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Even if you're not eligible for joining their team as a lawyer (which isn't necessarily a given), you can still volunteer or at least network with them.

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/

Perhaps they could use some help?
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/

This is coming very shortly after the congressional hearing where Eben Moglen gave testimony among others (see C-SPAN at 1:37:52). He actually explained AdblockPlus to counter the argument that the advertisment industry would collapse if privacy in the Internet would be restored.

The Software Freedom Law Center provides legal advice to free software developers without charge. Since your program is distributed under the terms of the GPL, contact them to see if they can help you in any way.

You've not really read that page, have you? Let me quote some bits:

If You engage in the commercial distribution or importation of software derived from an open source project or if You make or use such software outside the scope of creating such software code, You do not benefit from this promise for such distribution or for these other activities.

Meaning, if you distribute, or are doing it for money, it doesn't apply to you.

This promise is not an assurance either (i) that any of the Microsoft-issued patent claims cover a Covered Implementation or are enforceable or (ii) that a Covered Implementation would not infringe on patents or other intellectual property rights of any third party. No other rights except those expressly stated in this promise shall be deemed granted, waived, or received by implication, exhaustion, estoppel, or otherwise.

This is to be expected of course, but MS has an easy way out: sell the patents and have somebody else enforce them.

Here's another opinion

How about distributing all of our social network and other currently centralized services ala: the Freedom Box idea?

Alternately, replacing your router with something powerful enough to also run a Tor node, as mentioned earlier in the comments, or an Asterix server, or all of that together, would be a nice use.

OK, I just read the transcript here: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2010/isoc-ny/FreedomInTheCloud-transcript.html

And I'm not saying I don't respect Eben Moglen, or what he says there. Sure, he lays out great ideas, ideas worth doing.

But he is still misguided. The war he is proposing to fight mainly with distributed home-based technology to ensure some privacy through encryption can't be won. As long as we have an economic system based mostly on greed (and also ignorance), everything he tries to do will fail, if only because, after he wins, greed will buy new laws from ignorant people and put him in jail, and then greed will go house to house and pull every one of those wall warts out, getting neighbors to turn in neighbors who have them ("If you see something, say something"), same as people with radios were turned in in various countries in WWII. See:
"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, But Then It Was Too Late"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

He should know that ISPs will be able to track down every one of those things in short order, if only by hiring a million people out of the 20 million or more unemployed in the USA to go house-by-house with blanket search warrants and portable packet sniffers looking for "unlicensed" equipment. And other countries will find the things even faster. So, his approach is, at best, a slightly delaying and confusing action. Greed and ignorance will win unless we directly address greed and ignorance (well, even addressing greed and ignorance indirectly and subtly may be OK, too. :-).

Do I have an alternative? Yes I do. As I outlined here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1746980&cid=33177866
where I wrote the following paragraph:

As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach)
http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/TIA/genoaII.php
to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete.

Now, might such a public intelligence system run well on a system of wall warts like he describes? It probably would. But it does not absolutely need them. So, while they may be useful, the conception of cooperative sensemaking and cooperative design of a better future is by far more important.

And here is a document I put together that decribes four heterodox economic alternati

For people who hate watching video as much as I do, here's a transcript: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2010/isoc-ny/FreedomInTheCloud-transcript.html

I cannot figure out why the headline says that the EFF won this case. This case was brought by the Software Freedom Conservancy, with the Software Freedom Law Center acting as the Conservancy's legal counsel. The EFF was not, nor has ever been to my knowledge, involved in anything to do with the GPL.

Also, winning the whole case is probably inaccurate. What's been achieved here is a permanent injunction and judgment against one of the violators. Thus, the case against Westinghouse has been won, but there are other defendants in the case as well.

— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy

> EFF Wins GPL Case Against Westinghouse
Give proper attiribution, please!
Neither SFLC http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
nor SFC http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/
are EFF, and as far as I can see, they have no relation to EFF.
So why is EFF in the title?

> EFF Wins GPL Case Against Westinghouse
Give proper attiribution, please!
Neither SFLC http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
nor SFC http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/
are EFF, and as far as I can see, they have no relation to EFF.
So why is EFF in the title?

The Software Freedom Law Center has a great response up. From SFLC chairman Eben Moglen: "The confusion and uncertainty behind today's ruling guarantees that the issues involved in Bilski v. Kappos will have to return to the Supreme Court after much money has been wasted and much innovation obstructed."

(I hope they'll be providing a deeper analysis later on; the above came out like ten minutes after the decision, so obviously it's just based on the summary of the decision.)

-Karl Fogel

If the firmware includes any software that is a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy (here's a list), which it almost certainly does because 99% of these devices include BusyBox, send mail to conservancy@softwarefreedom.org and tell them about the device. They will start the process of making sure the vendor is complying with the necessary requirements of the licenses.

This sort of question is exactly what the Software Freedom Law Center is for.

" I've been working on my own on a project that uses GPL-licensed libraries."
" since no written or verbal agreement was ever made to transfer copyright over to my employer, I question whether they can claim that they now own the extended version of the project.
assuming you licensed it under the GPLv3

No, you were not employed by them at the time and had licensed it under the GPL. When they hired you, no copyright is transfered. even if you did build on the software it was GPL and has to stay GPL which means you have copyright over the entire code, except for the libraries. while you transfer copyright to your employer on code you make during your employment, they have to agree to the GPL to modify it and thus the copyright goes back to you.

GPL Quote:
9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.

You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
-END-

basically, they can have copies, they can run it, but they can not modify it unless they agree. if they do not agree they may not modify it and use it or it breaks copyright. since they are modifying it they have agreed, so you should be allowed to release it as you wish.

BUT:
if he does give it to someone to work on it who is directly under the control of him and they do not give it out to some one, then it may not be a violation

GPL Quote: ... This License acknowledges your rights of fair use or other equivalent, as provided by copyright law.

You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you.
-END

I'm not in anyway close to a lawyer =p
so you may want to call the SFC and ask them about it
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/

Facebook would have to go bankrupt first. The government only buys bankrupt companies.

In his speech "Freedom in the cloud" Eben Moglen talks about how he wants to, and will bankrupt Facebook (for free of course). So that could be aranged soon (some of us hope).

A careful examination of Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers reveals that it has little value. The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built..Further, to qualify for the pledge, a developer must remain unpaid for her work. Experience has shown that many FOSS developers eventually expand their work into for-profit consulting. Others are hired by companies that allow or encourage Free Software development on company time. In either situation, Microsoft's patent pledge is voided for that developer..Even if the patent pledge were to have some use aside from these problems, our community simply could not rely on it, since Microsoft has explicitly reserved the right to change its terms at any time in the future. A developer relying on the pledge could wake up any day to find it revoked. She'd have to cease development on her non-commercial and (mostly) non-distributable modifications that were previously subject to the covenant.

I'm sure that as long as companies follow in Novell's footsteps they'll be fine.

Just from my recent memory:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/dec/14/busybox-gpl-lawsuit/

And there was a case won in Germany a few years ago IIRC, though the details escape me.

But that doesn't address whether another organization should have access to this data in the first place which is the heart of this issue. Hosting conveniences aside, the best counterargument to using any other hosted service will be close examination of the consequences of one's chosen hoster(s) (and whomever the hoster(s) deems worthy) having access to one's data. Eben Moglen's Talk on "Freedom in the Cloud" seems remarkably apropos here.

Really, although Android has Linux, among the Linux-based phone OSs, it is probably the most closed.

Yes and no. While I wouldn't have gotten anything but the n900, for precisely the fact that Maemo is more like a regular (gnu/)linux distro compared to Android and WebOS, I hear that for example Android is indeed as much open as far as licences on code goes.

I havern't listened yet, but the software freedom law show talks about mobile software freedom in a recent podcast: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2010/jan/19/0x1F/

Apparently they side with Android (but partly because there are more hardware vendors to choose from, I hear).

But *all* of those Android vendors don't give you root, it has to be hacked, which leaves it open to "tivoization" as you said, when inevitably some of the carriers or phone vendors take it away, even if just for a while. (And if they take it away, even if just for a while, this is practically as closed as the iPhone; where you have to jailbreak it to get any freedom on the device.) Keep in mind that open source has a purpose, at least according to the non-pragmatist wing of the free software movement. It's purpose, according to the FSF, is not merely the proliferation of friendly licenses; it's the ability to modify and use the hardware and software you bought the way you see fit. As such, WebOS is slightly more in spirit, and Maemo even more in spirit, of the meaning of open source than Android; in spite of Android having a larger percentage (none of these are 100% open source) of code with a nice license.

But, again. I prefer maemo 5 on the n900, because I want an open "linux distro" on my phone, not just an open "linux based newfangled mobile phone OS" (or whatchamacallit, I realize one might technically call Android or WebOS "distros", but you know what I mean).

It is nice, I do kind of like WebOS's interface, but I already have an older Nokia Internet Tablet anyway and besides, I'm enslaved to a CDMA carrier so it doesn't make sense for me to get an unlocked GSM phone. (Though I'm thinking of selling the N810, it's a bit redundant once you have a smartphone with a good browser.) Also, the N900 is a transitional device; when Mameo goes from GTK+ to Qt, it will become incompatible with all newer Maemo devices that will be released by Nokia. That made me a bit reluctant to get it as well, I've been stung already by Nokia's tendency to make their devices obsolete. (They do this with Symbian too, much to the consternation of Symbian phone developers who have to deal with a half dozen different incompatible versions.)

Really, although Android has Linux, among the Linux-based phone OSs, it is probably the most closed.

Yes and no. While I wouldn't have gotten anything but the n900, for precisely the fact that Maemo is more like a regular (gnu/)linux distro compared to Android and WebOS, I hear that for example Android is indeed as much open as far as licences on code goes.

I havern't listened yet, but the software freedom law show talks about mobile software freedom in a recent podcast: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2010/jan/19/0x1F/

Apparently they side with Android (but partly because there are more hardware vendors to choose from, I hear).

But, again. I prefer maemo 5 on the n900, because I want an open "linux distro" on my phone, not just an open "linux based newfangled mobile phone OS" (or whatchamacallit, I realize one might technically call Android or WebOS "distros", but you know what I mean).

Although the kernel-dev for Atheros said that they don't have firmwares in that sense, see the lastes Software Freedom Law Show at http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ for refernence. So it is actually 100% Free Software.

Richard Stallman has clarified that he believes the GPL is necessary and sufficient protection for MySQL, in direct contradiction to Widenius' call that the license should be changed and copyrights rest in some entity other than Oracle.

Stallman: One thing that makes no sense at all is the idea of changing the license of MySQL to something non-copyleft. That would eliminate the possibility of selling exceptions, but allow all sorts of proprietary modified versions. Wherever MySQL should go, it isn't there.

Eben Moglen and the Software Freedom Law Center defend the GPL even more strongly:

"The GPL was designed specifically to ensure the permanent freedom of software, and the ability of everyone to improve and share their improvements to the program, no matter who acquires the copyrights to the code," Moglen said of the argument he presented to the Commission. "The whole point of GPL as a copyright license is to deal with every contingency that could result in hobbling or destroying the freedom of code shared under it. The drafters of GPL versions 2 and 3 considered scenarios very similar to the ones that the Commission is concerned about now. The design of the license, and the experience we have had using it, show that it can be counted upon to operate as intended in situations like this one."

Programs released under the GPL, including Linux, Samba, and the GNU Compiler Collection, have continually proven to be resistant to anti-competitive conduct in the marketplace. "GPL’d programs competing effectively against offerings of the richest and most powerful monopoly in the history of information technology have resisted the efforts of the monopolist to find a chink in its armor," Moglen writes.

Western Digital Techonologies Inc. is listed as one of the defendants.
Here's the pdf:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2009/busybox-complaint-2009-12-14.pdf

A good source of background info for this case is provided in epside 1 of the Software Freedom Law Center's podcast http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2008/nov/25/0x01/ It puts the case in perspective as to what software patents would be thrown-out under even the most optimistic Bilski rulings (ie: not ending all software patents, as we'd like to see).

It's all moot anyhow: the Software Freedom Law Center never replied to my
  request about the software patent thing. I suppose they still might; it's
  only been a few days, but for some reason, I fully expect to never hear from
  them.

Other people have covered other points, so I'm just going to talk about the SFLC. It sounds like you haven't communicated with them before, so please cut them some slack. Just yesterday Bradley Kuhn dented:

FLOSS ppls: !sflc is a charity w/ limited resources. It can take up to a week for us to answer general contact email. Pls give us a break!

The Microsoft Community Promise is not good enough. See this legal analysis for details:

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html

Microsoft lawyers are good enough to produce a better document than this, they just chose not to. See this document:

http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.html

for a better agreement and an analysis on why all the terms in it are needed (especially the "Patents" section).

Jeremy.

they claimed that it never was released under the LGPL. They tried some silly technicality where they said it was only released under the LGPL under some other terms. The LGPL itself clearly says any added terms can be removed, but they insisted it couldn't.

As you point out, the LGPL 2.1 (to pick an older version of the LGPL) states:

You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

Wikipedia's blurb on the licensing problem states:

the authors claimed Ext was available under an LGPL license as long as you "plan to use Ext in a personal, educational or non-profit manner" or "in an open source project that precludes using non-open source software" or "are using Ext in a commercial application that is not a software development library or toolkit".

Obviously, not everyone believes that this stance is legally defensible. As you state,

I strongly believe they are wrong about the "never being under LGPL" thing, but we weren't going to be wasting time dealing with lawyers and fighting them.

Next time, toss the question over to the Software Freedom Law Center. Even if you personally don't want to go forward with the issue, I feel like the SFLC is great at trying to resolve questions like this so that developers can just write code and leave the legal issues for the lawyers. They're really gung-ho about dealing with license violators and are dedicated to helping clear up licensing issues.

they claimed that it never was released under the LGPL. They tried some silly technicality where they said it was only released under the LGPL under some other terms. The LGPL itself clearly says any added terms can be removed, but they insisted it couldn't.

As you point out, the LGPL 2.1 (to pick an older version of the LGPL) states:

You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

Wikipedia's blurb on the licensing problem states:

the authors claimed Ext was available under an LGPL license as long as you "plan to use Ext in a personal, educational or non-profit manner" or "in an open source project that precludes using non-open source software" or "are using Ext in a commercial application that is not a software development library or toolkit".

Obviously, not everyone believes that this stance is legally defensible. As you state,

I strongly believe they are wrong about the "never being under LGPL" thing, but we weren't going to be wasting time dealing with lawyers and fighting them.

Next time, toss the question over to the Software Freedom Law Center. Even if you personally don't want to go forward with the issue, I feel like the SFLC is great at trying to resolve questions like this so that developers can just write code and leave the legal issues for the lawyers. They're really gung-ho about dealing with license violators and are dedicated to helping clear up licensing issues.

Reading the SLFC blog post in question, it doesn't say that Microsoft violated the GPL. All it says is that according to Steve Hemminger Microsoft violated the GPL, which of course had already been reported on Slashdot.

In other words, this isn't news.

And then there is also the Software Freedom Law Center, http://www.softwarefreedom.org/

Founded in 2005 to "provide legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)."

Fifty comments in this thread and no one has mentioned the Software Freedom Law Center? Amateurs!

The lead developer for FlashGot needs to contact the SFLC. Right. Now. The SFLC has lawyers on staff who eat companies like this for breakfast. Or at least, you know, they'll give them a very stern talking-to.

He shouldn't contact the supposed violators (that could cause legal murkiness), he should not go fishing around for evidence of the violation (again, more lawyerly problems), he should not pass Go, and in no way shape or form should he try to collect $200 from anyone.

Once he talks to the lawyers then he'll know what steps he should take to document the violation and then to approach the violators. By putting his ducks in a row first and by communicating with a lawyer, he'll have a much easier time approaching the Sothink company and getting the violation resolved.

Pro tip: The last time I emailed the SFLC it took 13 days for them to respond, so in order to get the ball rolling on resolving this problem I'd suggest picking up the phone and calling them.

"I really don't agree with that sentiment. I mean, there have been a few recent cases (BusyBox) where the company is making money off of it but I don't think SoThink is making a ton of cash off of their plugin."

BusyBox ??? You mean the GPL'd small footprint re-write of various UNIX/Linux utilities for use in embedded systems that is now, and has always been GPL'd? The same company that has successfully sued numerous companies for GPL violation, and was the first to bring one in a US court? I think you are confused.

I think the fundamental problem is that FLOSS community needs diversity and cannot be tied to a single for-profit entity. For a project to succeed with a healthy community, it needs individual developers or a non-profit entity (run by developers) to control it. I've written a blog post about this specific issue in response to Monty's linked in the main article.

*sigh* I see that you're all over the alterslashed comment threads.

So, lemmy counter with this:
The SFLC is on the case. There's nothing to be concerned about.
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/mar/30/settled-not-over-yet/

Today's settlement between Microsoft and TomTom ends one phase of the community's response to Microsoft patent aggression, and begins another. On the basis of the information we have, we have no reason to believe that TomTom's settlement agreement with Microsoft violates the license on the kernel, Linux, or any other free software used in its products. The settlement neither implies that Microsoft patents are valid nor that TomTom's products were or are infringing.

The FAT filesystem patents on which Microsoft sued are now and have always been invalid patents in our professional opinion. SFLC remains committed to protecting the interests of our clients and the community. We will act forcefully to protect all users and developers of free software against further intimidation or interference from these patents.

SFLC, working with the Open Invention Network and the Linux Foundation, is pleased to participate in a coordinated, carefully graduated response on behalf of all the community's members to ongoing anti-competitive Microsoft conduct. We believe in strength through unity, and we think our community's unity in the face of these threats has helped to bring about Microsoft's quick settlement on all issues with TomTom.

We in the non-profit licensing sector of the FLOSS world have a duty to the community of FLOSS users and programmers to defend their software freedom. I try to make every decision, on licensing policy (or, indeed, any issue) with that goal in mind.

Of course CC doesn't do software licenses and some of its licenses are only semi-free by the standards of free as in (software) freedom as applied to culture, but the overall lesson of the responsibility of license stewards applies.

I've been meaning to test out Go-oo, which is purportedly faster.

Go-OO is the slowest of all based on these benchmarks from the same site as in the OP.

One thing to keep in mind is that Go-OO is the Novell version of OpenOffice.org and what with the patent threat due to their Microsoft agreement (best explanation of this threat is here) you should be careful not to tie yourself to one particular office suite through proprietary formats. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) the ODF format is like HTML and you can reference and include proprietary files in it.

First and foremost, like all the other posts here, I'll tell you that you should not pursue legal advice from blogs like Slashdot. Even if people here claim to be lawyers, they likely are not, and even if they actually are, you are NOT being given legal advice (in the best case, you're getting their hasty first impressions).

Second: Such ownership rights are usually solidified upon employment by means of signing some kind of contract that agrees on who will own what. Without that, there may still be precedents for one way or another, but there may be enough ambiguity to work out a compromise that is favorable to all involved parties.

Offer to give them the copyright in exchange for an "non-exclusive infinite license" (that is not a legal term), effectively entitling you to use it outside the courtroom as if you had copyright, so you could sell licenses, GPL it, etc. If that's too strong (or more than you want), ask for a GPL, AGPL, or LGPL (the first two preserve the profitability of the copyright, since closed-source software is considerably more salable). They still get to use it however they like as the copyright holders, and your Free Software use probably won't get in their way anyway. If you think they'd be game for it, start the haggling in the other direction -- offer them the infinite license. If they take that, you'll probably have to include some kind of clause covering what happens if legal action is needed to protect it, as the copyright holder is the only party that can act on that (which is why the FSF requires copyright attribution for all GNU projects).

If you want FREE legal advice, you may be able to ask the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) for it at http://www.softwarefreedom.org/

Stories that are told that are retold become our culture. If the stories are owned and cannot be retold they might be lucrative, but they can't become culture. Copyright is the theft of culture from the future. Copyright must be abolished because as implemented it prevents the fair use of works long in the public domain.

This is a good place to thank Larry for keeping up the good fight. God Bless you Larry, I hope you win and I'm glad to continue to donate to your cause.

Stories that are told that are retold become our culture. If the stories are owned and cannot be retold they might be lucrative, but they can't become culture. Copyright is the theft of culture from the future. Copyright must be abolished because as implemented it prevents the fair use of works long in the public domain.

This is a good place to thank Larry for keeping up the good fight. God Bless you Larry, I hope you win and I'm glad to continue to donate to your cause.

The OSP is incompatible with open source software

Rather, GPL is incompatible with anything else that can't be re-licensed as GPL... May first we clear that mess, right ?

Please, let's.

First and foremost: only the original author or copyright holder may re-license any copyrighted work. Period. Including software under licenses like BSD in GPL copyrighted works does not re-license the BSD code. The BSD licensed code remains under the BSD license; it continues to allow re-use under the BSD terms.

Because confusion on this issue has been fairly common, the Software Freedom Law Center published a paper on the subject after the Linux ath5k debacle.

Rather, GPL is incompatible with anything else that can't be re-licensed as GPL... May first we clear that mess, right ?

Please, let's.

First and foremost: only the original author or copyright holder may re-license any copyrighted work. Period. Including software under licenses like BSD in GPL copyrighted works does not re-license the BSD code. The BSD licensed code remains under the BSD license; it continues to allow re-use under the BSD terms.

Because confusion on this issue has been fairly common, the Software Freedom Law Center published a paper on the subject after the Linux ath5k debacle.

The GP is correct, a self employed individual (contractor, home based business, etc) does have to show a good faith attempt at making a profit. Writing off loses in three consecutive years is one of the good faith tests, though that alone doesn't prove you're not making an attempt. Corporations have entirely different tax rules.
A FOSS project that's considered a hobby and one that's considered a charity differ by the tax status of the organization running it. Out of pocket costs for a legally recognized non-profit are potentially tax deductible. Otherwise it's probably just a hobby in the eyes of the IRS.

I hoped that I kept the article summary relatively free of my personal opinion, which I will indulge in this comment:

Thomson Reuters has too many asshats.

Let us set aside the fact that academic software and those who develop academic software should embrace interoperability and knowledge sharing.

I'll even set aside that, despite the (rewritten) title, Zotero has many fundamental differences from EndNote.

The complaint is, in the words of Bruce D'Arcus, "a nuisance lawsuit designed to intimidate." Zotero's style repository contains no EndNote .ens styles and seems to contain no styles derived from those styles. CSL styles are created manually and through an online style creator. There is no way to get a new CSL style from an .ens file--the Zotero beta had mapped fields internally to allow .ens files to be used independently of CSL (but even this feature has been disabled in the trunk). Zotero thought about copyright issues surrounding this feature and came to the right decision--not to distribute .ens files or .csl files derived from .ens files, but to retain the feature to work with user-provided .ens files (similar to the way OpenOffice.org can open and save MS Office files).

I have decided not to purchase EndNote and I am asking my employer to do the same, unless the suit is dropped. I intend to donate at least as much as an EndNote license costs to George Mason University, the Software Freedom Law Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation or any other applicable entity that both defends Zotero in this case and solicits donations. (I don't know any organization who has stepped in on this case yet, but I imagine that one of these organizations can provide some sort of legal support in the future.)

I encourage you to stop purchasing Thomson products too. There are plenty of reference managers for all platforms (some proprietary, some free/open source) that you can choose instead, not the least of which is Zotero.

Disclaimer: I am a developer of refbase, a free and open source reference manager that might be seen to compete with Thomson Reuters's EndNoteWeb. I have and continue to use many reference managers. While I have many technical complaints about the EndNote products, they aren't the worst technical products. Thomson may be the worst socially, though--in addition to inane and baseless lawsuits, they are very slow to respond to general feedback.

This post at the Software Freedom Law Center implies strongly the opposite is true: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/foss-primer.html#x1-190003

Individual Liability

Developers working alone, apart from any corporate form, are not shielded from personal liability for project-related activities. If a developer takes donations or otherwise receives money for working on a solo project, the developer must report that compensation as personal income and pay income taxes on it. Likewise, all legal liability to third parties will fall to the developer. For example, the developer may be liable to users for breach of any express warranties made regarding the software, or any implied warranties that are not effectively disclaimed.

Wow, GPL by itself is as complicated and hard to explain as all other licenses put together?

Where did you get that idea?

Look, think about it as a positive. Lots of people are testing the same UI on different platforms so any bugs found on Linux will be fixed in Windows too. Also users can move between operating systems without having a radically different interface.

Strategically KOffice matters to the Office File Format debate... OpenDocument (ODF) vs Microsofts OOXML.

Healthy competition in standards is needed like it is in the browser market. KOffice uses ODF (of course it couldn't use OOXML without reverse-engineering) and by being the second most popular implementation it helps keep OpenOffice.org honest (not that there's any sign that they're not honest). When MSOffice support ODF then KOffice will be more important still -- it will help evaluate ODF compliance and interoperability.

Microsoft Office earns them 10 billion and a part of that is coming out of your country's economy -- competition in the form of KOffice is very good indeed. It's particularly good that they're embracing Windows -- it worked for Firefox.

It is important to note that open source developers, whether commercial or non-commercial, will not need a patent license for the development of implementations of these protocols or for the non-commercial distribution of these implementations, according to Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Open Source Developers.

Remember folks that this is Microsofts own description and that the GPL experts have said that Microsoft's OSP (Open Specification Promise) is incompatible with Open Source licenses. The SFLC also say that it would even comply with BSD-style licenses.

And please -- this is a legal matter to do with the wording of the Microsoft pledge, so lets not hear slashdot legal advice -- lets link to actual legal opinion if anyone wants to debate this.

Oh and the Sun license pledge for ODF is compatible with GPL according to the people who helped design GPL