The FSF, Linux's Hit Men

PrimeNumber writes "Forbes has this story about the Free Software Foundation and its quest for Cisco and Broadcom to release the source of GPL'ed linux source used in routers. Forewarning: The open source community is not portrayed in positive light so you might want to skip reading this. However it did help me gain insight into software from a PHB and suit perspective."

Comments

My Letter to the Forbes Editors

[Featureless]

I am surprised and saddened to see what appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the GPL in Forbes.

I am a technology expert with development and management experience, who has used and overseen the use of GPL software in a variety of very large, very recognizable organizations.

If you choose to use GPL software, the rule is simple and straightforward. You are choosing to take some work for free. The authors gave it away. All they ask is that you, too, give it away.

The GPL is the legal manifestation of the idea that it is wrong to take free work and sell it.

If you read some GPL'd work, and then threw it away and wrote something of your own, having taken nothing, you would owe nothing. But if you take this particular work, you must respect the wishes of those who gave it, and add to their collective efforts in the same way.

The popularity of the GPL is such now that many organizations begin to feel threatend by it. In some few cases, a response to this perceived threat has been a remarkably crafted item of disinformation: that the GPL is "viral."

This is a beautiful piece of propaganda, because it conveys, with gorgeous sleight of hand, that, like a virus, the GPL infects without your permission, or perhaps even without your knowledge.

This is a stunning act of deception. From the front lines, with the benefit of over a decade of experience, I can tell that it is unlikely anyone "accidentally" or "unknowingly" takes from this particular pool of free work. One _chooses_ to take it because it's there, it's free, it's been crafted by a community of people without regard for deadlines or profit margins, and because you can fix it yourself if there are problems. You do this only if you find the compromise of giving away any of your changes or improvements on it to be acceptable. Many places do not take this bargain - as well they should not! And many more places find this kind of cooperation is exactly what the doctor ordered.

If, as a manager, you discovered that GPL code has "appeared" in your program against your wishes, you will never find, in the history of the "Free Software Foundation" any situation where, like SCO, all redress is deemed impossible, and blackmail is demanded. (Indeed, metaphorically speaking, SCO demands it not just from you, but all your customers!) Rather, you will find a patient, polite group of academics and engineers, who are eager to avoid conflict, and happy to let you simply correct your mistake, if that's what it is, by removing the free work from your own.

And you will find that this is so even when, though the obstinacy, momentum and ignorance of a large organization, some people dabble with the idea of stealing this free work from and then not giving their changes back - breaking the rule.

There are, as the author points out, many "open source" organizations and licensees that are less restrictive than the GPL, from which an individual or company may choose from in the event that they still wish to get software for free, yet find the GPL rules unsuitable.

But there is nothing more normal and harmless than the GPL, or the people who enforce it. And I must say, none of their actions do damage to the GPL or its continuing, widespread adoption - in fact, they enhance it, since by making people follow the rules, everyone feels more comfortable in sharing their work. Everyone knows that their contribution won't be simply appropriated by SCO or another unscrupulous party and charged for. Only articles like this, which through what I'm sure are a series of honest misunderstandings, can convey a mistaken impression of how the process works, that might give pause to the concept of sharing labor.

Thank you for your time.

Re:Of course!

[nullard]

I sent this to Forbes:

Lets say that Microsoft had developed some router code that Linksys had
licensed for a fee. If Linksys distributed their routers using Microsoft's
software but stopped paying the license fees, Microsoft would sue Linksys
and Forbes would run an article about Linksys stealing Microsoft's
intellectual property.

In the case of the GPL, the "license fee" is sharing your code. When you
copy GPL code into yours, the copyright holders don't ask for monetary
compensation, they ask for any changes you make and distribute to be made
public. That's the cost of using GPL intellectual property. The "free"
software is not public domain. It is copyrighted software. If a company
chooses to use this software in their products and refuses to abide by the
license, they have committed a copyright violation. The offending company
should face the same penalty for that, no matter who the copyright owner
is.

I hope someone reads it.

Re:Of course!

[meta-monkey]

Exactly, the whole "Linux is a shadow/communist conspiracy" thing annoyed the heck out of me. I wrote the editor this letter:

FSF ombudsmen, not "hit men"

Dear Editor,

In response to Daniel Lyons' piece, "Linux's Hit Men" dated October 14, 2003, I respectfully disagree with the author's conclusions.

Lyons seems to take offense that Cisco should be required to release the source code for the router software used in their Linksys wireless router, which was derived from GPL-covered code. When the Linksys engineers sat down to design their product, they had three options for the software. They could either a) license router software from another vendor, like Microsoft, which developed the Windows CE embedded operating system, b) write their own software from scratch, or, c) take advantage of code developed by the open-source community. Since option a) would require them to purchase a license for each router they sold, and thereby eat into their profits, and option b) would surely cost millions of dollars and months if not years of development time, they chose option c), with full knowledge of the requirements of the GPL, which are completely up-front, and in no way "onerous," as Mr. Lyons describes them. Where licensing Windows CE from Microsoft requires you to pay Microsoft money, licensing GPL software requires you to contribute back to the pool of open source software from which you benefited.

Lyons mentions that: "the $129 device has been a smash hit, selling 400,000 units in the first quarter of this year alone," and then goes on to say that the "the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house..." The problem with that conclusion is that Cisco didn't build the house. Their $129 device, of which they have sold 400,000 units of, would have cost much more, and taken much longer to develop and get to market if they hadn't leveraged the free software provided by thousands of volunteers over the past ten years. Is it too much to ask that they make a small contribution of software back to the community, which provided them with software that allowed them to make millions of dollars?

Finally, I question the author's motives and biases. I wonder how Mr. Lyons would have reported this story if Cisco were distributing Windows CE on their devices, without paying royalties to Microsoft, or failing to abide by the far more restrictive policies in their license? The author states that "For months, in secret, the Free Software Foundation...has been making threats..." when, in fact, it has been widely reported in the technical media that the FSF has made requests for the source code from Cisco. The language of the article makes Linux sound like some of shadow-communist conspiracy. "Linux's Hit Men?" "The dark side of the free software movement?" "Comrade?"

Some objectivity and a modicum of research, please, Mr. Lyons.

Here's mine

[ccarr.com]

My letter to the editor:

In his article "Linux's Hit Men", author Daniel Lyons suggests that the Free Software Foundation is somehow wrong to insist that Cisco abide by the license that accompanied the software that they are distributing in some of their routers. He even implies a sinister motive to the FSF's "quiet" handling of the case, as though he would prefer to see them loudly castigating Cisco. In his haste to defend the prerogatives of big business, he neglects to take cognizance of the social contract which makes business transactions possible: in our society, we expect contracts, licenses, and the law to be obeyed.

Under copyright law, you are not permitted to make copies of another person's work. Period. The General Public License grants others the right to make copies of work distributed under the GPL with the proviso that any derivatives works must also be released under the GPL, with the source code made available to all comers. If you don't accept the GPL, then copyright law controls, and you may not make a copy.

Such a provision may well be unpalatable to Cisco, but if that's the case, they should not have used GPL'ed code. Cisco is reaping large profits from the volunteer work of thousands of coders, and all they ask is that Cisco share the their improvements.

Mr. Lyons either misconstrues the GPL, or else he believes that the copyrighted code of small-time volunteer programmers is somehow unworthy of enforcement.