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FSF Wants Your Vouchers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the light-side-of-the-force dept.

Ridgelift writes "California residents can help support the Free Software Foundation by donating their Microsoft vouchers to the FSF. In turn, the FSF will be able to convert the vouchers into hardware. There's more information here at the FSF website. With 1.1 billion dollars in vouchers Microsoft is forced to pay through the recent anti-trust court case, it's satisfying to see some of those fortunes being spent to help create good software for a change."

3 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. I think... by Evil+Adrian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think that giving these vouchers to schools that don't have computer equipment (or that have older computer equipment) and helping those children learn to use computers is a much better use of the vouchers than donating them to the FSF.

    --
    evil adrian
  2. As much as I like the FSF... by transiit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm against this, as I'm against the vouchers. I got my claim form in the mail the other day, and the choices it gave were basically "Accept the settlement, write an objection to the court, attend a hearing to state your objection in person, or do nothing (and thus waive all further rights)".

    As these vouchers represent accepting the settlement, donating them to a worthy cause doesn't satisfy my problems with the settlement, namely that they are to be redeemed for hardware (much of which comes bundled with more Microsoft products).

    I can't say I agree with an antitrust remedy that increases the sales of the monopoly that is being punished.

    -transiit

  3. Why? FSF is being more petty than usual. by DAldredge · · Score: 5, Interesting

    RMS 'fires' Lead Hurd Dev over license dispute.

    http://lists.softwarelibero.it/pipermail/discuss io ni/2003-November/008465.html

    Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:33:16 -0800
    From: tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
    Subject: What's up with the GFDL?
    To: gnu-prog-discuss@gnu.org
    X-Spam-Level:

    Richard Stallman is pushing an anti-free license for documentation.
    By that, I mean, a license for documentation which, if it were used
    for software, would unquestionably be understood as unfree.

    There are many negative consequences of this action:

    1) The Debian Project, which is committed to free software, cannot
    distribute GFDL'd manuals as part of the Debian system. This is
    ironic in the extreme, because RMS used to complain that Debian was
    too loose about distributing non-free things. Now Debian is too
    tight for him.

    2) It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and
    incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever. This is
    not a mere license incompatibility. It's not just that the GFDL is
    incompatible with this or that free software license: it's that it
    is fundamentally incompatible with *any* free software license
    whatsoever. So if you write a new program, and you have no
    commitments at all about what license you want to use, saving only
    that it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text.

    3) The FSF solicited public comment on the GFDL, but this seems to
    have been a deceptive enterprise. The goal seems to have been to
    garner public support for it, and that simply failed. So the FSF
    does not trumpet that little public comment, and has issued no
    explanation of why such a widely unpopular documentation license
    should be used.

    4) RMS has now "dismissed" me as Hurd maintainer because I have
    publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU maintainer must
    support and speak in favor of GNU policies. If this is really
    RMS's reason, then it means that he demands the right to control
    the speech of every GNU volunteer when it comes to GNU project
    policies. He wants not merely to set the direction, but also to
    require that each and every one of us publicly support a GNU policy
    when asked to.

    I do not know what the right response is. I believe perhaps the best
    thing to do is to create structures for GNU project volunteers to
    express their opinions so that we can even find out what the GNU
    project thinks. Heretofore, RMS has been an able spokesman, but when
    he disregards the comments of volunteers (even when explicitly
    solicited), works against free software, and attempts to control the
    speech of GNU volunteers in talking about such issues, something has
    gone very wrong.

    I suspect that nothing will happen, and the sad result will be that
    while free software will continue to thrive, the GNU project will
    die. I do not know what would prevent that.

    Thomas

    Technical Addendum
    - ------------------

    The incompatibilities of the GFDL with free software are not
    controversial. There are two central problems.

    First, GFDL'd manuals can contain "invariant sections" which cannot be
    changed or removed. This is a restriction on modification which isn't
    permitted for free software licenses. Moreover, it is not a trivial
    restriction or one that imposes minimal costs. Invariant sections can
    be very large, and the pieces of a GFDL'd manual that one wants to
    copy might be small. (For example, a description of how to use a
    single function, if copied from the Emacs manual, requires the
    inclusion of many kilobytes of extraneous text from invariant
    sections.) Such restrictions are not allowed in free software
    licenses.

    Second, there are restrictions on what formats a GFDL'd manual can be
    distributed in,