Slashdot Mirror

Bruce Perens writes "Microsoft's new "Software Choice" campaign is all for your right to choose... as long as you choose Microsoft. It's too bad that Intel and the U.S. Government couldn't see through the rhetoric. Read the full story at The Register." Note that California will soon be considering - like Peru - a law to mandate open source software in government. The gloves are off - on both sides.

Bruce Perens wrote with this interesting reversal: "News.com reports HP has backed off of its DMCA threat." Which makes SNOsoft's official response thankfully beside the point now. Update: 08/02 05:37 GMT by T : Declan McCullagh points out this CNET story, which includes words from HP, Snosoft, and Bruce Perens. Writes Declan: "HP blames the snafu on... their lawyers!"

Slashback with more on paying royalties for Web standards, Sun's newest office suite, securing your 802.11 network starting with the antenna(e), and another glove.

Fewer excuses for the "memos and shopping lists" crowd. Sean Lamb writes: "Now that everyone's done slashdotting Sun's servers, I've posted an Out-Of-Box-Experience review of StarOffice 6.0 beta over at Linux Orbit."

Some things just want to be Free. Bruce Perens writes: "HP has made a public statement supporting royalty-free web standards and urging the community to write W3C with their opinion. "

A document on Perens' web site outlines Hewlett-Packard's response to the ongoing discussion of allowing technologies into W3C standards which could require patents on the so-called Reasonable and Non-Discrimatory (RAND) basis. That document reads in part:

"Agreement on royalty-free standards does not end this discussion. The licensing of patents embedded in standards must be compatible with the GPL license that is applied to the Linux operating system kernel, the MIT-derived license that is applied to the Apache web server, and a number of other software licenses. Because of the many thousands of copyright holders who have already contributed to existing products under those licenses, those software licenses can not be changed - the patent licensing mandated by W3C standards must accommodate them."

I hope other companies benefiting from software like Apache, Linux, and any other software which could be hurt by royalty-based standards make similar statements.

Wardrivers, begone. Moshe Barr may have laid out how to share a network connection with the neighborhood, but what about when you don't want to or can't afford to? trevmar writes: "BYTE.com has just published an article I wrote about WLAN antennas -- how they work and how to choose them. Hopefully I have put in all the stuff you will need to know whether you are setting up a community freenet, or just want to make your own home network harder to hack. If you are hardware inclined, I also describe some low cost hardware, and an access point that can be pulled apart very easily and resoldered at will ..."

Need an integrated keyboard here ... Adrian writes "Forget the guys with the glove from Berkeley, check out these guys -- they have a great product that interfaces with 3D Max for realtime animation generation that is on the market and won best of SIGGRAPH a couple of years back -http://www.didjiglove.com.au" While that's nice, I'd rather not forget the Berkeley guys just yet, since their seems like a more generalized concept.

Slashback with more on paying royalties for Web standards, Sun's newest office suite, securing your 802.11 network starting with the antenna(e), and another glove.

Fewer excuses for the "memos and shopping lists" crowd. Sean Lamb writes: "Now that everyone's done slashdotting Sun's servers, I've posted an Out-Of-Box-Experience review of StarOffice 6.0 beta over at Linux Orbit."

Some things just want to be Free. Bruce Perens writes: "HP has made a public statement supporting royalty-free web standards and urging the community to write W3C with their opinion. "

A document on Perens' web site outlines Hewlett-Packard's response to the ongoing discussion of allowing technologies into W3C standards which could require patents on the so-called Reasonable and Non-Discrimatory (RAND) basis. That document reads in part:

"Agreement on royalty-free standards does not end this discussion. The licensing of patents embedded in standards must be compatible with the GPL license that is applied to the Linux operating system kernel, the MIT-derived license that is applied to the Apache web server, and a number of other software licenses. Because of the many thousands of copyright holders who have already contributed to existing products under those licenses, those software licenses can not be changed - the patent licensing mandated by W3C standards must accommodate them."

I hope other companies benefiting from software like Apache, Linux, and any other software which could be hurt by royalty-based standards make similar statements.

Wardrivers, begone. Moshe Barr may have laid out how to share a network connection with the neighborhood, but what about when you don't want to or can't afford to? trevmar writes: "BYTE.com has just published an article I wrote about WLAN antennas -- how they work and how to choose them. Hopefully I have put in all the stuff you will need to know whether you are setting up a community freenet, or just want to make your own home network harder to hack. If you are hardware inclined, I also describe some low cost hardware, and an access point that can be pulled apart very easily and resoldered at will ..."

Need an integrated keyboard here ... Adrian writes "Forget the guys with the glove from Berkeley, check out these guys -- they have a great product that interfaces with 3D Max for realtime animation generation that is on the market and won best of SIGGRAPH a couple of years back -http://www.didjiglove.com.au" While that's nice, I'd rather not forget the Berkeley guys just yet, since their seems like a more generalized concept.

EconomyGuy writes "Looks like the some big players all got together to respond to Microsoft's recent claims about the GPL. CNet is running a story about it, or you can read the response right here. If names like ESR, Linus, RMS, and Perens can all agree on something to say, then Microsoft's plan to split the community just might back fire on them."

Bruce Perens writes: "Did you think you knew what I am doing about software patents from the news coverage? You're probably wrong. Get the real scoop here. There's been enough distortion that I took the time to put down my own opinions, and an explanation of the summit meeting I'm calling on Free Software and The Law. Thanks! - Bruce" You might need to read our previous story about Perens' patent activities for background.

Bruce Perens writes: "Did you think you knew what I am doing about software patents from the news coverage? You're probably wrong. Get the real scoop here. There's been enough distortion that I took the time to put down my own opinions, and an explanation of the summit meeting I'm calling on Free Software and The Law. Thanks! - Bruce" You might need to read our previous story about Perens' patent activities for background.

Bruce Perens K6BP writes: "The Phase 3-D Amateur satellite, called "Oscar 40" now that it is in orbit, is back on the air. A ground station sent a reset command and a command to turn on a microwave transmitter, which worked on the first attempt. The transmitter is sending an unmodulated carrier until telemetry software is reloaded, but it's clear from the doppler shift of the signal and the loss-of-signal time as the transmitter crosses the horizon that the signal is coming from the satellite's orbit. The ground controller will now reload the flight computer software and bootstrap the main flight computer. It will take a while to reload both computers and to investigate problems with the satellite, as this is complicated by the attitude and orbit of the satellite - right now it's not actively stabilized and is only pointing the antennas toward the Earth during part of its orbit, and of course it's only above the horizon from any ground controller's perspective during part of each orbit." Read on for a bit more on this promising news."

"A board of inquiry will convene to investigate the loss-of-signal incident and to change procedures to avoid another such incident with this or a future Amateur satellite. General information about the satellite can be found at www.amsat.org. The following announcement is from www.amsat-dl.org:

The Santa Claus brought AO40 back On Air! At 2000-12-25 21:45 command station Ian, ZL1AOX sent a RESET command through L-band and an initialization block to switch the S2 S-Band transmitter On. Just after the first attempt the S2 beacon came on 2401.305 MHz, Signal was about S5 to 6 which was comparable to when S2 was heard last during testing The S2 beacon produced a steady signal and from the doppler wobbling it is also clear that it is in fact coming from AO-40. Ian ZL1AOX reported that he was able to copy and observe (with Spectrogram) the S2 beacon. His LOS time was 2000-12-26 03:45:15. Predicted LOS from NORAD set #12 keps gave 5 secs later. Approx distance was 61,470 Kms. Today, 2000-12-26 at about 16:05 UTC, ZL1AOX will acquire AO-40 shortly after perigee with a reasonably good squint angle. He will than start reloading the IPS software. Until than the beacon will not carry any telemetry, just a carrier. Once the bootloader for IPS is up, you will see "X" blocks in the telemetry until IPS is completely loaded... (Thanks to DB2OS for this information)."

Bruce Perens writes "The Phase 3-D satellite, renamed Oscar 40 once it reached orbit, has suffered multiple failures and has stopped transmitting telemetry. It is not yet known if the satellite is responding to commands. The main telemetry beacon on 145.898 MHz was operating poorly after separation and now may be transmitting a weak unmodulated carrier. A fuel valve appears to be sticking closed and appeared to be only 10% open after multiple operation commands. Then, the first flight burn was 3 minutes too long due to another, not-yet-understood problem, boosting the craft into a higher orbit than expected (not yet a problem in itself as the final orbit is to be even higher). A backup flight computer, itself an experiment to see if the CPU would be radiation-hard enough to survive, has its RAM corrupted every 1 or 2 days in orbit as it crosses radiation belts and currently is not set up to reboot automaticaly. The primary flight computer may have crashed. An expected watchdog timer reset did not occur, but this would be the case if the satellite was receiving some commands."

"We may have to wait until after Christmas for another reset. Controllers have not transmitted a hard reset command yet, which would work even with the flight computer crashed, as they wish to explore other options. The satellite would automaticaly cycle through a number of frequencies and antennas if it does not get any commands for 10 orbits, and controllers hope to re-establish control as this happens. A hard reset could delay that option.

"The satellite waited several years for launch due to Arianne 5's early failures and a revised accelleration profile for the booster that required a redisign of the satellite frame to take additional stress. Aging may have effected components such as the fuel valves. Telemetry stopped suddenly during work on the 400 Newton kick motor, leading to speculation that the satellite may have suffered physical damage, but NORAD radar profiles indicate that it has not exploded.

Problems with Phase 3-D are bad news for hams, who raised $1 Million for the satellite, the 40th in the series of Amateur satellites launched since 1962. Phase 3-D has been criticized for pu ting too many eggs in one basket, unlike other small ham satellites built on a low budget and more easily launched as hitch-hikers with other payloads than the multi-ton Phase 3-D.

"The core development team urges patience. The satellite is in a stable orbit in one piece, just where it is expected to be, as confirmed by NORAD. They can take lots of time to debug it where it is, and hope to restore its functionality.

"For bulletins, see the AMSAT web site.

"A number of other ham satellites remain operational, and astronauts are currently using a ham station on the International Space Station to speak with people on the ground."

Bruce Perens submitted a story he wrote for his website on overflows and who's fault they are. I'm pretty skeptical of almost every point raised in this story, but it's an interesting read. [Updated 21:13 by t] As Sea Monkey points out, Bruce has now taken down the article, with a brief note: "I've withdrawn this article after enough people convinced me that I didn't know what I was talking about. It happens sometimes. Thanks." What if everyone displayed such grace?

Ian Murdock started the Debian Project in 1993 and was its leader until 1996. Now he's president and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems, a company working on a Debian-based system called Linux NOW. (Bruce Perens is chairman of the company's board of directors, so the place is obviously as Debian as a commercial entity can get.) Please post your questions for Ian below. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him by e-mail and run his replies as soon as he gets them back to us.

Bruce Perens writes: "The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is running a forum on software warranties and UCITA. This is of interest to free software authors because UCITA and other proposed law actually require warranties on the software you give away that would cause great hardship to free software authors. It's of interest for proprietary software users because the warranties attached to software that you pay for are generally considered inadequate.FTC is soliciting written comments, the due date is Sept. 11. Full details on how to comment are here."

Beating plows into ploughshares, turning lead into gold, casting new light through windows opened only just last week, it's another spellbinding outbreak of Slashback. Stand back, breathe slowly as the scent of humble correction wafts over you, mingling with the essence of new and perhaps intriguing information. Bruce Perens, too.

"That's not censorship, mate. This is censorship!" Carnage4Life writes: "After causing a murder trial to be aborted last month CrimeNet has been ordered by the attorney general of the Australian state of Victoria to be shut down. If the site operators refuse to shut down they will face jail time. The story can be found here. In news which can only be considered related, an anonymous kangaroo wrote: "Found a reference to this article on LISNews. Seems the Aussie Parliament pitched a hissy fit when their internet access got filtered. Oh gee, how the fsck do you think the rest of the country feels?" How indeed. That's what happens when you start introducing clashing premises, I guess. Geese, ganders, sauce.

To the moon, Alice -- To the moon! We've frequently linked to NASA photos from Slashdot; what if they said "(registration required)" after them like links to the New York Times? MousePotato writes: "NASA announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Dreamtime Holdings to provide multimedia coverage of astronaut activities. The press release details "creating a state-of-the-art multimedia portal, www.Dreamtime.com, that will, with the click of a mouse, open the door to thousands of images, sounds, documents, blueprints and plans from NASA's currently underused archives. " Interesting to note about it is the fact that they will be using HDTV to give us as well as NASA engineers high quality video." Interesting, too, that billions of space research tax dollars are being used "to create new market opportunities in the multimedia arena."

Does this mean I can watch my -- errr ... "classics" again? The DVD-under-Linux story continues, specifically with an update on LinDVD; soon, the MPAA's claims that there are legal DVD players for Linux users may hold at least a sprinking of water; johnnick writes: "Another update in the DeCSS saga. One of the arguments for DeCSS was that there was no legal DVD decoder for Linux boxes. CNET reports that InterVideo, a licensee of the software that enables DVD information to be decoded, plans to release beta software called LinDVD this month that allows people to watch DVDs on Linux machines."

Microsoft not making a run for the border: Calz writes: "Both Microsoft and B.C.'s Investment Minister have denied that Microsoft is considering moving, as reported in this Yahoo article."

In other news from planet Microsoft, the indefatigable Bruce Perens has this to say about mixed-case licensing:

"Microsoft has been caught in a trivial, easily remedied, GPL violation, which is detailed here. They have been contacted, and their response was, well, dumb.

Why do companies get involved in trivial GPL violations? Because the company picks up Free Software as part of one of their products without making a commitment to do the simple, easy, inexpensive things that are required to comply with the Free Software license. Folks, if you can't comply with license requirements as easy as those in the GPL, find other software, please.

One of these examples comes up at least once a month, and I'm going to keep submitting these stories until the situation improves. Maybe that means forever. Today's wakeup call goes to Microsoft corporation, read the account from Tim Burlowski. "

As Bruce says, this looks like a relatively easy one to fix. It could be explained by the complexities of mergers and acquisitions, general confusion, alignment of planets etc, but eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, including as applied to software. Unless Microsoft would like to declare all EULAs null and void ...

Phexro extended our congratulations to Bruce and Valerie on the birth of Bruce 2.0, otherwise known as Stanley Charles Perens. this is jimmy asked us all to compete in the great Beltsander Races. Need to send crazy Aunt JoAnne some E-mail? Try something from the Great Spam Archive, sent in by Jones. Nezumi-chan wasn't the only one to write in with this one, but all I can say is Oh, yes. ahaning wrote in to tell us about the Obsolete Computer Museum. Want something to plug them into? blizzard shared Electricity from Giant Artichokes. Also, check out the Ultracade, which is cool unless you're a video game purist like me. Dropkick wrote in about a cyber-riffic washing machine. Last but not least, Penguin_99 writes in about cool photos from Galileo. That's it, folks. Thanks to AfterY2K for the title inspiration.

Bruce Perens writes "Be is violating the GPL on my software. While it's something they can easily fix, it's a good example of why people need to keep track of where the software they are using came from, and what license is applied to it. We've got the full story over on Technocrat.net." Updated 23:15GMT by timothy: Thanks to reader Eugenia Loli, who wrote: "Andrew Kimpton from Be, was on the phone with Bruce Perens earlier, and Be is clearing up the issue once and for good! Please read the important update."

Bruce Perens writes "In August, I accepted the president's position at Linux Capital Group, a business incubator and venture capital firm specializing in Linux. This is explained in my open letter to the free software community on the group's web site. My firm has announced its first investment, in Progeny Linux, a company headed by Debian Founder Ian Murdock, which will produce a commercial version of Debian in cooperation with the Debian developers. We will be starting and funding several other Linux companies. We now intend to show other businesses by example how to succeed while being a good citizen of the free software community."

Bruce Perens writes "Novell has submitted its Open Source license for review. You can find it, and a few details about license-review, here. "

This week's interview guest with Eric S. Raymond. We got a *lot* of good questions, forwarded the moderators' favorites to Eric, and he not only answered the ones we sent him but - extra cool - picked some more out of the crowd and answered them, too. Read the complete session (below) and if you have something you want to add, go ahead. If Eric has time, he'll jump in and respond, because, well, he's just that kind of guy. ;) Note: questions marked with * are the ones Eric added to the moderators' selections.

chromatic asks:
Astute readers know why you've reluctantly taken a position as a Linux evangelist, open source sociologist, and prime target. Taking the opposite approach, is there anything which would convince you to step down, that your posts were no longer necessary?

This is not meant to be inflammatory ... it's just a roundabout way of asking how far along your goals are, and what your plans will be if you ever meet them.

ESR answers:
Three things could cause me to step down:

• One: someone emerging to do the public-advocate job clearly better than I do.
• Two: Linux's market share going over 50%. (Cool down, BSD guys -- I'd be equally pleased to see some other open-source Unix win, it just doesn't seen very likely at this point).
• Three: a collapse in Microsoft's stock price. That would mean the end of effective FUD and countermarketing against open source.

ivo asks:
A while ago, we read from you that being the Open Source advocate you are was wearing you down and influencing your life very badly. Did you cut down on advocating and did it help? In other words, did you get your life back?

ESR answers:
Not really. Something more remarkable happened instead; the community responded to my distress call by growing up a little. I got letters of apology from some of the worst flamers. Many people in the rest of the community started pressuring the pinheads who had been making my job harder to shut up or get constructive.

I have also cut down somewhat on my travel schedule, but not as much as I thought earlier this year I would have to. I'm also demanding (and getting) better travel conditions -- business class instead of the cheap seats in coach. It makes a difference, more of one than I would have thought.

Stephen Williams asks*:
I'm glad to see that, after a three-year break, the Jargon File has been updated over the past few months. Is version 5.0.0 in the works? Are there any plans to release an update to the print version, The New Hacker's Dictionary, any time soon?

ESR answers:
I've discussed the possibility with people at O'Reilly. That might be my second-to-next book, after "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and before "The Art Of Unix Programming" (which is about half-done now but could take me another nine months to finish). Whether I go with O'Reilly or the publisher of the previous editions (MIT Press) the fourth edition of TNHD seems likely to come out next year sometime.

Tom Christiansen asks:
I don't know how to ask this question without it sounding like stirring the pot, but what about the growing chasm between free software (giftware) and GNU software (the viral kind, not the nice LGPL kind)? This is a real issue for some people in some situations. Think about the many BSD resellers and vendors who have custom packaging in highly competitive fields, like video editing? Doesn't the friction hurt everyone? Apple has turned to BSD not Linux, and the GPL is cited as one reason why. This seems to be devisive. There are no end of flamewars on /. and elsewhere, and the heat diminishes the light. What kind of reconciliation is possible? Or is "take no prisoners" just the way it has to work?

ESR answers:
I don't see a chasm there, Tom. After all, we're all still writing and exchanging code. We're all using basically the same set of licenses. I don't think there are properly two different movements at all, outside the imaginations of a few rather fanatical partisans on both sides.

Here is the reality test: if you're running a project and someone sends you a patch, will you stop to enquire whether that person is a member of the correct faction before you apply it? I don't think so...

So despite the verbal fireworks and philosophical disputes, we're all hackers together. What unites us is more important than what divides us.

Tet asks:
You say you want to live in a world where software doesn't suck. I couldn't agree more. However, do you see closed source software on an open source OS as a step in the right direction, or just likely to be a more stable platform on which to run your potentially bug-ridden software?

ESR answers:
Step in the right direction, definitely. As more and more infrastructure goes open, and the remaimning closed-source applications increasingly use it for leverage, the overall quality of the applications will go up.

planet_hoth*:
Recent interest shown by large commercial tech companies (IBM, SGI, Sun) seems to signal a new chapter in the history of Linux. Do you see the participation of these companies strengthening the linux communitity? Destroying it? Or transforming it into something completely different?

ESR answers:
Look around you. What do you see, compared to a year ago?

Do you see fewer Linux hackers writing open source, or more? Do you see fewer hackers getting *paid* to write open source, or more? I think the answer is pretty clear.

Do you see our designs, or our licenses, or our coding practices being changed in any significant way by corporate participation? Again, I think the answer is pretty clear.

The truth is, they're not transforming us. We're transforming them.

asad asks*:
I know that you are on the board of directors at VA Linux, what does your job entail?

ESR answers:
My job at VA mostly involves sitting in a board meeting once a month asking searching questions about what the firm is doing and why. My role there (as Larry Augustin describes it) is to be the official corporate conscience. This mainly involves nipping bad ideas in the bud, before they flower into something that would piss off the hacker community. I have not had to do this often.

shawnhargreaves asks:
You've always been involved in hacker projects outside of just coding (eg. the Jargon File), but over the last year or so the spokesperson role seems to have grown into a fulltime job. How long is it since you last sat down to write a major piece of software? Do you expect to go back to fulltime development work anytime soon, and if so, what would you work on? How do you manage to cope with the withdrawal symptoms?

ESR answers:
An astute question ;-). I haven't sat down to write a major piece of software from scratch in months, but I am continuing to maintain fetchmail. I just took over the gif2png beta code with Greg Roelofs's consent; the 1.0.0 version might be out by the time you read this. Today I did some work on gnuplot, bringing the PNG driver up to date.

If I get to go full-time again soon, I want to go back to work on Trove, the distributed web-based code-archiving system I designed last year. I'd also like to work with Guido van Rossum on Python 1.6; there are some long-time wishlist features like rich comparisons and a full lambda facility that I care enough about to implement myself. I also have a strategy-gaming system I wrote back in the 1980s that I'd like to put a modern (Web-based) interface on. Finally, having contributed a bit of code to GNOME (the network-monitor applet) I'd like to balance things by doing something for KDE.

meersan asks:
This has probably been asked before, but I can't recall seeing the answer to it anywhere. What originally led you to write The Cathedral and the Bazaar? -- what I'm interested in is if there was some event or impetus that prompted you to write it down. Obviously you'd have no way of predicting the firestorm that followed, but it's always intriguing to know about the spark that started it all

ESR answers:
I wrote CatB as a way of coping with my astonishment in the face of the Linux phenomenon. What I observed was that the community around Linux had evolved a way to write software that (a) was tremendously effective, (b) violated the classic Brooks's Law rules, and (c) was completely unconscious! Nobody reflected on what they were doing; it was practice without theory. I wrote CatB as an attempt to help my tribe become more conscious about what it has been doing.

Q*bert asks:
We all know that you are a staunch advocate of libertarianism. Do you see the open-source / free-software movement turning into a larger political push for libertarian, minimal government?

What conferences are you planning to attend this year? Do you have plans for organizing Geeks with Guns outings during them? If so, is there a mailing list or some other source of information about how to join?

ESR answers:
No comment on that first question. But, if you could see my face, I'm wearing a very evil grin....

See my speaking calendar for the conferences I plan to attend. As for GWG, there's no mailing list; would you like to host one? I rely on local organizers to find a range, and I don't have one for Atlanta Linux Showcase yet.

banky asks:
Linux, like all things in the computer world, will eventually become obsolete or maybe just too much work to keep "up to date". Linus (er, Dr. Torvalds) even said in his "Open Sources" essay that (paraphrasing) someone else could come along and write something better which will take Linux's place. How long do you think before someone will have an offering that will obsolete (or at least prove a competitor to) Linux and the BSD's?

ESR answers:
I doubt Linux will have a real technical competitor for a long time, because I think it will probably just absorb new architectural ideas, amoeba-like, as they evolve. Twenty years from now the core APIs may have grown and changed tremendously, but we'll still think of it as the `same' codebase and call it Linux :-).

scumdamn asks:
Is the friction between Gnome and KDE, BSD and GPL, Free Software and Open Source, and the other sources of flame war a bad thing or a good thing for the movement? Many people seem to feel that the competition is devisive, but isn't it the opposite? We're always preaching that competition is a good thing for the entire market, but then we complain when any of our pet projects are pitted head to head with another. The passion felt by the proponents of each philosophy seems to result in better, more quality work. Isn't this proof that competition is the Good Thing we've been saying it is all along?

ESR answers:
I think you answered your own question :-).

cemerson asks:
Which of the coders working on open source projects do you admire the most? A particular big name like Linus, or someone less well-known?

ESR answers:
Hmmm. I don't think there's anyone I can say I admire the most. There's a level of ability beyond which trying to make comparisons between people just gets silly, because each of the people that good has become a sort of perfect master of his own domain. Linus. RMS. Larry Wall. Guido van Rossum. James Gosling. Going further back, Ken Thompson or Dennis Ritchie. Anyway, I find these guys have gotten their fill of being admired, so I try to be friends with them instead.

K asks:
Why isn't there an entry for "free software" in the Jargon Dictionary? Was this a politically-motivated decision?

ESR answers:
Zounds! You know, until this moment, I didn't realize that entry was missing.

I don't think you want me to write it, though. I would find it hard to avoid using phrases like "rhetorical millstone around our necks" and "held us back for fifteen years". Care to submit one yourself?

Paul Crowley asks:
In Understand my job, please! you described Bruce Perens's proposal that we have a team of Linux advocates sharing the load as "glib". Could you say more about why you feel this way - isn't it more likely that a job where the load is shared would be more attractive?

ESR answers:
I think I answered that question in the same paragraph you quoted. What makes the job rough isn't the workload, it's the second-guessers and snipers from the sidelines -- among whom Bruce was, at the time, nearly the worst. Connect the dots yourself.

jflynn asks:
Starting an open source project from nothing but people with a common interest is difficult. It's been my experience that it is very easy to founder with a bazaar approach to architecture and design. The issues tend to get confused with religious wars about toolkits and license choice, and just a lot of differing opinions about how to best structure a program, no one of which may be *obviously* better.

Is it essential for individuals to first create a working model, incomplete and buggy it may be, before applying bazaar development? Or what would you suggest in terms of managing a bazaar approach to creating programs from a bare idea?

ESR answers:
I wouldn't. I think you're right; the successful projects have a core of individual vision around which the bazaar community nucleates.

elutfall asks*:
Since, as we all know, cheese is the most powerful substance in the universe, I was wondering what your favorite source of ultimate power is?

ESR answers:
That would have to be sex, because I'm allergic to cheese.

--

Next week: Bruce Sterling.

Bruce Perens wrote in to send us a link to an article he has written about Sun's StarOffice Release: Is It Really What You Think? It discusses the implications for Linux, and the fact that it technically isn't going to be released under a true Open Source license. Worth a read.

Bruce Perens wrote in to send us a link to an article he has written about Sun's StarOffice Release: Is It Really What You Think? It discusses the implications for Linux, and the fact that it technically isn't going to be released under a true Open Source license. Worth a read.

We sent a stack of questions to Bruce Perens earler this week, and here are the answers. But before you start reading what Bruce has to say and taking it as gospel, he has a reminder for you: "I have to make the disclaimer that I am not attempting to practice law. The advice I give is to help you formulate strategies for participatation in the free software community, you may still need to consult an attorney regarding how you implement those strategies."

-------------------------

From: Jason Hammerschmidt jasonh@cyberplex.com

Open Source Licensing, and the latest craze to go public (such as RedHat's IPO) sometimes have conflicting values. When public, you have to cater to your stock holders, this can easily conflict with the open source communities goals. Although you can build a business model around secondary and tertiary services such as support and manuals, etc. there will still be a conflict of interest at the center of it all. Most important, the philosophy and integrity of our community can be easily compromised and undermined by stock holders. The fact that our community has the same ability to acquire stock means little unless we own the majority of stock, and this is unlikely to happen. What, Bruce Perens, is your view on this subject? And how can we ensure the safety of our beliefs?

yes I know this is two questions :) and I also know this isn't a strictly licensing question, but it is very closely related.

Jason,

You'll notice that a some of the companies that are already participating in free software development have been public-stock companies for a long time: IBM, and Apple, for example. Yet, these companies found a way to participate in Open Source. In IBM's case, it's making something of research-derived products it might not have been able to continue in development or market otherwise. In Apple's case, they're attempting to keep up with Linux - truly a daunting task - by being open too. Also, they are trying to return benefit they've already gotten from the community, and they might be able to open some secondary markets in the future from ports of their free software. You'll notice that when we had a problem with Apple's and IBM's original licenses, we used publicity to influence them. Public-stock companies are very sensitive to publicity because their stock price can go up or down depending on what people are saying about them. If their strategy is one that will prevent them from getting effective participation from the community, that won't help their bottom line and the market will notice.

There is no conflict of interest here - it's a quid-pro-quo. If the participation of the community is not important enough, the company will exit the free software arena.

Every for-profit company that participates in free software development will have to find a balance between its own needs and those of the community if it is to participate at all. I have a scale that I use to describe free software participants that runs from benefactor to symbiote to parisite. I'd put Red Hat in the symbiote position right now, NASA is a benefactor, and the parisites know who they are :-). Parisites eventually lose because the community is too eager to help out their competition.

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from adamc@email.unc.edu

To what extent have the various "free" and not-so-free licenses been evaluated by people with serious legal expertise? I hear charges against, e.g. the GPL that it won't stand up in court, that it's too vague, and other things of that ilk. Has the FSF ever had a crackerack patent (or whatever area of the law is involved) go over their license with a fine-toothed comb?

Adam,

The GPL has actually had a good deal of evaluation. Richard Stallman has an MIT law professor who helps him, and there has been a law school thesis and some private analysis.There are definitely holes, but there's also evidence that it could be enforced. Ironicaly, the UCITA, a proposed U.S. "uniform state law" that poses us problems because places a ban on reverse-engineering, also has provisions that make the GPL and other free software licenses much eaiser to enforce.

One of the biggest problems with the GPL and all other free software licenses concerns the definition of a derived work. The definition of a derived work in copyright law is mostly concerned with print, film, and sound works, and was formulated before software came along. Thus, it doesn't say anything about how reference should be treated. For example, if you copy my function into your own program, it's a derived work. If you simply call my function without copying it, it's not a derived work according to U.S. copyright law, although you are having the exact same effect that you would if you'd copied the function. It's trivial to make any program a shared library or a callable object through object brokers like CORBA or COM, so you can easily circumvent license restrictions about derived works if you are considering copyright law alone. However, licenses are a combination of copyright law and contract law, and under contract law you can be restricted from performing certain activities that the software author might consider the creation of a derived work, activities that you would otherwise be permitted to do under copyright law. And of course, if you don't except the license, you have no right to use or copy the software at all. The problem is that the GPL doesn't really define what those activities are. That should change.

However, we don't generally have to go to court to enforce licenses, so they aren't getting tested for enforcibility in court, which is the only real test. Publicity is our primary enforcement tool, and it's surprising just how effective that has been so far.

I am soliciting attorneys to do pro bono work (donated work for the public good) to help address problems with licenses. There's a BOF about this at the LinuxWorld conference in August.

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from parkerd@tegris.com

Hi Bruce,

I recently started programming open source software for Windows (due to my unfamiliarity with Linux programming), and organized various OSS projects under the title of "Neon Goat Productions". However, I don't feel that I have a good grasp on the ideas behind some more advanced licensing techniques. First of all, if I release software under the GNU GPL, or other licenses, do I (as the sole owner of the copyright) have the option to change the license later on, either to another OSS license, or a closed source license? I don't intend on doing anything like this, but I definitely want to have the ability to control the future of my work. Also, if I release a project under the GPL, am I allowed to use portions of my GPL'd code in an independent, commercial program? I don't want to end up rewriting the same code for another job, just because the licenses aren't exactly the same. Finally, I am a bit unclear on releasing software under two licenses (for example, having the choice between either the GPL or the Artistic licenses). Since the Artistic license is less restrictive than the GPL, what would be the difference if the software was only released under the Artistic license instead of having an either/or clause?

Sincerely,

David Parker

David,

If you are the copyright holder of a program, you may issue that program under any number of licenses simultaneously. While you can't take the GPL back once you release a GPL-ed version, there is nothing that compels you to release later versions under the GPL. But this is all ignoring the issue of other people's contributions to your program.

The situation is much more complicated when other people contribute. They own the copyright to their modifications.

You can deal with this in several ways if you want to keep the option to distribute your work under a different license:

1. Simply don't use their contributions in your commercial product.

2. Insist that they sign the copyright of the modifications over to you before you before you will put any of their modifications in your main source thread. This is what FSF does, so that they have the option to revise the GPL later on without having to go to everybody who made a modification and ask their permission.

3. Use a license like the Netscape Public License that gives you the right to distribute contributed modifications under other licenses. Note, however, that the NPL only requires that for modifications to your files, and that if somone creates a separate file and links it in, they are not required to give you the right to distribute that file under other licenses. Of course you can write your own license that says something different.

Regarding the Artistic license, I'd suggest that you do dual-license with the GPL if you choose to use the Artistic, becuase that makes it absolutely clear that your work can be united with other work that is already under the GPL to make one product. I also don't like the language of the Artistic license. I discuss why near the end of my article on the OSD.

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from: Mike Moses" moses@pobox.com

Would it be rude, inconsiderate, or copyleft infringing for a group of midnight coders to gather together collectively and form a company with a name like 'Open Source Consultants' or some other derivative with 'Open Source' in the name?

Mike,

If you use the name Open Source in the title of an organization, that organization should use only software licenses that comply with the Open Source Definition, and not any "Open Source Definition", I mean the one that the Debian folks and I wrote and that we all know and love :-). I'd object to an "Open Source Magazine" that advertised non-Open-Source products, for example, simply because it would act to confuse people about what is Open Source and what isn't. That would be inconsiderate. It wouldn't be copyright-infringing because we're talking about a trademark, not a copyright. Also, the status of that trademark is rather iffy right now: it's still a trademark, but currently has no federal registration pending.

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from: John L Grantham grantha@hannover.sgh-net.de

I note that the companies that you say deserve praise for their efforts, Apple and IBM, are both hardware companies that in effect happen to produce software. In both cases, they make far more money from their hardware than they do software, so in effect they have less to lose by giving an open source license a shot, but have much to gain in the form of increased sales of hardware.

But what about companies that are primarily in software? How do you see them making money off of open source, when that is after all their main motive--earning cash? In other words, why buy an open source package when you can download or copy it for free? Finally, are there any large "traditional" software companies (ones from before open source became a buzzword) that you see making commendable moves like IBM and Apple? Best regards, John a.k.a. Ethelred

John,

Obviously, it's easy for companies that vend free software as an accessory to hardware to make money, because it's a lot easier to copy a disk than it is to copy a PC! Companies like VA Linux Systems come to mind.

If your business must primarily be software, not support, not anything else, you can't make everything free. This, for example, is the strategy of Sendmail Inc., which makes proprietary add-ons for the free sendmail mail delivery agent. Digital Creations, makers of the Zope web content management software, aren't quite a software pure-play: They give away their core software, and they sell services to customize that core to vertical markets for specific customers, newspapers for example. Some of that customization work may not make its way back into the free product. They have also announced some proprietary add-ons for Zope.

Yes, there is a large traditional software company making a commendable move. Unfortunately, I can't tell you who they are yet. It's not nice for me to pre-empt other people's announcements - I did that to Troll Tech once and they got (justifiably) very annoyed with me.

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from: Bill Gladen

With all of the companies that are coming up with Open Source Definition compliant licenses, it is getting difficult to keep track of what the various licenses actually contain. Is there any work being done on a template license that companies could just post a delta of?; For instance, if you had an Open Source Base License O, which contained clauses A-N, then companies could just draft their license which stated "This license modifies O in the following ways: remove clause B, replace clause C with clause C', and add clause T."

I am certainly encouraging new entries to use one of the existing licenses rather than complicate the situation with another incompatible license. However, when the choice is having them make their own license or not release the software under an Open-Source-Definition-compliant license at all, I'd obviously rather see them release the software.

We are still in the learning period where companies are figuring out how to meet their own needs while participate in free software while meeting their own needs at the same time. This is sort of winding down now, and in a year or so we'll be able to get together and draft some standard licenses. I'd prefer not to have companies release deltas to a license, becuase that isn't much better than having them make their own licenses if the delta gets big. I'd just want some check-boxes for license options that would all be qualified under the Open Source Definition.

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from: Corinna Cohn gemini@indy.net

Amiga, Inc. has recently anounced that they will use Linux as the kernel for their new operating system. They have said that they will make heavy modifications to the kernel. As far as I know, this is the first highly adultered distribution of Linux. Can you explain, of the changes they will make, what parts of the source code must be released back into the community?

Thank you,

Corinna Cohn

Unfortunately, I have not yet been contacted by Amiga, Inc., so I can't say for sure what they are doing. If they make modifications to the kernel in the form of modularized device drivers, they can probably keep those proprietary. I'd hate to see it, though. I'd prefer to see them contribute all of their modifications back to the community, and there is little reason for them not to, since they are selling hardware and their device drivers would probably not run on anything else. If they modify Linux in general, not just the device drivers, they are compelled to distribute the source for those modifications.

It would be silly for them to embrace Linux without the benefits of free software. That would be missing the point. I don't think they'd do anything that dumb.

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from D. Dale Gulledge ddg@americasm01.nt.com

One of the hot issues in open source development in general right now is the issue of licensing an open source project in such a way as to maintain a profitable niche for the company that created the product. The issue is a hot one for me because a former boss of mine approached me for suggestions on how to handle a project as open source within a corporate environment.

As an example, Troll Tech attempted to deal with the controversy over the non-free status of Qt with their QPL. My own interpretation of their solution and that of other companies is that they make their work free for use in other open source projects but not for commercial use. Much of the controversy has arisen from where the boundary is drawn, since there are several companies selling distributions of and support for open source software. Neither those companies nor a significant portion of the open source community wants to see a license that would prohibit them from offering distribution and support services.

My question is, what is the best model for an open source license to be used for software produced within a corporate environment? The problem is twofold. First, the license must be acceptable to the open source community or it is a failure both as an open source project and as a component of a business case. Second, there must be a business case for it.

-- Dale Gulledge, Sr. Developer, Nortel Networks
Also, the author of the Emacs Calendar/Diary Desk Calendar formatting code, team leader for the Esperanto translation team for the Free Translation Project, and host of the Linux Users' Group of Rochester.

I know both sides of the issue, but I don't yet have the answer.

Dale,

If I were doing it, I'd release my software under the GPL, and I'd also offer it under a commercial license. This part's a bit complicated: I'd insist that people who wanted their modifications to go into my main source thread must sign a separate and independent copyright for those modifications over to me, while they'd also maintain their own copyright. In other words, each party would own the modification and would have the right to do anything they wanted with that modification without consulting the other party. That way, I'd have the right to issue modifications under my commercial license, but I'd also commit to release all modifications that were submitted to me under the GPL. Becuase I'm using a split copyright rather than license terms to get the rights to the modifications, I'm not putting any odious terms on code that other people write. I'd continue to be an active maintainer and architect of the product so that people would want to submit their modifications to me.

In my opinion, this is the best of all worlds. The software is always available under the GPL. It's also available under a commercial license from which I can generate revenue. My original contribution continues to be a big enough part that it doesn't make sense for someone else to come out with a clone, but if I ever go out of business or lose interest in the program, someone else can make a commercial clone, writing out my contribution, and can get the modifications from their contributors under the same terms that I did. Until I do go out of business, there's not much reason for contributors to deal with anyone else.

Circumvention is an important principle in free software. I feel OK about Red Hat selling my software becuase I can always circumvent them and sell it myself. The circumvention provision here might make developers more willing to contribute to a commercial product.

Sorry if this is a bit deep. I'd be happy to discuss it in more detail.

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from: Larry_Harkrider@radian.com

What licensing issues apply to older software written by now-defunct companies? Is there a point at which such software enters the public domain?

Software eventually enters the public domain, but it takes so long that no computer that can execute it The situation with software from defunct companies is a sad one. Someone always owns it, because in the case of bankruptcy, there's always a creditor (generally more than one) who assumes the property of the bankrupt company. So, the situation is that your old license still applies but you probably can't get any service or upgrades or enforce your warranty, and you might not even be able to establish who owns the software without an expensive legal search. But you still can't give away copies of that software without infringing on someone's property rights, and that someone might come after you to enforce them.

Big customers have tried insisting that their vendors place the source code in escrow, so that the customer will have rights to that source code if the company goes out of business or declines to fulfill certain responsibilities like upgrades and warranty service. That works great if you wield enough power that your software vendor will negociate with you, for example if you are the only customer for a particular product or if you are paying a very large sum. It doesn't work for anyone else. It would be nice if there were laws about source-code escrow that protected the little guy. It would also be nice if the terms of copyrights didn't run so long and thus work did enter the public domain within one person's lifetime. Every 20 years, the international copyright convention meets and makes the copyright term 20 years longer. This is an abuse of the intent of the original copyright law, which was meant to exchange legal protection for your work for your releasing that work into the public domain eventually.

Hey, these were great questions! I enjoyed this, thanks!

Bruce Perens

Editor's note: Bruce Perens' latest venture is the Web site TECHNOCRAT.NET

Gryphon sent us a link to a Linux Power article on Open Source causing more harm than good. Talks about OSI, ESR, the recent proliferation of "Open Source" and more things that are also being discussed fairly passionately in the article on ESR wanting to retire that we posted earlier. Update: 03/29 11:45 by S : In other reactions to the ESR story, AbiSource's Eric Sink argues replacing ESR is the wrong goal, and Bruce Perens says we need speakers not leaders. Thanks to LT and rokhed.

Bruce Perens has written a response to Apple's Public Source License (APSL). The essay discusses reasons why the license does not consitute an open source license (ala the Debian Free Software Guidlines (DFSG) or the Open Source Definition (OSD)). The essay has been endorsed by the Debian Project Leader (Wichert Akkerman), and Ian Jackson, president of SPI. Many people, including myself, feel that one of the biggest threats to the free software community is almost-free software.

Ray Dassen writes "Bruce Perens has written " Is Your Software In Danger of Termination? ", a letter about the problem of termination clauses such as those in the licenses of Jikes and Secure Mailer. "

Ray Dassen writes "Bruce Perens has written " Is Your Software In Danger of Termination? ", a letter about the problem of termination clauses such as those in the licenses of Jikes and Secure Mailer. "