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Seminar On Details Of The GPL And Related Licenses
bkuhn writes "Given the recent confusion about LGPL on slashdot, and the concern it
raised for those convincing corporate legal departments to adopt to Free
Software, perhaps your readers might be interested in FSF's legal seminar on
the GPL and related licenses. The first one is in Silicon Valley, and
if it is successful, we hope to hold others in the next 8 months in New
York City and Tokyo." Since the FSF and the GNU project have long created and fought for software that's shareable, Free, and Not UNIX, what's taught at these seminars will probably differ sharply from what you can hear at next Monday's SCO conference call on the "IBM lawsuit, UNIX Ownership and Copyrights."
Why there's any confusion myself - it's pretty straightforward to me. OTOH, it's good to see the FSF giving their official explanations, maybe I'll learn something.
Could someone here tell me what's so hard to grasp about the GPL? or LGPL? Not trolling, just wondering. Maybe its just completely different world views or something. *shrugs*
C|N>K
If you think that is bad the FSF's Deluxe Software Distribution set costs $5000. Clearly the FSF really means it when they say that it is Free as in Freedom and not Free as in Free Beer. Cheapbytes probably sells the same package for $10 + s/h.
$500 is actually a ridiculously low price for what is offered in the seminar. Heck, the State Bar of California has approved this program for 7 hours of MCLE credit, for crying out loud.
Actually, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which monitors the scene and enforces the GPL, says a Mountain View company has been violating the GPL for more than a year. The foundation calls the violations serious and is threatening a lawsuit.
The specifics of the FSF's beef with OpenTV have to do with the company's policies in sending source code to licensees of OpenTV software tools created under the GPL. According to the foundation, OpenTV has either refused to provide the code, or has attached improper conditions on providing it, to several programmers who have every right to it.
OpenTV's intellectual property lawyer, Scott Doyle, says there's been missed communications on both sides but that the company has no intention of violating any legal agreements. He says the company plans to post the code in question online.
But if the FSF is right that OpenTV is violating the GPL, and if this behavior is found to be legal by the courts, the entire free-software and open-source movements could be derailed. Agreeing to share the improvements you make in the GPL-licensed software you've used is an essential part of the larger ecosystem.
Some people I respect say the GPL is a bad idea, period. They say it's too restrictive of programmers' rights, in the sense of forcing them to open what they've done to the world. Fine: If you don't like the GPL, don't create software from code that used it in the first place. Then put different licensing terms on what you've done.
But legal agreements are supposed to matter in our system. Just because the GPL turns the idea of intellectual property somewhat around doesn't make it less valid.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?