Slashback: Forbes, VoIP, Firefly

Sit back, read Slashback. Tonight, (another) revision to the "Hidden Agenda" collegiate games contest, torrent files for the new Mandrake release, and the by turns heated-and-cool responses to Forbes' unfriendly description of the FSF -- for attempting to protect their copyrights -- as Linux's "hit men." Read on below for the details.

Hey, this approach works for the New York Post ... digidave writes "The fallout from Dan's Linux's Hit Men article on Forbes.com has pushed Forbes.com into putting up a discussion board, where Dan [Lyons] has posted his response"

And unmadindu writes "FSF's Bradley Kuhn has responded to the Forbes article ( reported earlier at Slashdot). Read the short, but to-the-point response at Linux Today." Kuhn's response is remarkable in its restraint.

Reader Waldo Jaquith sent the text of Lyon's first posting; an excerpt serves to illustrate its tone:

"Of course the Free Software Foundation is entitled to enforce its GNU General Public License (GPL), just as other organizations are entitled to enforce their copyrights and licenses. My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux. By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."

Some of the postings in response are very impressive; I especially like this one.

Dragonfly Forum Logs are scintillating reading. drdink writes "SlashNET would like to thank Matthew Dillon and everyone who attended the Dragonfly BSD Q&A forum session. Logs are available both in text and HTML formats."

You get to keep your base. Stealthgirl writes "The Hidden Agenda Game Development Contest, which received quite a bit of interest but also a lot of flak for its IP rules, has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot. Check out this post for more info." Up to the entrants to decide if they like the rules of any contest, of course.

Leech friendly, with public Mandrake 9.2 torrents. An anonymous reader writes "Public torrents for the first two of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs are up (I and II). Anybody cares to share the third?"

Sir? It's reality calling, on line two, from Anywhere. Marcelo Rodriguez (gardel on Slashdot), editor of Voxilla.com, writes: "We've posted the complete text of Federal Judge Mike Davis' ruling in Vonage v. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Voxilla.com. ... It's pretty much a slam dunk for Vonage and VoIP. Judge Davis wrote that Congress mandates that 'that information services such as those provided by Vonage must not be regulated by state law.' He also wrote that 'State regulation would effectively decimate Congress's mandate that the Internet remain unfettered by regulation.'"

Comments

DragonFly != Firefly...

[Teancom]

And thus my hopes for "Firefly taken up by SciFi" are dashed...

On the other hand, how stupid do you have to be to get you hopes up based on a /. headline?!??!?

GPL == Communism, and I like it that way

[Dancin_Santa]

Despite DashingLeech's long, yet vapid, response to the article claiming that Linux is somehow cheaper than BSD and that Lyons didn't conduct a cost/benefit analysis, he misses the essential point.

Linux is Free Software.

This is misread by almost everyone in the business community and seriously almost everyone in the OSS community. Even the originator of the concept doesn't fully grasp the depth of the statement as he has become one of the proponents of what I call "the Free Software Lie". The Lie is that the "Free" in Free Software is freedom for the developer. It is NOT.

The Freedom referred to in Free Software is freedom for the software under the GPL. Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.

It is precisely unfit for business for exactly the things that Lyons says in his article. Companies can't imprison or hide the software and remain in the good graces of the GPL and copyright law. If you want a license that grants developers rights, then stick with the BSD (UnFree) license. If you care about the Freedom of Software, then go with the GPL.

Re:Hey, Pot. You're black...

[RovingSlug]

So why is it ok for the FSF to protect their copyrights and not ok for the RIAA and MPAA?

I'll bite! The RIAA and MPAA are limiting the freedoms of individuals for the benefit of corporations. FSF and the GPL are limiting the freedoms of corporations for the benefit of individuals. Rule #1: Always err on the side of the individual. For instance, compare "Undamaged corporations and damaged individuals" versus "damaged corporations and undamaged indiduals". In the broadest possible sense, you're a fool to pick the first over the second. Because if the individuals are undamaged, then by definition, who cares about the corporations?

Public mdk 9.2 torrents: eating our own young.

[DenialS]

I admit that I'm disappointed with the evident glee that some of my peers appear to be taking in posting public torrents for Mandrake 9.2. Mandrake is a company that has contributed a great deal to the open source community, but it is a company that must pay wages to living, breathing people. They made two small changes to their release process for 9.2 to try to ensure that those people continue to be able to put food on their table and contribute more skill and knowledge to our community:

• Sponsored ads during install and preset bookmarks
• Delay availability of the 9.2 release to all but MandrakeClub members and Mandrake developers / translators

As a member of MandrakeClub for the past year, with a renewal for the next year, I have ponied up and contributed US$120 towards the continued survival of Mandrake the company--and by extension, those who eke out a living contributing to and pulling together this excellent product.

In addition, I have submitted bug reports, contributed to the technical support forums, and tried (unsuccessfully, alas) to contribute an rpm to the Mandrake contribs.

It bothers me that some of my peers clearly don't respect the approach that Mandrake has taken to attempt to supplement its meagre revenue. Some of the attitude, I assume, is an adoption of the "The net sees censorship as damage, and routes around it" perspective. I would argue that prematurely sharing the Mandrake 9.2 release images is a misapplication of that perspective. Delaying the release of the 9.2 images is a reward for those who contributed directly to the latest release, and the images will be made officially available to everyone else in a matter of weeks.

There is one case that merits consideration. In the same way that Red Hat chose leading Linux developers to receive shares of its IPO years back (ah the good old days), there are undoubtedly many developers whose code is being used and distributed by Mandrake. It would be nice if Mandrake also invited those developers to access the early 9.2 torrents--although with so many packages, tracking all of the developers and ensuring that they have authorized IDs might require an entire company in itself.

Some of it is pure selfishness, in the manner of a child's tantrum: "I want this free, and I want it NOW!"

I suspect some of the attitude is also a simple fascination with the ability to adopt technical measures to overcome business policy. While setting up a BitTorrent offers a bit of a gee-whiz factor, I predict that overcoming Mandrake's business policy by removing one of their two means of increasing revenues will have one of two effects, neither one particularly pleasant:

1. Mandrake will increase the use of sponsored ads and bookmarks, making their presence more invasive (imagine your OpenOffice assistant rendered as a Bawls Guarana beverage, offering an additional tip linking to the Bawls site every time you invoke help) and harder to overcome
2. Mandrake will give up trying to produce a commercial product, stop paying its developers, and one more source of open source innovation will dwindle away. Aggressive adoption of the first tactic might eventually lead to this outcome as well, as users tire of ads in their face.

So I'm asking everyone out there sharing unofficial Mandrake 9.2 ISOs: please consider the larger ramifications of your actions. In isolation, what you're doing might not seem all that important--but when you're posting (and publicizing, and taking advantage of) torrents on Slashdot, your actions will have a detrimental effect on the company that's making the very distribution you're so keenly sharing.

And that distribution simply might not be available to share in the future...

Re:Public mdk 9.2 torrents: eating our own young.

[DenialS]

I'm quite clear on the concepts of the GPL and what it stands for. Mandrake made their RPMs and source RPMs tree publically available the same day that they made their ISOs available to us--which more than meets their obligations as a distributor of GPLed code.

In particular, the clause that appears to apply to Mandrake is:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

Now, who was it that needs some education on the GPL? I'm sorry, but I don't particularly care to allow you to try to justify your actions with sloppy, uninformed rationalization.