is neither required nor forbidden. With or without a click through, the GPL's rules remain the same.

Merely agreeing to the GPL doesn't place any obligations on you. You are not required to agree to anything to merely use software which is licensed under the GPL. You only have obligations if you modify or distribute the software. If it really bothers you to click through the GPL, nothing stops you from hacking the GPLed software to bypass this.

Incidentally, this means that some software's (e.g. OpenOffice's) practice of presenting the GPL in the installer as if it were an EULA (requiring you to agree to it before continuing the installation) is at best useless, and at worst, dangerously misleading.

Besides having contributed to GPL'd software before linux even existed, I am directly involved and have been one of the major proponents of GPL compliance in a company that has paid enough money to the FSF to have their logo posted at the FSF's Patron's Page. We ship products every day with GPL compliance and have contributed major amounts of funding for GPL projects.

If FSF does more moronic things like this it would be my official recommendation to not supply more funding directly to the FSF but fund other GPL projects directly.

You asked:

And why didn't any of the previous FSF actions against Apple bother you?

That did bother me, RMS boycotted apple and then Apple eventually complied. Richard Stallman announced the End of the Apple Boycott in 1995.

Let me re-iterate that for you: Why RMS and FSF may have theological/political differences with Apple, Apple is is full compliance with the FSF/GNU license terms of the software that they contribute to and distribute.

The people at FSF who are involved in this petty irrelevant protest are only making the FSF look bad and those people are not contributing to Open Moko
when they are at an apple store wasting everybody's time.

--jeffk++

Obviously the FSF's definition of free is the GPL. Not freedom of choice.

What I don't get is how the FREE Software Foundation can even pretend that the GPL has anything to do with freedom, as in the liberty meaning of free: "not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes" (from my handy Dictionary.app)

It seems to me that the GPL is the antithesis of "free software" and is more like "very rigidly controlled software" - 17 densely worded clauses with tons of legalese and limitations. If I was looking for "free software" I'd be using stuff that has a MIT or BSD license, licenses with 2 or 3 clauses that truly let you do ANYTHING you want with the source code.

Not that I think the GPL is this terrible, horrible thing. It can be put to good use and a lot of smart people have put out some damn good GPL software. I understand the argument for the GPL, I just don't agree that it can be called "free" software - unless you mean you are giving it away without cost.

On the other hand the FSF should be renamed the Fascist Software Foundation because of the tactics that they use. You don't get people to come over to your cause by being an idiot and messing around with them, you get them to come over by doing helpful stuff like making good software and making their lives easier.

ORLY?

Actually, this isn't really much of a turnaround. Microsoft has long played the "we love open source" (but hate GPL!) stance. The Apache foundation has long since been in the BSD-like license camp (there's very little actual difference between the apache license and BSD). Microsoft really doesn't mind being able to take code. It just doesn't like the idea of having to give back. This may be a way of trying to push the open source community to move toward the BSD-style licensing community... after all, Microsoft uses BSD code. OSX *definetly* uses BSD code. It's possible to totally be proprietary and be cool with BSD.

So what about the LGPL? The LGPL does require that if you make changes to the library, you have to give them back. So if you make changes to glib, you gotta give them back. But you can make any app link to glib, and be completely proprietary, and it doesn't have to be open source. In many ways, this isn't too much of a problem for Microsoft though, since they really aren't in the business of libraries, they're in the business of applications and operating systems. It's is a small advancement though.

It's this kind of situation which is why the FSF, which originally produced the LGPL, wrote an essay saying that it's not always strategically the best choice for free and open source software.

Keep a copy of the original file and make a diff. Am I missing something?

Yes, it's Java-heavy. The study author sells a proprietary static analysis tool for Java. So the Java bias is understandable, but their title should have made it clear that they were only analyzing a few Java programs, and not a representative sample of major OSS projects. They also ignored the enterprise support options for these programs, which is completely unjustifiable.

I think its Java bias matters. Until very recently, most Java programs required Sun's proprietary Java implementation. The FSF and others warned of the Java Trap - so a very large proportion of the FLOSS community has actively ignored these Java programs. Sun has recently released most of its Java implementation as FLOSS, and the most recent versions of Fedora and Ubuntu have now integrated it (through Debian hasn't), so I think we'll start to see more cooperation in Java projects.

They made three claims, let's take a look at them...

"Failure to Provide Access to Security Expertise... [aka] documentation that covers the security implications and secure deployment of the software they develop, a dedicated email alias for users to report security vulnerabilities, or easy access to internal security experts to discuss security issues". Odd, they seem to be ignoring the enterprise versions (e.g., Red Hat sells JBOSS support); that doesn't seem to be a fair methodology. Their demand for a "dedicated email alias" and "easy access to internal security experts" shows that they fail to understand that some people want totally open discussions, which these projects do support. They may not LIKE that, and actually I'd agree with them, but claiming that there's NO way to report vulnerabilities or to talk with developers seems fundamentally mistaken. I agree with them that documentation about security needs improvement, though I don't see any evidence that FLOSS is worse than proprietary on that count.

"Failure to Adopt a Secure Development Process... In virtually every project analyzed, there were a significant number of security issues that went unaddressed over three generations of releases...". It's not clear what these "issues" were. Were these REAL issues, or just reports from a static analysis tool? I wish they'd gone more into this, it's hard to say this is really true or not given their report. Often static analysis tools' reports have LOADS of false positives. As a result, it's hard to see if this is real or not.

"Failure to Leverage Technology to Uncover Security Vulnerabilities: The number of security issues identified in the study - especially in the most popular open source packages - was surprising...". Again, not surprising if what is being measured is raw unanalyzed tool output. It could be that every single "vulnerability" is a false positive (not an uncommon result, unfortunately). I would agree with them that I'd like to see more projects use more tools, but a lot of FLOSS projects do use tools. For example, the Linux kernel developers ended up creating their own static analysis toolsuite because tools are normally designed to analyze applications, not kernels.

The claim that this is representative of FLOSS is unfounded, since it only considers a few Java programs and ignores their enterprise support options (which is what you'd use for an enterprise!). I really wish they'd explained what they meant by issues; the problem of tool false positives is very well known, and I don't see that they really addressed that.

The original said: "Government and commercial organizations that leverage open source should use open source applications with great caution. Risk analysis and code review should be performed on any open source code running in business-critical applications...". Um, let's try: "Government and commercial organizations that leverage software should use software with great caution. Risk analysis and code review should be performed on any software running in business-critical applications..."

This is all I can find...

http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.3.0/gcc/Non_002dbugs.html#Non_002dbugs

This is gcc-specific and I'm not sure it totally proves what I was saying.

Basically it says though that something like

int i = 1;
func(i++, i++);

could end up being func(2, 3) or func(3, 2)...

that might mean comma-separated expressions aren't inherently ordered.

I like how whenever the discussion of open source comes up, someone always tries to slip in "freedom to modify in place" as one of the rights you have with free software, that link up top about the SDK being incompatible with the GPL even links here: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

in an attempt to say that freedom to modify in place is one of the four freedoms, and it isn't.

"Thus you could in theory place your work under GPLv2, as long as it was either entirely original or derived only from code licensed under GPLv2 and earlier. But the result still would not qualify as free software, since no one could alter your source code and run the modified result on their phone."

The link they provide to the FSF doesn't even remotely say that, it talks about being able to see, modify, and distribute the source. Code signing doesn't threaten any of those rights, if you don't want to use the software on such a locked down device, don't buy one, and don't use it. You still have the software and the freedom to use it anywhere else you want.

No, it's not semantics, because according to the science of semantics, they did steal. How that bullshit argument got so popular around here absolutely eludes me. Somehow, people who know nothing about law or linguistics have spawned a meme that has incredible staying power. UBISoft absolutely did steal that crack. THERE IS NO REQUIREMENT OF PHYSICAL DEPRIVATION IN THE ENGLISH VERB 'TO STEAL'. FURTHER, 'STEAL' IS NOT A LEGAL TERM OF ART, SO ANY THEFT ANALOGY IS DOOMED TO FAILURE.

The problem is that the verb "to steal" does require it to refer to actual property, not a government-granted, time-limited monopoly over distribution rights. Unless, of course, you fell for that idiotic "IP" scam, in which case I'd kindly refer you to this excellent rebuttal written by the man who wrote one of the world's most widely used software licenses, among various other works.

The GPL is about freedom for the user, as discusseed here and (if that is your goal) this means that you cannot allow your sw to be used in non-free (free as in freedom) derivatives.

On the other hand BSD developers could well care for nothing besides their project. If it is used to produce closed sw that traps and locks-in users, they don't care (think BSD kernel->OSX kernel). I am not saying that its always so, but its possible.

As a practical matter a successful cl0osed derivative could bite back BSD sw by making the original project obsolete. GPL sw has no such problem.

You need to get your facts straight.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Cisco, for one, uses QT in some apps i've used from them. Guess what, proprietary software.
Can't really think of anyone else right now.

Software freedom has not to do with choice nor with forcing people to use or run software. It is the software proprietors who are trying to control what software you can use (theirs, not competitors), how you use it (digital restrictions management), and what you're allowed to do with the software should you get a copy of it (via restrictive licensing).

Software freedom has to do with giving people the freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify all published computer software. If a job needs to be done with a computer, a free software activist will endorse using or writing a free software program to do that job.

Software freedom activists explain these freedoms in compelling ways so as to convince others to run (and develop, if one is so inclined) only free software. Software freedom activists value social solidarity and see the control proprietors try to impose as unethical and a social ill. The way to combat this social ill is to teach people that we should value our freedom and work to protect it.

The problem with software choice is that it attempts to that free software (which respects your freedoms and encourages social solidarity) and proprietary software (which treats you as a subordinate and prevents you from organizing with your fellows) are equals when in fact they are opposites.

We should care how people are treated and what freedoms they have. We should value our software freedom for its own sake and act accordingly.

For such a staunch FSF idealist, I find it ironic that you infringed on their copyright by failing to include the required notice in your copy and paste job.

Sadly, both of those contain binary blobs and at least Debian also distributes some proprietary software.

There are a few distributions but I accept these are hardly well known.

You're confusing proprietary software with free software.

Users of Skype are not free to run Skype for any purpose, they cannot study how Skype works or adapt it to their needs, they likely cannot distribute copies of Skype and certainly cannot distribute modified versions of Skype.

If that's your concern, go with one of the FSF-approved distros.

The way the article is phrased, it's all or nothing. "The Linux Desktop" is not a single entity, why should the separate distros all conform to a single ideal?

To me, this is a great example of the free software vs open source debate.

Free software is a political movement, concerned with user freedom, and the creation of an operating system made entirely from free software.

Open source is a development methodology that aims to make better free software, but has no problem with using and even developing proprietary software at the same time.

Personally, I think is a real shame that so many distributions have non-free software in their repositories, but they are ultimately more concerned with getting more users to their distro than promoting software freedom.

It's quite telling that the GNU project only lists a handful of distributions, most of which very few will have heard of or used, yet I'm glad that such a list exists.

The distributions which are making inroads to getting on that list, such as Fedora and Debian, and the distributions which move further away from that list with each release, including, sadly, Ubuntu are quite evident of the difference in their communities.

Ubuntu is concerned by things like "marketshare" -- there is no market when your product can be redistributed freely.

Of course they should be open sourced. Ideally all four of the software freedoms should be enshrined in law.

Also, all physical products should be required to be fully user-serviceable and to come with complete manufacturing instructions, and patents and copyright should be abolished. This will make everyone far better off, since the price of all products will drop to the marginal cost of producing them and nobody will be forced to pay for the development efforts. Development can be funded by having the design shop sell support contracts, which is a much better model because the necessity of paid support by the original designers is much more closely linked to the design quality than the product sales volume and profit margin is.

This is part of why I have no tolerance for pirate bullshit. Sure, if you want to pirate a game, go out ahead and do it, but don't act like you have some God-given right to rip people off.

We're not ripping people off, we're ripping corporations off. Don't you understand corporations are evil?

Many users unconsciously recognize the wrong of refusing to share, so they decide to ignore the licenses and laws, and share programs anyway. But they often feel guilty about doing so. They know that they must break the laws in order to be good neighbors, but they still consider the laws authoritative, and they conclude that being a good neighbor (which they are) is naughty or shameful. That is also a kind of psychosocial harm, but one can escape it by deciding that these licenses and laws have no moral force.

Now get some pot (banning marijuana is also immoral) and join the hippies.

If you want a term to replace piracy.

Stallman sounds like a demented Mr. Rogers. "Sharing with your neighbor."

If you want a term to replace piracy.

Of course they should be open sourced. Ideally all four of the software freedoms should be enshrined in law.

There really can't be any debate about this. Whether you think Socialist/Communist are pejorative terms or not, they definitely fit here. The GNU project (and the FSF, by extension) are founded on a set of explicit Communist principles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need

In the ideal GNU world, all software would be given away for free to anyone who needed it, and programmers would donate their time and effort out of the the sheer joy of doing useful work. The anti-commercial bias of the FSF and other "free software" advocates is completely out in the open.

Seriously, have you even read the GNU Manifesto?
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html

First, it's a "manifesto" - that's, like, 10 bonus communism points right there. It also makes references to "solidarity", "comrades", and various other well-worn Communist catch phrases.

Or this essay:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/my_doom.html

Where RMS compares working on proprietary software to lying under oath, or committing murder (really!).

There really can't be any debate about this. Whether you think Socialist/Communist are pejorative terms or not, they definitely fit here. The GNU project (and the FSF, by extension) are founded on a set of explicit Communist principles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need

In the ideal GNU world, all software would be given away for free to anyone who needed it, and programmers would donate their time and effort out of the the sheer joy of doing useful work. The anti-commercial bias of the FSF and other "free software" advocates is completely out in the open.

Seriously, have you even read the GNU Manifesto?
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html

First, it's a "manifesto" - that's, like, 10 bonus communism points right there. It also makes references to "solidarity", "comrades", and various other well-worn Communist catch phrases.

Or this essay:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/my_doom.html

Where RMS compares working on proprietary software to lying under oath, or committing murder (really!).

If GPL really made programming unprofitable there would be probably no market for software in countries that recognize the GPL :) Software will be developed by volunteers who are funded by the government (by the way, pretty similar to the way software was developed in USSR).

(now I wish there was some alternative version of the LGPL that forced derivative work to REMAIN in that license so that people could use it in proprietary products - but still giving back any changes to the library itself - so we could avoid bad moves like the MySQL one. Best of both worlds, eh?)

Have you looked at the GUILE license? It's just a standard GPL, with a specific exception that says you can link GUILE with non-free code without needing to change the license of the non-free code.

http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/docs-1.6/guile-ref/Guile-License.html

So, any changes you make to GUILE, you need to give back under GPL. But you are free to embed GUILE in anything.

The LGPL has some strange clauses (counting how many lines you may include from a header file!?). I kind of like the GUILE license.

steveha

While there is a large overlap between the approved Free Software Licenses and the approved Open Source Licenses, the fact that a project has a license that is in both lists doesn't make it both Open Source and Free Software.

Sorry, but that's insane. You may dislike the other term ('Free Software' if you call your work 'Open Source' and 'Open Source' if you define your work as 'Free Software'), but the Linux kernel is both Free Software and Open Source, Python is both Open Source and Free Software, and so is all of the software in Debian main.

Consider the GPL - it's approved by both. But Red Hat doesn't publish Free Software, it publishes Open Source

According to your theory, the Linux kernel is partly Open Source and partly free, because some of the developers adscribe to the Free Software philosophy, while others are paid by Open Source companies. Does that make Linux 89% (or whatever) Open Source and only 11% free?

I too prefer to call it "Free Software" (I am Spanish, so "software libre" rolls of my tongue better than "open source"), but we can't pretend that Open Source and Free Software are exclusive terms.

The academic community studying Free and Open Source Software call it that, or by its acronym FOSS/FLOSS (the L standing for "Libre"). That way they can do away with the terminological hairsplitting and devote their attention to whatever aspect of Free Software they want to study.

I would agree with you. RMS and his cohorts have long valued the freedom of code over the freedom of people. (RMS, at least, seems to think it's an absolute sin that people dare to make money off software; his essays are frightening things.)

You should read this RMS article then. Really scary. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html