Slashdot Mirror

Anyone looking for the GNU 2 licence may find it at:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

The pre-preamble contains the text:
"Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed."
The whole document uses "license" instead of "licence."

In my part of the world, "licence" is a noun and "license" is a verb
(similar to practice (noun) and practise (verb)).

Can I disregard GPL2 because its use of the word "license" is incompatible with my grammar?

Using an open source tool and modifying it are two deeply different things. No FOSS tool that I know of limits what you can do with its output. OS X is compiled with GCC, but it's a commercial OS, for instance.

I believe it's a function of copyright law, not free software particularly, that gives you copyright power over the work you make. In other words, what you're saying is true but the underlying principle has nothing to do with the GNU Compiler Collection being free software; that same principle applies to proprietary software as well. Apple could compile their OS with a proprietary compiler with no loss in copyright power. I'd imagine that Apple developers choose GCC for the freedoms GCC gives them (NeXT modified GCC to suit their needs), GCC's excellent developers, and GCC's technical merit.

The unusual situation with Bison has been explained elsewhere in this thread and Richard Stallman addressed this issue in one of his talks. I'd be wary of embedded DRM in saved files, but I don't think most computer users have that problem to face right now.

Finally, I think you meant to say "proprietary" and not "commercial". FOSS is commercial software when it is developed as a business activity. What differentiates free software from proprietary software is that users have freedoms with free software they don't get with proprietary software.

No FOSS tool that I know of limits what you can do with its output.

One category of programs that may cause such issues are lexical and syntactical analyzers (also known as lexer and parser generators), since they often include parts of themselves in their output.

Got any examples?

The most common lex and yacc tools distributed with Linux are Flex and Bison - or at least they were when last I had occasion to use such things. It's not true in either of those cases.

Flex, if you look at its sourceforge page is distributed under the BSD licence. So there are no problems with flex.

Bison is more problematical, since it's released under the full GPL. The problem is acknowledged by the FSF

Some programs copy parts of themselves into the output for technical reasons--for example, Bison copies a standard parser program into its output file. In such cases, the copied text in the output is covered by the same license that covers it in the source code. Meanwhile, the part of the output which is derived from the program's input inherits the copyright status of the input.

However the same FAQ entry continues:

As it happens, Bison can also be used to develop non-free programs. This is because we decided to explicitly permit the use of the Bison standard parser program in Bison output files without restriction.

So Bison isn't a threat either.

Which tools were you thinking of, specifically? I'm sure the authors of such tools don't intend to lay traps for proprietary developers, and I expect they'd be happy to make the relevant changes if it meant wider use of their tools.

Failing that, it would be a worthwhile exercise to publicise any such tools that are incompatible with proprietary development processes. As opposed to just going "Open Source! Be Very Afraid!" which doesn't seem to contribute anything of value to the debate

"If more code was released under BSD-type license, we would've seen wider adoption."

"The point is about the rules being too restrictive for some people."

"I designed the GNU GPL to uphold and defend the freedoms that define free software--to use the words of 1776, it establishes them as inalienable rights for programs released under the GPL. It ensures that you have the freedom to study, change, and redistribute the program, by saying that nobody is authorized to take these freedoms away from you by redistributing the program under a restrictive license.

For the sake of cooperation, we encourage others to modify and extend the programs that we publish. For the sake of freedom, we set the condition that these modified versions of our programs must respect your freedom just like the original version. We encourage two-way cooperation by rejecting parasites: whoever wishes to copy parts of our software into his program must let us use parts of that program in our programs. Nobody is forced to join our club, but those who wish to participate must offer us the same cooperation they receive from us. That makes the system fair.

Millions of users, tens of thousands of developers, and companies as large as IBM, Intel, and Sun, have chosen to participate on this basis. But some companies want the advantages without the responsibilities."

Splitting hairs, I'd say - in any case, I think we agree that it's hard to reconcile "commercial software should not exist" with "I want to sell commercial software." As to 'judging the code on its merits,' I wouldn't want to buy from someone who didn't want me as a customer, even if the price were zero. If nothing else, I'd worry that they would be less likely to accept patches, fix bugs that were important to me, interact on mailing lists, and in general provide support. It's not necessarily a deal breaker, but it's a factor to consider. In large organizations, procedural issues can dominate the technical ones.

And - no offense intended - 'judge the code on its merits' is not practiced by the FSF community (if you'll permit me to generalize from RMS), who believe that, for example, schools should use exclusively free software, regardless of any technically superior proprietary alternatives. For RMS, too, procedural issues dominate the technical issues.

If you were in the business of selling software, would you feel comfortable using code written by folks who are philosophically opposed to the existence of your business? If you're going to blame the commercial software shills, you also have to acknowledge the impact of the open source shills.

Intel's compiler (icc), available for Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD extends OpenMP to clusters.

You can build your OpenMP code and it will run on clusters automatically. Intel's additional pragmas allow you to control, which things you want parallelized over multiple machines vs. multiple CPUs (the former being fairly expensive to setup and keep in sync).

I've also seen messages on gcc's mailing list, that talk about extending gcc's OpenMP implementation (moved from GOMP to mainstream in gcc-4.2) to clusters the same way.

Nothing in OpenMP prevents a particular implementation from offering multi-machine parallelization. Intel's is just the first compiler to get there...

The beauty of it all is that OpenMP is just compiler pragmas — you can always build the same code with them off (or with a non-supporting compiler), and it will still run serially.

Intel's compiler (icc), available for Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD extends OpenMP to clusters.

You can build your OpenMP code and it will run on clusters automatically. Intel's additional pragmas allow you to control, which things you want parallelized over multiple machines vs. multiple CPUs (the former being fairly expensive to setup and keep in sync).

I've also seen messages on gcc's mailing list, that talk about extending gcc's OpenMP implementation (moved from GOMP to mainstream in gcc-4.2) to clusters the same way.

Nothing in OpenMP prevents a particular implementation from offering multi-machine parallelization. Intel's is just the first compiler to get there...

The beauty of it all is that OpenMP is just compiler pragmas — you can always build the same code with them off (or with a non-supporting compiler), and it will still run serially.

Hey, look! You don't know what you're talking about. M4 is a programing language (well macro processor) and coincidentally I'm not retarded.

I like the way they worry about inaccurate translations, like Muslims do with the Qu'ran. The GPL really is a revealed text, not a composed one isn't it?

Sure, the GPL FAQ explains this sort of thing:

• How does the GPL apply to fonts [which are sort-of executable]?
• Can I release a program under the GPL which I developed using non-free tools?
• Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
• Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
• In what cases is the output of a GPL program covered by the GPL too?

Sure, the GPL FAQ explains this sort of thing:

• How does the GPL apply to fonts [which are sort-of executable]?
• Can I release a program under the GPL which I developed using non-free tools?
• Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
• Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
• In what cases is the output of a GPL program covered by the GPL too?

Sure, the GPL FAQ explains this sort of thing:

• How does the GPL apply to fonts [which are sort-of executable]?
• Can I release a program under the GPL which I developed using non-free tools?
• Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
• Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
• In what cases is the output of a GPL program covered by the GPL too?

Sure, the GPL FAQ explains this sort of thing:

• How does the GPL apply to fonts [which are sort-of executable]?
• Can I release a program under the GPL which I developed using non-free tools?
• Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
• Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
• In what cases is the output of a GPL program covered by the GPL too?

Sure, the GPL FAQ explains this sort of thing:

• How does the GPL apply to fonts [which are sort-of executable]?
• Can I release a program under the GPL which I developed using non-free tools?
• Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
• Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
• In what cases is the output of a GPL program covered by the GPL too?

Aren't all the news service sites jumping on stories about big manufacturers possibly providing GNU/Linux? Whilst it would be great to see OEMs pre-installing GNU/Linux it's advisable to not get excited until you can see proof, e.g. the machines are advertised on their respective web sites. As a real alternative to Windows too, not hidden in the depths of the site as a token gesture, so their marketing department can claim that they, 'tried Linux but there was no demand.'

From TFA:

HP has preloaded PCs with Linux in previous years, but the market acceptance wasn't there to do that on a broader scale, according to Small. "Frankly, we did that in the past and didn't see the results for it," he said.

My argument to Mr Small would be that he didn't take a sufficient risk. If they did provide a mass-market GNU/Linux desktop, not many people heard about it. This is why it's important to put any offering on an equal footing with Windows (as difficult as that may be considering their contracts).

The other mistake is with marketing departments making this assumption: 'Linux == Cheap. So people who want Linux, want cheap PC's!' Then they only offer it on some low-end model no discerning geek would ever buy. Had they actually bothered to ask the community they would have found that most want Freedom, not free beer. I believe Wal-Mart and other large US shops rolled-out some rather pitiful offerings recently.

He added that HP also plans some enhancements to its channel programs to help in the delivery of Linux solutions, but he didn't give details.

What does this mean exactly? To a layman such as myself it sounds like they are considering doing the same as Dell and getting their hardware certified with some GNU/Linux providers. A step in the right direction, but hardly the Holy-grail of pre-installed GNU/Linux this article is trumpeting.

As far as I know, the Linux kernel will remain with GPLv2. Right now, nothing is covered by GPLv3, so it means nothing. It should get interesting if some open source component used in Suse goes with GPLv3, though.

• Choose a specific version and stick with it.
• Choose a specific version and say "this version or later".
• Say "any version of the GPL can apply".

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

• Kawa: licensed under the Kawa License, which is an X-11/MIT style license. Kawa is a Scheme/Emacs Lisp environment that runs on Java, in case you were wondering.
• GNU less: the page says it is licensed under a SimplePermissiveNowarranty, but if you download the latest less tarball from ftp.gnu.org, you will find it is GPLd. However, older versions of less were non-copyleft, and they still are, as you can still download them.
• Ncurses, which is distributed under an X11-style license.
• Proto, which is is a tool for finding C and C++ function prototypes (someone please explain to me what that means), in the Public Domain. This one is not downloadable from the GNU ftp, but I guess that, if they list it as a GNU project, it must be.
• Quexo, xquery implementation using Kawa to compile to java bytecode. Under the Kawa license, which means an X11-style license.
• Speex, an audio compression codec for voice, under the Xiph.org license (a modified BSD)

• Kawa: licensed under the Kawa License, which is an X-11/MIT style license. Kawa is a Scheme/Emacs Lisp environment that runs on Java, in case you were wondering.
• GNU less: the page says it is licensed under a SimplePermissiveNowarranty, but if you download the latest less tarball from ftp.gnu.org, you will find it is GPLd. However, older versions of less were non-copyleft, and they still are, as you can still download them.
• Ncurses, which is distributed under an X11-style license.
• Proto, which is is a tool for finding C and C++ function prototypes (someone please explain to me what that means), in the Public Domain. This one is not downloadable from the GNU ftp, but I guess that, if they list it as a GNU project, it must be.
• Quexo, xquery implementation using Kawa to compile to java bytecode. Under the Kawa license, which means an X11-style license.
• Speex, an audio compression codec for voice, under the Xiph.org license (a modified BSD)

• Kawa: licensed under the Kawa License, which is an X-11/MIT style license. Kawa is a Scheme/Emacs Lisp environment that runs on Java, in case you were wondering.
• GNU less: the page says it is licensed under a SimplePermissiveNowarranty, but if you download the latest less tarball from ftp.gnu.org, you will find it is GPLd. However, older versions of less were non-copyleft, and they still are, as you can still download them.
• Ncurses, which is distributed under an X11-style license.
• Proto, which is is a tool for finding C and C++ function prototypes (someone please explain to me what that means), in the Public Domain. This one is not downloadable from the GNU ftp, but I guess that, if they list it as a GNU project, it must be.
• Quexo, xquery implementation using Kawa to compile to java bytecode. Under the Kawa license, which means an X11-style license.
• Speex, an audio compression codec for voice, under the Xiph.org license (a modified BSD)

• Kawa: licensed under the Kawa License, which is an X-11/MIT style license. Kawa is a Scheme/Emacs Lisp environment that runs on Java, in case you were wondering.
• GNU less: the page says it is licensed under a SimplePermissiveNowarranty, but if you download the latest less tarball from ftp.gnu.org, you will find it is GPLd. However, older versions of less were non-copyleft, and they still are, as you can still download them.
• Ncurses, which is distributed under an X11-style license.
• Proto, which is is a tool for finding C and C++ function prototypes (someone please explain to me what that means), in the Public Domain. This one is not downloadable from the GNU ftp, but I guess that, if they list it as a GNU project, it must be.
• Quexo, xquery implementation using Kawa to compile to java bytecode. Under the Kawa license, which means an X11-style license.
• Speex, an audio compression codec for voice, under the Xiph.org license (a modified BSD)

Well, I can't think of any GNU software that is not copyleft, but I know a prominent example of GNU software that is weak copyleft rather than strong copyleft: GNU libc. And I know an example of software which is not in the GNU project but for which Stallman agreed that a non-copleft licence was best: Ogg vorbis codec.

The reason for GNU libc using a weak copyleft licence is tactical. From "Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library":

There are reasons that can make it better to use the Library GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Library GPL for that library.

The reason for endorsing the use of a non-copyleft licence for the Ogg vorbis codec was that the goal was to maximise adoption. Vorbis had to displace the entrenched MP3 format, so any inconveniences or legal problems would impede that goal. So Stallman agreed that the developers should use an X11 style permissive licence.

Slightly offtopic: Yesterday, reading gnu.org, this bit of news jumped on me:

Most GNU software is copylefted, but not all; however, all GNU software must be free software.

Yes, I am surprised too. Any guess as to which piece of GNU software is under a non-copyleft license?

Everyone knows that ed is the standard text editor.

1. Use a 32bit browser if you want that proprietary crapware.
2. The industry wouldn't dare start games over DVD decryption.
3. We don't want closed source device drivers, if you do then stick to Windows or OSX.

Your number three and additional little rant is obnoxious

In fact, we're actually improving by switching away from WebCT (proprietary, run by an evil company) to Sakai (Free Software).

That's incorrect!
Quoting from:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#Priv ateSoftware

"Private or custom software is software developed for one user (typically an organization or company). That user keeps it and uses it, and does not release it to the public either as source code or as binaries.

A private program is free software in a trivial sense if its unique user has full rights to it. However, in a deeper sense, it does not really make sense to pose the question of whether such a program is free software or not.

In general we do not believe it is wrong to develop a program and not release it. There are occasions when a program is so useful that withholding it from release is treating humanity badly. However, most programs are not that marvelous, and withholding them is not particularly harmful. Thus, there is no conflict between the development of private or custom software and the principles of the free software movement.

Nearly all employment for programmers is in development of custom software; therefore most programming jobs are, or could be, done in a way compatible with the free software movement."

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;

It's the fact that muslix64's program is capable of decrypting a copyrighted work without permission.

Free Software has nothing to do with communities, except for a certain correlation between success, popularity and Free (as in speech) development philosophy. Don't get the concepts mixed.

They don't own the expression more than you or I, but as they are its original coiner, I will bring the GNU definition of Free Software, as seen in their The Free Software Definition page:

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Nothing there mentions that the software *must* (or either should) be "developed in open source communities" (being the operative word there "developed").

I'm not disputing the benefits of a community-laden development, but only pointing that the concepts of Free Software, Open Source and community-based development are three different sets that share an intersection that, although very good for the whole "cause", cannot summarize adequately the entire concept.

Perhaps he felt that the assertions were self-evident. After all, the people who drafted the GPL felt there was enough of a difference that they drafted the GNU Free Documentation License.

Creative Commons is a disaster.

Jonathan Coulton's songs are released under CC-NC-BY-SA 2.5. That means I can only use them in works that are also CC-NC-BY-SA 2.5. So if someone on Jamendo (or whatever) releases a song under CC-BY-SA 2.5, I can't make a mashup of them with either license. I can't make a movie, under any license, that contains both songs. That "open movie" Elephants Dream that was all over digg/slashdot was released under CC-BY, but its soundtrack was released under CC-NC-ND, so I can't mix the existing soundtrack with Coulton's or whoever's music.

In fact, this whole fad of having hundreds of different "licenses" from every company with slightly different wording is completely ruining the spirit of freedom and the internet. Wikipedia is released under the GFDL. I can't print out an article and distribute it without attaching the entire text of the GFDL. That's a free open-content encyclopedia? Same with Wikibooks. Meanwhile, MIT's OpenCourseWare is released under CC-BY-NC-SA 2.5, so I can't combine a Wikipedia article with an MIT "open course". I can't include pictures from DeviantArt or Flickr if they're released under any other license.

The whole thing is so crazy and short-sighted.

We only need three licenses, and they are completely compatible in one direction:

1. a public domain license, saying that you can do whatever you want with it;
2. the BSD (a.k.a. MIT) license, which requires attribution to the original authors, but is otherwise free;
3. and the GPL, the share-alike license which allows for commercial use (but prevents you from getting screwed, by forcing commercial sellers to also offer a free version).

Before you ask what the hell I'm talking about: yes, you can release art (books, pictures, or anything else) under the GPL (and BSD, obviously). And you should choose that over any Creative Commons licenses.

Already so much content exists under the GPL that it's crazy to prevent your "open content" from being used in it.

Well, that is a problem, but overall I'm more concerned with whether they've addressed Debian's criticisms. The GNU criticisms are basically, 'People refer to them vaguely, and you can't use them with our licenses.' The latter is a considerable practical problem, given the mass of GPL material out there. But the issues raised in the Debian criticism are much more serious, as far as I'm concerned. They deal in detail with its vaguenesses, its difficult points, and essentially with how well it can really be used and how free it truly is.

I'm not really sure whether the changes amount to addressing all these issues (where 'addressing' may just mean 'objection noted, but no change'). A diff would be helpful...

This is similiar to ESR's "right to copy", http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html except it is the mafiaa & m$ (vista), rather than the publishing industry doing it to us.

Now we go one baby-step down the path where debugging tools like the ones used by these "hackers","pirates", and "anti-establishmentarians" require a license to own and use, because tools like this can apparently cause more damage to our society than an unlicensed firearm can do in a school...

From The Right To Read:

Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.

--jeffk++

Open source software is software whose source code is freely available (i.e., without any requirement for payment or any other obstacles) for anyone to inspect and study

Visual Basic on GNU/Linux

jeevesbond writes

"The Mono Project announced that it has developed a Visual Basic compiler that will enable software developers who use Microsoft Visual Basic to run their applications on any platform that supports Mono, such as Linux, without any code modifications."

There are only a few very specific reasons why some people say GNU/Linux instead of Linux. If you believe in them strongly enough that you're willing to add those three entire syllables to the name, how on earth can you reconcile that with being indifferent enough to use the more common form "Linux" only a few lines later?

In fact, using them like that implies a certain interchangeability between the two. RMS must be turning in his grave.

I read two issues in TFA: 1) listening to Jobs and rumours about a DRM-free EMI, DRM is on the way out and 2) the copying levy in Canada is also on the way out, albeit not so quickly, and maybe to be replaced by something else. I'm thrilled by the first, but less optimistic (and possibly less enthusiastic) about the second.

What pisses me off about DRM is that it is not just about ensuring that content cannot be distributed to anyone holus-bolus, but it is about restricting use far and beyond current practise. It is useful to think about DRM not just in the context of say music distribution, but rather in terms of its impact on content distribution and sharing in general. A good example is Stallman's The Right to Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html; I don't think there are many people out there who will dispute that I should be able to loan you a book to read, but the current climate and direction of DRM is to indeed to restrict that practise. 'The Right to Read' might have seemed a little far-fetched in 1997 when it was written, but it sure doesn't look all that unlikely now, does it? DRM is no longer (and maybe never was!) about saving content producers from low-effort, high-volume piracy - it is now about fundamentally changing the consumers rights regarding the use of that content.

The copy levy in Canada was intended to recover dollars lost to producers and distributors as a result of technology that facilitated easy copying and the resultant alleged lost revenue. My problem with this is that we don't know whether any revenue actually is lost, and even if we accept that some is, quantifying the lost revenue is not really possible. Well, I guess you can make numbers up, but that's about it. :)

The levy has turned out to have a useful legal side-effect in Canada in that it has provided a basis for stopping P2P downloading from being identified as illegal, much to the chagrin of the distribution industry, who lobbied for the levy in the first place. Extending the levy to other devices I don't like the sound of quite so much.

However, as other posters have noted, we really haven't addressed the problem of compensation for the admittedly low-effort, higher-quality-that-cassette-mixed-tapes digital piracy that abounds today. If I download a song from my P2P network of choice, the artist hasn't been compensated. I'm suspicious of the levy being used as a mechanism for such compensation, because it is so circuitous, but I don't see the industry letting this one go now that they've got it, unless they are blindly pissed off by the legal side-effect.

As long as the levy lets me download music without fear of reprisal, and if those levy dollars could be used as a rough justice method to compensate artists for piracy that does occur (and yes, I do know this may be difficult/not possible), then I'm okay with the levy. I may even be able to live with an extension of the levy

It depends what you mean by out. I do not think that most people would take "out" to mean "development started", but "development (of first version) done"

Hurd is still not out:

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html#status

Quite right; as RMS says in his updated version of an underrated essay on gnu.org:

We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being misidentified as open source supporters.

The notion that people would want to get credit for their work and not be identified with a movement that conveys a different message is apparently difficult for some people to understand and act upon. Witness the number of people who will refuse to give GNU a share of the credit and instead refer to a "Linux operating system" when that system features GNU software. The GNU/Linux naming FAQ responds to every rebuttal I've seen.

Lots of people don't understand the differences between the movements, even when those differences explain the vastly different results we see on the ground (such as explaining why free software movement proponents say proprietary software is anti-social and open source movement proponents endorse installing and running proprietary software). For years, the OSI told people the differences were "ideological tub-thumping" and that was about the most insightful explanation they had to offer. Meanwhile, the FSF was publishing a different and far more respectful explanation which was recently updated.

The OSI's president, Michael Tiemann, said the OSI is changing; distancing themselves from the views of Eric Raymond ("Eric does speak for himself but less and less for the OSI."). I hope that the OSI will be able to bring its audience around to understand why ethical understanding is important. Businesses greatest achievement has been to get people to believe they can separate what they do from ethics, and it's important we challenge that perception; in many cases this is a life or death matter. But there is much for the OSI to do because of the wedge they created; for example, convincing people that approving of similar sets of licenses is all there is to say on the subject (another followup to your post illustrates this point). RMS discussed the differences between the movements and Tiemann president responded.

Quite right; as RMS says in his updated version of an underrated essay on gnu.org:

We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being misidentified as open source supporters.

The notion that people would want to get credit for their work and not be identified with a movement that conveys a different message is apparently difficult for some people to understand and act upon. Witness the number of people who will refuse to give GNU a share of the credit and instead refer to a "Linux operating system" when that system features GNU software. The GNU/Linux naming FAQ responds to every rebuttal I've seen.

Lots of people don't understand the differences between the movements, even when those differences explain the vastly different results we see on the ground (such as explaining why free software movement proponents say proprietary software is anti-social and open source movement proponents endorse installing and running proprietary software). For years, the OSI told people the differences were "ideological tub-thumping" and that was about the most insightful explanation they had to offer. Meanwhile, the FSF was publishing a different and far more respectful explanation which was recently updated.

The OSI's president, Michael Tiemann, said the OSI is changing; distancing themselves from the views of Eric Raymond ("Eric does speak for himself but less and less for the OSI."). I hope that the OSI will be able to bring its audience around to understand why ethical understanding is important. Businesses greatest achievement has been to get people to believe they can separate what they do from ethics, and it's important we challenge that perception; in many cases this is a life or death matter. But there is much for the OSI to do because of the wedge they created; for example, convincing people that approving of similar sets of licenses is all there is to say on the subject (another followup to your post illustrates this point). RMS discussed the differences between the movements and Tiemann president responded.

Quite right; as RMS says in his updated version of an underrated essay on gnu.org:

We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being misidentified as open source supporters.

The notion that people would want to get credit for their work and not be identified with a movement that conveys a different message is apparently difficult for some people to understand and act upon. Witness the number of people who will refuse to give GNU a share of the credit and instead refer to a "Linux operating system" when that system features GNU software. The GNU/Linux naming FAQ responds to every rebuttal I've seen.

Lots of people don't understand the differences between the movements, even when those differences explain the vastly different results we see on the ground (such as explaining why free software movement proponents say proprietary software is anti-social and open source movement proponents endorse installing and running proprietary software). For years, the OSI told people the differences were "ideological tub-thumping" and that was about the most insightful explanation they had to offer. Meanwhile, the FSF was publishing a different and far more respectful explanation which was recently updated.

The OSI's president, Michael Tiemann, said the OSI is changing; distancing themselves from the views of Eric Raymond ("Eric does speak for himself but less and less for the OSI."). I hope that the OSI will be able to bring its audience around to understand why ethical understanding is important. Businesses greatest achievement has been to get people to believe they can separate what they do from ethics, and it's important we challenge that perception; in many cases this is a life or death matter. But there is much for the OSI to do because of the wedge they created; for example, convincing people that approving of similar sets of licenses is all there is to say on the subject (another followup to your post illustrates this point). RMS discussed the differences between the movements and Tiemann president responded.

Linus' blessing is neither sufficient nor necessary for any fork of Linux, GPL3 or otherwise. It's not sufficient, because the vast majority of code in Linux is not "Copyright (c) Linus Torvalds". It's not necessary, because the only permission anyone needs is that which has already been granted by the individual copyright holders, as stated in the comments of the individual files.

Linus Torvalds doesn't have any special legal status with respect to Linux. He holds the "Linux(TM)" trademark, and he currently maintains the tree that is arguably the most popular among Linux kernel developers, but that's about it. He himself has said as much on numerous occasions.

This may be a nitpick, but you actually are allowed to sell someone a copy of GPL'd work. Now in general, the chances of anyone being willing to pay you for this are virtually zero, since you can typically find a copy on the Internet for free. But the license itself explicitly allows the charging of a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, as well as for providing warranty coverage of said GPL'd code.

We already have a solution to the Travelling Salesman Problem. Do you really think NP-complete problems are so hard and mystical that we can't currently run computers to solve them? Yes, the best (100% accurate) solutions we have currently increase the execution time exponentially with the problem size. So what?

NP-complete != impossible. NP-complete != slow. NP-complete = slow for big problems. A few years ago I was playing around with NP-completeness in my spare time. Using GNU Guile (hint: this was not a blazingly fast implementation), I was able to solve a typical n=1000 subset sum instance in under a minute on commodity hardware.

With a clever heuristic or two, and a clever programmer, and a clever optimizing compiler, I wouldn't be surprised if USPS could solve Travelling Salesman Problems where the number of nodes is on the order of magnitude of 10000, without overly exorbitant hardware costs. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think USPS has more than 10000 stops on most of its shipping routes.

If USPS wanted to use the Travelling Salesman Problem, they would be using it already. Using a quantum computer would do nothing for them but add headaches and cost. NP-complete problems are only hard when you're looking at big data sets, and I just don't think USPS making shipping routes would fall into that category.

I'm not certain what meaning the GPL has in the media content field. It provides for protection of a "Program" and it's fairly clear from the text of the license that it's talking about a computer program. The GPL does not require that the Program be given away for free (as in beer) -- it does impose certain requirements on the distributor / copier, but those say nothing about price. For reference, here's the gpl v2.

Creative Commons provides a series of form clauses which may or may not allow the free (as in beer) distribution of a work. It is certainly appropriate for media content (as opposed to software), but does not require that the author give up his or her or its rights, whether those rights be to distribution, derivative works, etc. You might want to look at their license list

. Both of these licenses rely on an effective and enforceable copyright law. I suppose if all current and future copyrighted works fell into the public domain, there may be no need for the licenses, though I would argue that the GPL has a larger intent than simply putting works into the public domain. In any case, Fox is enforcing its rights under the same copyright law that the Creative Commons licenses and the GPL rely upon.

Therefore, there is no hypocrisy because we would defend FOX if they used a freer license.

What exactly are you looking for? Free Simpsons episodes on Youtube? This wasn't the case of a creative remix or mashup. This wasn't about using clips from the Simpsons in an otherwise creative work. This was the wholesale copy and distribution of Simpsons episodes.

Of course there is. They are not free software. I am unable to alter them to fix bugs or add new features.