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KDE to RMS: That's Absurd.
A retierd War Corespondant writes "KDE has issued a formal response to RMS' latest editorial on KDE and GPLed QT. Favorite Quote: "This entire thing is just too absurd and we refuse to play this game." They also point to the listing of licenses and Authors within KDE." Update: 09/06 11:38 AM by H :Some of the authors have written as well.
When you violate a license agreement, you lose the rights to use the software. That's simply what happens. You can't use that software again until the author forgives you for it and allows you to use it.
So, why is RMS forgiving KDE when not one semicolen of FSF code is included in KDE? And why does he single out KDE when there have been other violators of the GPL throughout the years? Did Corel get forgiveness from RMS, Linus Torvalds, and yes, the KDE developers? Did GNOME get forgiveness from KDE when they inadvertantly misappropriated their code?
The problem is not so much that RMS grants some sort of legal forgiveness, but rather that he singles out KDE and KDE alone as needing to be forgiven.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You're right, of course, and the reasons why RMS does not compromise where the GPL are concerned are very valid ones. But, and this is a problem where RMS is concerned, revolutions are as much about co-existing with your fellow revolutionaries as they are advancing your ideology.
RMS is a really smart and dedicated guy, but all I've ever seen from him are missives about what everyone should be doing. Even if he's right, he's going to piss people off to the extent where he will make people want to disagree with him on principle, no matter how correct he is.
His latest KDE article thing is a perfect example. TrollTech finally releases QT as GPLd software, and what does he do? Point out that all the old stuff is probably incompatible, and mention that because of that they've lost their right to redistribute their software unless they beg everyone for forgiveness.
That is an example of an unwillingness to compromise endangering his revolution... and if it should ever fail, he'd only have himself to blame for it.
He should write code less and study history more.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
And then, at some point, the intervening centuries come crashing down, with a resounding, "What the heck!?!" Did this guy really... no, I already know, he did really believe all this. He absolutely lived in this elaborate, invisible realm, which requires the most careful tread once you've made it your own.
RMS manages to evoke the same sort of response from his contemporaries; and small wonder, since his own moral realm seems absolutely personal, mostly crafted by his own hand. Suddenly, just when you least expect it, RMS feels it absolutely necessary to... forgive you.
Odd duck, but I like him. You can certainly tell why he was such a coder anyway... sitting down to the keyboard, he's just slipping from one abstraction to another.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
KDE and Qt jointly worked to remove even the last licensing problems had with the KDE project by putting Qt 2.2 under the GPL. RMS managed to dis that, again.
The KDE people have every right to be pissed, now. But their answer is one of the most mature reactions I have seen from an Open Source project. They even went through the pain to compile a detailed list of licenses and authors of their whole project for reference.
Thank you, KDE, for your grown up and professional respose to criticsm from a person who contributed an important meme to our community, but now behaves like a spoiled child.
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
Did anyone read the RMS article? I think it's a far cry from the ranting and raving everyone seems to think it is. It was well thought out, well organized, and a rather tame comment on the current state of KDE licensing issues from a man that knows far more about the subject than anyone else I know. He doesn't say KDE sucks, he doesn't say everyone should use GNOME, and he doesn't say KDE's future is doomed. He simply stated what he believes are the final loopholes in the a licensing scheme that has an admittedly shaky history (the KDE/QT/QPL/GPL thing). He lays out what few things still need to be done and forecasts a bright future for KDE when we can finally call KDE free in every sense of the word. He even goes so far as to declare the QT emulation project (can't remember it's name right now) as unneeded. That statement says volumes about his motives and views on this whole subject...
I laughed so hard I was afraid I was just going to lose it, right at that line. BWAHAHAHAHA.
First off, Bell Labs was one of a handful of facilities in the United States totally set up for pure research. Like XEROX Palo Alto Research Center, Bell Labs did research that went somewhere. For years, Bell Labs scientists generated an average of a patent a day. It was Bell Labs that brought high-fidelity playback into being, with its research into people preferences by using a pipe-organ swell box to go from full-frequency response to the tin-box sound popular with radios at the time. Indeed, like that sound study, much of the Bell Labs research didn't relate directly to telephones, although it was amazing how "unrelated research" did come back to help the telecommunications giant to provide better phone service.
Bell Labs didn't have a CLUE how to turn a profit through the post-divestiture 80s, and into the 90s as well. I couldn't be hired as an employee because I didn't have a PhD, but that didn't stop them from hiring me as a consultant to get some sanity into projects.
Look, the FCC had more to do with the Unix troubles than anything else. Or perhaps you haven't done your homework? Reading some of the Orders regarding Unix were, well, interesting. Here was the FCC, long before Computer I, talking about an operating system that was developed by a regulated monopoly working outside its boundery, and what was a Commission to do?
As for taking the hint, you have never seen RMS at his worst, have you? It's one reason I'm happy he doesn't come to a certain convention any more.
What law is it that gives you an obligation to enforce a license using the legal system? And there were legitimate breaches of the GPL (the KDE article admits a few instances of such). However, AFAIK no FSF software was involved, so RMS and the FSF couldn't do very much about it, except complain.
In fact, in all the cases so far where someone has used GPL code in violation of the license have been solved outside the court system. Examples are the Next Objective C compiler (based on gcc) and ncftp (used readline), both of which were released under the GPL (though NcFTP seems to be Artistic License now, and no longer uses readline).
I think what you're missing are such very stark things as:
RMS: Misusing a GPL-covered program permanently forfeits the right to distribute the code at all...Also, where code was copied from other GPL-covered programs, their copyright holders need to be asked for forgiveness.
MISUSING a program PERMANENTLY FORFEITS the RIGHT... ASK FOR FORGIVENESS!
As others are saying in these comments, other projects seem to have gotten off easy with their violations. A license change and all was well. Now, Troll Tech and KDE have bent over BACKWARD through compromise with a commercial product to finally give in and reach GPL licensing, AND ITS STILL NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Unlike other projects and entities violating the GPL, this group has PERMANENTLY FORFEITED their RIGHTS until they ask for FORGIVENESS from EACH and EVERY copyright holder whose rights they have trod upon.
I'm sorry... but this really seems to be singling out the KDE people, and I think that, in this case, whether FORGIVE is being used in a legal sense or no, there are definite moralistic/political intentions behind it. Remember, FSF is not just about Open Source. It's a moral/political movement, and thus all pronouncements from it will echo that nature.
The world at large (though maybe not Sun or MS)
likes those pissing matches. They are a sign
that noone has total control. Why do you think
big corporations like IBM are trying to
contribute to Linux? That's right, because it
will not be controlled by someone else.
The fact that people argue about licensing
shows that the community has checks and balances
and that fanatical RMS/ESR/your favorite loony
followers will all balance each other out.
Checks and balances is a powerful attraction
for a business.
Side note: debate is not same as flame war.
The RMS vs. KDE smells like a flame war in
disguise, but both sides were quite constructive
despite the tone - RMS forgave past license
violations and KDE provided a method for license
issues resolution via e-mail.
As a laywer without the described credentials, I'll second werdna. This does not take specialized knowledge in copyright law to see Stallman's behavior as petty and hypertechnical.
For that matter, it doesn't even require legal training--note the description of how KDE has been singled out as needing forgiveness, whereas past alleged violations have not seen such treatment.
hawk, esq., not giving legal advice
Meaningless devisive and unendling flamewars are not. Why can't slashdot show a little restraint and try to rise just a little bit above the level of toilet stall door graphitti? This "article" is complete gibberish and belongs nowhere on a website that proclaims itself to be a news source. Please either spin off the "Slashdot Rumour Mill and Flamewar" site, or show that you know a little bit about journalistic integrity.
got drum'n'bass?
http://mp3.com/vitriolix
Kimp was never distributed. As such it was never in violation of the GPL or the wishes of the Gimp developers.
The GPL allows you unlimited rights to curupt GPLed code as long as the results stay internal.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
XXX is licensed under the BSD-style license below. This license is retroactively applicable to previous versions which were released under the GNU General Public License. My goal in releasing free software is to contribute to the free flow of code between projects. I have come to realize that I should use a license with the same goal, rather than one designed to create encumbrances, uncertainty and hostility.
I originally chose the GPL because I wanted to reserve my code for other free projects. But at this point, I'd rather see it wind up it Windows than have it make life difficult for free developers who want to make use of it. I don't claim to be a significant part of the free software world, but I want my corner of it to work the way I want it to.
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What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It's that sort of fuzzy logic that got KDE into trouble in the first place. Like it or not the licensing of open source software is a big issue, and it will only become more important as open source software becomes more prevalent.
Right now we are still under the radar of the IP lawyers, but it won't be long before the GPL gets its day in court. RMS is simply trying to do all he can to make sure that the GPL wins when it gets to the big dance.
The GPL is probably RMS's greatest hack. It is quite literally a hack of epic proportions, and so you can't hardly blame the guy for wanting to protect it. Just because you think that the subject is boring and nitpicky does not mean that RMS isn't spot on. IP law is like coding GUIs in assembler on a machine that changes its instruction set every 4 months. It makes little sense, and is full of seeming contradictions and picky nits. Unfortunately, when it comes to the law, the nits matter.
He isn't asking KDE developers to beg him : he's unconditionally stated that all the FSF-owned stuff is OK to use - i.e. he's given the 'forgiveness' without KDE even asking.
By requesting that KDE ask for similar statements from all the other contributors he's ensuring that this flame war is dead, with a stake through the heart : noone can come back and accuse them later of misusing some GPL'd code.
I agree. I think this whole KDE/GNOME flamewar does not contribute anything to evolve X11 desktops for the Unix community and only succeeds in dividing two excellent and innovative groups of developers. I'm sick of hearing this crap, if you want to use GPLed stuff, do so, if you want to use commercial stuff, do so. Just relax people.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Can't anybody do anything without violating either a) The DMCA
b) The GPL
c) IP Laws
Sheesh. I'm going back to law school.
:wq
Hi, For the sake of completeness, a Point Of View from the other side. What RMS says, is that if you violate the GPL, you loose the rights to use the software with which you did this. This would legally mean, that anyone who has used KDE, may not use it anymore. This is a technical problem, which RMS tries to solve. OK, the problem is absurd -- but it is a valid problem! So why do I say "KDE is arrogant"? Well, first, to get you to read this post, of course ;-) But second, for this:
- Qt was non-free. KDE said: no problem.
- Qt got free. KDE said: nice, now we can solve the problem that we DIDN'T HAVE in the first place.
- Linking GPL'ed code to Qt remained a problem. KDE said: no problem.
- Qt got GPL. KDE said: nice, now we can solve the other NON-EXISTING problem.
While during this COMPLETE period of time, all that was needed from the KDE side (and NOT from the Troll Tech side), was a note from the developers of KDE, stating that you MAY link this software with QT.
Which the lazy buts never wanted to write, because they claimed that there WAS no such problem. Instead, Troll Tech had to resolve the problem. Hey, they're not responsible for this at all! All they make is a toolkit, that is being "abused" by KDE!
And now, KDE goes on by saying that there is no problem, except for a few problems of the past that never existed anyway, but have been solved nevertheless. With the same arrogance, they claim that GNOME was set up to be anti-KDE and nothing more.... Geesh, sometimes it seems that KDE is being developed in a country where the word for "Legalities" is the same as that for "toilet paper"...
Heck, so what if I lose my karma in exchange for some truth...
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
I agree that the need for a legal "forgiveness" for distributing GPL'ed code linked with Qt is absurd. But is it the law that is absurd, or RMS interpretation of the law?
Probably a bit of both, I can't see any logic flaws in RMS's interpretation, but he has always been much more strict in following copyright law to the letter than just about everyone else, where other people ignore problems that would never occur in practice.
Sometimes this pays off, like when he insisted that the GNU project developed its own patent free compression program (gzip), while just about everyone else was satisfied with using compress and LZW, and trusted the vague statements from Unisys that they would never enforce their patent on software only systems.
What is wrong to do is to take this as an insult to KDE. Being paranoid about copyright law is a fundamental part of RMS's nature.
Now it's been argued that his last editorial is absurd. Here's what I have to say: RMS has probably a lot more legal background than most people at KDE and on Slashdot (including me). Unless you are a lawyer specialized in Copyrights, just shut up and give him a break!
As a lawyer with the credentials you describe, I'm here to state that the previous postings, criticizing RMS remarks as hypertechnical and petty, were fair accounts. RMS response clearly sets forth more of a personal preference for Gnome than a legal argument in opposition to the use of KDE/Qt.
This was no subtle legal defense of GPL, and to the extent it was, it was more than adequately answered by the KDE author's response. It requires no subtle expertise in computer law to understand these arguments -- pettiness is as pettiness does.
OK, some may find that RMS is a bit zealous about licenses... but how much do YOU know about all the legal stuff involved in mixing licenses? I say he's taking the right approch: to be paranoid with the GPL. How many scream when a vendor ships a (free as in beer) modified version of Linux with its hardware? If the "OSS community" (I'm assuming it's a united organization, though I know it is not) is to stand up against GPL violations, it should first make sure that it doesn't violate the GPL itself in any way. That includes the KDE/Qt stuff.
Now it's been argued that his last editorial is absurd. Here's what I have to say: RMS has probably a lot more legal background than most people at KDE and on Slashdot (including me). Unless you are a lawyer specialized in Copyrights, just shut up and give him a break!
He's been trying to defend Free Software (for better or worse) for much longer that anyone else and he's trying to prevent bad things from happenning not in the short (1-2 years) term, but the long (10-15 years) term.
At last, remember (and this is not RMS-specific) that if it was only about KDE developpers (ie no one else complaining), Qt probably wouldn't even have been released with the QPL (much less the GPL) and that would have been real bad. I know that the KDE developpers just want to code and don't want to bother with licensing issues, but some things have to be done. Since the KDE people didn't bother clearing up the Qt licensing issue, people from the outside took care of that, with the results (wars) we know.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I never thought I would be saying this about a guy who wrote emacs, for crying out loud --maybe I did; I use vi :-)...-- but RMS needs to grow up.
:-)? why can Larry Wall command respect even by people who don't like Perl? I believe the reason is that those guys are sociable, gracious guys who can obviously both inspire people and manage a large project succesfully.
I've asked this before: why the leaders of other, more succesful OSS projects than anything FSF has thrown together have managed to pump out great code without alienating more than half of the community? Why isn't Linus despised by a good chunk of developers (even BSDers
Would you like Linus as your boss? Larry Wall as your supervisor? Brian Behendorf as your team leader? Now, would you like RMS as your co-worker?
RMS comments on "forgivness" struck me more as a LEGAL statement than a MORAL statement. Trolltech is releasing QT/Free Edition under the GPL making it perfectly legal to link any other GPLed code to it. If FSF copyrighted code is linked to this QT then all will be well. I believe that RMS was trying to say any past linking of FSF (NOT GPLed code in general...just the stuff owned by the FSF so put down yer flamethrower 'kay?) owned code will not be pursued as long as the GPLed QT is used for this purpose in the future.
A new QT release being GPLed does NOT resolve past legal ambiguities if FSF code was linked against "old" QT. RMS' "forgiveness" removes another set of legal ambiguities. He was responding to TrollTech's actions in kind. I'll grant that his way of doing it was a little abrasive but isn't the act more important than the way he said it?
After reading some of the comments and the article posters blurb, I clicked the link expecting vitriol and flame but all I see is reasonableness and calmness on the part of the KDE developers.
All they've said is that RMS claims that before KDE can switch the license on the code, all copyright holders need to explicitly approve it ("grant forgiveness"). KDE claims that most have (since they are KDE developers) except for two modules that weren't written specifically for KDE but can be rewritten if need be to make sure all of KDE is compatible.
Heck, they even list modules and email addresses of developers so they can be contacted to make sure that they actually OK the license switch and thus noone's copyright is being violated.
All in all, reasoned and mature reactions. Kudos to KDE.
(-1 Troll)
Seriously, /. is "shiny things for geeks". I think the story approval process is:
/. worth reading, and the community that creates the discussion. The articles are just decoys that happen to call the right kind of people here.
1) read submission, if not immediately compelled to follow the link, toss it out
2) follow link, if link is obviously not as described by submission on first glance, toss it out
3) post submission to front page, don't stop to check trivial details like facts or spelling
4) read the linked article
Journalistic integrity doesn't even come into it. It is not only amateur, but lazy. If it sounds really cool (to someone who has top-level posting privileges), it goes up. It's that simple, and, yes, that stupid.
It sorta works, too. Since it's interesting, and there's a discussion forum, all the relevant facts get posted and modded up by the readers. Really, the articles aren't what we're here for. Each article is just the topic of the hour. It's the discussion that makes
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RMS just wanted to make sure it was done right. He is an expert, very much the expert on Open Source licenses, especially the GPL. No doubt he has studied the QPL vs GPL issues for hours on end. He knows what he's talking about, and he knows that something needs to be done. And it needs to be done now, before KDE goes off on its newfound completely-free-software high.
I don't think anyone on the outside knew that there was so little code in KDE that could actually cause a problem; I certainly would have thought more than just the two programs mentioned would have been affected.
It just doesn't make sense to ignore such small problems, trivial as they are. They can be solved with a quick email from the authors of the code. Might as well spend a week soliciting responses, and get it right this time. For sure.
And perhaps KDE is better off just releasing a "clean" version and then re-incorporating the old code back in. But it also doesn't show ANY respect to the programmers how made the code. Maybe they would actually like a say in how their work is being used.
----
I have a copy of the source of glibc-2.0.105 sitting on my hard drive. In inet/rexec.c (amongst other files) what do I see but a file under the BSD licence including the advertising clause. Clearly I have no rights to this code since it cannot be distributed under the GPL.
Thankfully, in 2.1, the advertising clause has been removed. But nonetheless, I expect a full apology from the FSF for breaking the terms of the original BSD licence and forgiveness from the Regents of the University of California so that I can be assured that I may use glibc2 without let or hinderance.
I await my apology.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
There is a danger in branding one person the "final and sole authority" in any revolution. And make no mistake, Free Software is a revolution.
Yes, RMS wrote the license. But if he remains the only authority on the interpretation of that license, then what does any other participant have? Basically, they have what RMS lets them have, and nothing more.
If Richard Stallman is not willing to let other people participate in his revolution -- as equals, not as subordinates -- then they'll go off and start their own. That's precisely what the XEmacs people did, and that's precisely what the KDE people did... and that's what Eric Raymond did. And that's what a lot of people are doing. They're going their own way because the Old Guard won't give an inch.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Okay, this is all a little out of control here. Does anyone actually read the articles? I followed both links then went and read the comments people have posted. I would have sworn that everyone else had read a couple of different stories. The comments people have given these two articles make it seem as though RMS and the KDE teams were flaming each other relentlessly. Instead the articles are very mild, and for the most part just restating facts
What is my take on the situation? I think it is spawned by a few posters who have never heard legal jargon. The term 'Forgive' is not used in a moralistic sense, but in a specific legal sense.
Get over it, RMS gave a nice little article which actually seemed to cheer on KDE for going GPL compatible. He listed a few minor issues that needed to be touched up on and went so far as to note that he, as the copyright holder for FSF code, was taking the first step in clearing the last of the hurdles of making KDE completely GPL compatible.
SO where exactly is the problem, is it that Richard Stallman cheers for Gnome? What the heck would you expect? Enough flames okay? The holy war is over, it was a tie.
Everyone is so quick to call stallman a looney because he is standing up for freedom. He is TRYING to protect all of our freedoms by being consistent in his views. We do not have the liberty to decide when its "ok" to break the GPL and when it is "not ok". It is never ok, that holds true even for other free software developers. Everyone would be up in arms if it was microsoft who wrote an "open source" GUI with proprietary widgets. What stallman said was perfectly reasonable given the circumstances. There have been a number of instances where a KDE app developer took GPL protected code and modified it to work with KDE/QT. Anyone remember KIMP (THE QT GIMP REPLACEMENT). It is PERFECTLY reasonable for stallman to ask developers (gimp developers for example) to forgive past violations by kde developers who broke the GPL (*example KIMP). *sigh*
-- You can be a geeklord too
Once upon a time, there was an operating system named Unix. A fine operating system by the standards of several there - not merely in technical value, but in fun value. For across the nation and indeed the world, many hackers were given leave to play with this Operating System, and have great fun with it. There was a bit of foreshadowed warning in that it was owned ultimately by AT&T's Bell Labs, but this was not noticed as they were docile.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Richard M. Stallman. He was not a famous man (not to the world at large, at least), nor was he a man of any combination of unique qualities. He was another hacker, another UNIX lover, another programmer enjoying the relative freedom in early Unix.
And then AT&T Bell Labs returned, took over Unix and claimed it all for their own, destroying the freedom that grew from this system and making many hackers unhappy.
So RMS went forth and formed the Free Software Foundation and started, with several friends, the GNU Operating System project. And much progress was made on it, and it was Good.
Now...
Once upon a time, there was an operating system named Linux. Started by a Helsinki hacker with a school project to finish, it became embraced by several hackers toying with what was slowly becoming the complete GNU OS. With the combination of the GNU OS tools (free for use by all except those who would try to take them permanently), the Linux Operating System began to take the world by fire. There was a bit of foreshadowed warning in that those GNU tools, and indeed the whole of Linux, were under Richard Stallman's GNU General Public Liscence, and thus subject to his whim and the whim of the Free Software Foundation, but this was ignored as RMS was a freedom fighter, and it was well known he would never take Linux away.
Or was it?
When Bell Labs was looked at, many disadvanatages were evident. Bell Labs is corporate-owned; it survives by putting profit first, and AT&T had a reputation for doing Bad Things with the consumer.
When we look at RMS, many disadvantages are evident. RMS is only human; he has backstabbed, grown arrogant (see Emacs vs. Xemacs), and the cynical would say that he has become convinced that the only way Freedom can be defended is if he alone does it.
Library GPL to "Lesser" GPL. "Don't use the BSD Liscence". Emacs vs. XEmacs. "GNU/Linux". "The X Consortium has betrayed us". "xxx is not compatible with the GPL, so it is bad". "Boycott Amazon".
"KDE is still in violation".
Are we, possibly, at all going to take the hint?
-Jo Hunter
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
without RMS or another hard liner who stuck to his guns and just plain simply refused to give an inch we'd not have all the wonderful choices we have today, we'd all be running Windows 95
(hrm)FreeBSD(cough)XFree86(blurgh)lcc(hrrump)
(I could go on, but I think that last one was a lung)
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