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

Forbes is a Microsoft shill anyway

[Kiaser Zohsay]

The last several Forbes articles that even mentioned Linux were just plain old bashing.

Now, maybe I'll RTFA.

Daniel Lyons

[AsparagusChallenge]

Remember "What SCO wants, SCO gets"? Same author. Don't expect any love from him.

Re:Daniel Lyons

[Marcus Erroneous]

The original article was interesting enough. Protecting your IP in order to make money is okay, protecting your IP not to make money is not. Then you read "What SCO wants, SCO gets" and you see the same theme. It's okay to sue the pants off of someone in the name of greed, or to attack someone for failing to live up to your licensing agreements when it costs you money, but the upholding of the license on legal grounds without greed as the fundamental motive is unAmerican and wrong? WTF?
Either a license is legal and a company has the right to enforce the terms that were entered into, or it's not. Either it's okay to rip off someones IP or it's not. The idea that it's okay to rip off someone elses IP if you're going to make a buck is hollow.
Then again, these guys thought Enron was wonderful. Forbes isn't targeting the type of person that is furthering the world, just themselves. What I find really sad is that the author completely skips over the fact that companies can develop internal applications based on GPLcode then deploy and use them enterprise wide without paying the onerous licensing fees that would normally be required by proprietary software. That would save a lot of businesses a lot of money, improving their margins and boosting profits and bonuses. I don't think that it would really be against Forbes targetted readership to have an article that shows both sides of the issue. If you use it to sell a product based on GPL you have obligations that you don't normally take into account and that you might well decide are too steep for you. That's an informed business decision for you to make. And, that same software deployed internally you can keep to yourself and still save a bundle on licensing costs. Again, another informed business decision.
It's not outside of Forbe's scope to present a balanced article to help its readership make informed decisions. They miss the point that the GPL is about allowing businesses to have more options in the tools that they use to conduct business. It's all about lowering costs, being more efficient and freeing you to spend less money while keeping more of what you make. And that truly is what business is about.

Re:WTF?

[aborchers]

Here's what I sent Forbes via their comment function:

I'd like to be diplomatic, but the tone of this article is just ridiculous.

Since when is it an onerous act to expect a licensee to comply with the terms of the license? These companies used GPL-protected code and then wanted to balk at the license by not distributing the changes as required. How is that different from a software purchaser deciding it is acceptable to copy and redistribute proprietary software protected by a more "traditional" license?

While it may be an affront to the proprietary software industry's ways of doing business, the GPL is a sound contract that anyone is free to accept or reject as conditions for use of the protected software. The payment for receiving the "free" GPL software is that modifications must be released back to benefit the public. If that isn't acceptable, then these companies should not use GPL code and should either create or purchase another operating system.

Spare us the "comrade" and "dark side" nonsense. This is a simple contract dispute based on U.S. copyright law. Your mockery of it reflects poorly on your journalistic credibility.

Daniel Lyons, the author

[leming]

If you look at other articles that Daniel Lyons has written for Forbes, you will see that this man is more or less anti-free software. He wrote an article back in June about SCO vs. Linux. In that article he describes linux users as: "like many religious folk, Linux-loving crunchies [are] convinced of their own rightousness..." This is just another article written by a another man who thinks that Linux will go nowhere because it isn't backed by a major corporation starting with an M.

It's my personal opinion not to read too much into the article, and take it just as it is, an opinion -- someone else's view on what is happening.

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:Great quote:

[fermion]

This is real interesting because I would think Forbes would be pro IP. For instance, do they support the RIAA? I guess they do not. Music for all practical intents and purposes is free. If someone buys music, it is out of a respect for laws and various contracts that says we buy goods and services. We have always been able to get music for free, it is just easier now. The fact that music sales have remained as high as they have, in spite of music being freely available, in spite of the RIAA attacking customers and potential customers, in spite of the economy being in such a slump that many people have no money.

And does Forbes believe in EULA that says you must have a license for each machine or each processor? I guess not. After all, the consequences to businesses for violating these agreements are extreme. A company with several PCs and lacking a single license for the MS software could be a great deal of trouble. And the gestapo tactics of the BSA audits and spy software certainly cannot be good a corporation.

Many of these adults remind me so much of adolescents who want to pick and choose the rules. The GPL is disclosed up front and a person chooses to use the GPL code or not. If they choose to used it and violate the license, there are consequences, just like any other violation. It is childish to say after the fact that the rules are unfair. The rules were agreed to when the software was used. And unlike some other software or music licenses, there is no element of constraint or duress, and the GPL has no element of unreasonable restrictions of rights.

The fact is that corporations want others to pay for their worthless products, but refuse the same in return. We have seen this with the RIAA and expensive industry reports. I have seen this with guys make 100K a year but only go to movies when they are free. And we see this know with companies that steal code but complain when others do the same.

Still worth a read

[nanojath]

Forewarning: The open source community is not portrayed in positive light so you might want to skip reading this.

I'd suggest it is very important to read this. I think it's a bit simplistic to say that Forbes is a "Microsoft shill." Rather, Forbes is heavily invested in the status quo of business circa the early 21st century, and is naturally threatened (and apparently not a little confused) by open source and what it represents.

Anyone who bothers to give it a little thought realizes that in the modern economic system, the wealth of the 5% that own 85% of everything is protected by a business environment where the barriers of entry are too high to permit the appearance of significant competition from below. Every once in a while, emerging technologies can be harnessed to create an Apple or a Microsoft to challenge the more traditional, say, IBM.

Now, it's plain enough that we among the 95% are largely responsible for all of this wealth getting shuffled around. We do the work, we buy the products. Our retirement plans sit around for 40 years, a nice capital base in the market while the fat cats try to speculate their way to another billion. In general, we aren't able to muster sufficient organization or marshall enough of our resources together to have a conscious, guided effect on these things.

It's little surprise, then, that Forbes falls back on the rhetoric of Communism and revolution to characterize the Open Source movement, because it represents a similar kind of threat to that system. Labor unions, for example, represent an attempt to collectivize the theoretical power of a group (workers are required for business to be done, workers can choose to see themselves in a collective bargaining position opposite those that own the business) to shift the balance of power between labor and management. Communism represents the attempt to acheive this reordering on the national scale through conventional political means (democratic processes and conquest). Open source has succeeded up to this point by a similar route - harnessing the distributed power of a group of individuals to achieve results normally available only to major players.

Unlike these things, though, while the Open Source "movement" may be informed by an ideology, the integrity of its product is maintained by an adherence to the strictly capitalist, legal definition of intellectual property. What is truly offensive to the Forbes set is that the grubby horde would have the audacity to coopt one of THEIR legal power tools to create a product that nakedly opposes the dynamics of the status quo.

The basic argument of this article, if you strip away the snide asides about the irony of those open source commies suing people for violating their I.P. just like regular businessmen, fercryin'outloud, is that by legally defending it's licenses, the Open Source community will discourage people who don't wish to abide by those licenses from adopting software released under them. Uh, yes, that is correct, sir. Businesses which wish to develop proprietary technologies with closed source software should not use GPL code.

Is Forbes genuinely incapable of understanding that the whole point of Open Source is that it represents a parallel software development strategy that is opposed to the conventional business paradigm of proprietary I.P., or are they engaged in conscious propaganda in defense of the status quo? In the end it doesn't matter, the result is the same. The principle of open source licensed software is a genuine economic threat to the conventional I.P. business paradigm, but it is completely impotent if the licenses are not enforced. So I'd say, don't skip this article - study it carefully and learn the strategy of your oponents.