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FSF's Position On Proposed W3C "RF" Patent Policy
bkuhn writes "FSF released its
position on the proposed W3C 'RF' patent policy. W3C's proposed
policy is a step in the right direction (compared to RAND), but because of 'field of use' restrictions, it is in fact not a Free-Software-friendly
policy. The Free Software community is encouraged to say so in their
comments on the last call draft."
The FSF's position is important not because everyone is obligated to regard it as gospel and follow it blindly (although some do), or to regard it as heresy and blindly criticise it (although some do), but because in most (not all) cases, the FSF present a well-reasoned argument and raise an important issue.
I don't agree with them on the GNU/Linux thing (although even there, I respect their argument as well-reasoned, if you accept enough of their premises) but reading their position statements is always worthwhile, from my point of view. Even if I don't agree, it's good to challenge my views by exposing myself to well-reasoned opposing ones.
In this case, in particular, the FSF raised a very significant point and one which I, for one, hadn't noticed. I suspect that the chances of the outcome that the FSF hopes for are slim, since the community had to fight tooth and nail for the limited victory we already won, but it's very important to be aware of the limitations of the victory, and to continue to work towards eventually removing that limitation, even if it's not immediate. Without the FSF to point this out, we'd all be celebrating our "victory" and moving onto the next fight - the FSF remind us that there's still a battle here to continue fighting. That's a good thing, IMHO, whatever you think of the FSF.
Stuart.
You're the perfect example of the kind of person who blindly criticises anything they say, without actually reading it. This kind of crap barely deserves a response, but I'll give it one since it seems to be so common.
The FSF has nothing against capitalism; they practice it themselves, by selling CDs of GNU software. Sure, they don't hold it as an ideal above all others, and they treat it as answerable to their ethics: in other words, as a means to an end, but not the end in itself.
They're only opposed to a small subset of the current implementation of capitalism, and that subset is (not entirely coincidentally) the same part of what is commonly regarded as "capitalism" that many people hold as distinctly anti-capitalist: artificial monopolies created through copyright and patents. A "pure" capitalist would argue that these are wrong because they interfere with the free market; the FSF argues that they are wrong because they unethically prevent users from sharing.
"Information wants to be free", while perhaps originating from the Free Software community, has become the mantra of Napster/Kazaa users and I'm sure the FSF sees it as as much of a liability as I do. Perhaps "Information ought to be free"...
I could go on and on about the complete lack of basis in fact of your comment, but I don't have time. It's not like you actually have any interest in hearing an opposing viewpoint anyway, or perhaps you'd actually have read what they write, and know that you're spouting crap.
And they're shameless about it, too! If you want to donate some code to the FSF, they demand that you sign over the copyright on the code to them! We had some legacy software here (I work for Lockheed in Fort Worth, and we have a collection of Ada libraries that we don't use any more) that we wanted to donate to the FSF and they said that they wouldn't accept it unless we signed over the copyright to them!
They have good reasons for this policy. If you think this is only a theoretical concern, look up the early history of the development of GNU Emacs. RMS originally based GNU Emacs off code whose copyright had not been assigned to the FSF, but which he had been told he had permission to use by a contibuter to the original codebase. He was later forced to remove that code after being threatened by a company who had bought the copyright from another contributer (James Gosling) to that project.
This infomation can be found here. Do a search for "Gosling", to find the relevant part.
~Phillip
Yes, I care because the GNU GPL is the preeminent Free Software license. I care because the FSF is concerned with everyone's freedom to share and modify software, and that includes me. Their mission requires thorough analysis of the ethics and freedoms of Free Software, an analysis I think the FSF has done an excellent job of providing. This concern includes talking about patents that adversely affect those freedoms.
It's also possible people believe the FSF knows "what's what" because these people have considered the matter of Free Software seriously and reached a conclusion compatible with the FSF's position. The FSF has been around dutifully working on Free Software issues for so long many people have had the opportunity to learn what the FSF stands for.
Judging by the size of the Slashdot thread when the FSF published their GNU/Linux FAQ I'd say a lot of Slashdot readers paid attention--it was quite a popular discussion for Slashdot. I think it is fair to give credit where credit is due, and it is reasonable to draw fine distinctions in order to speak and understand things more clearly. I find calling the union of the GNU operating system and the Linux kernal "GNU/Linux" to be helpful to both of those ends. I also find the term helpful to instruct other people on why GNU is so important, and helpful to explain what Linus Torvalds contributed.
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