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RMS & FSF Directors To Meet With FSF Members
Free Software Foundation writes "Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, Bradley Kuhn, and the rest of the FSF leadership are hosting a rare FSF members meeting in Cambridge, MA on March 27, where they will tackle topics including, 'The Dangers of Software Patents', SCO, 'Free Software in a Global Economy', and 'The State of the Foundation'. FSF members will have ample opportunity to gripe, praise, dialog, network, and eat."
FSF members will have ample opportunity to gripe, praise, dialog, network, and eat.'
funny, there's no mention of showering....
;)
i hope the xfree team goes there and talks the license issue with them
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
I think the song "Cavern" could be thoroughly rewritten to be about the FSF. Don't know if it should be, but it could be.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Get out and support your GNU Organisation if you're anywhere around! Networking in reality still means a lot more than its virtual counterpart.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
FSF members will have ample opportunity to ... eat.
Free food? Shit, where do I sign up?
... that title has enough acronyms. Perhaps it should be "RMS & FSF Directors TMW FSF Members".
Darl McBride won't be there, so don't bother bringing your guns.
Anyone know if these things are good places to pick up chicks? "Hey babe. You say you support open source? Mind if I take a peek at your code?"
I think the most important matter would be discussing what the GPL is actually compatable with. There have been so many accusations lately of incompatablity (some of which conflict with that the GPL actually states) it's getting a bit out of hand.
anyone know the status of the FSF finances? it would be interesting to know.
the last i heard they had $750,000 in the account which is not too bad for a company that relies on external funding.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Maybe because free-ness isn't the only factor that's important? If you support GPL licensed projects, you can be sure that your support will never directly aid non-free projects.
It depends on what you want. If you only want your code to be free, there are many licenses you can use. If you want your code and its derivative works to be free, there are other license options.
RMS will go down in history as the visionary that made free software and open systems the prevailing technological force for the rest of the century. This is assuming that corperate influences can be subdued long enough to continue the huge momentum we've acheived over the past decade or two.
I'm inclined to predict at 10:1 odds against that RMS will go down as the most influential person of the next century, kind of in the same way as gutenberg is known now. He wasn't known at all really when he was alive, but the study of history set him in his proper place.
We know the following:
1.) The meeting will not be for real
2.) If it was for real, it will have 90 percent lawyers
3.) All members attending will be automatically sued by SCO after the meeting
If you mean "ability to ensnare others", other licences are a good deal more free.
If you mean having your source available 'n' generations down the line, together with that of software that is built upon yours, the GPL is probably the most free.
The GPL yields free software , so the Free Software Foundation is eminently the correct name for a GPL-promoting organisation.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I know I saw this and was reminded to join... and perhaps I will now... nothing like argueing with RMS as an incentive to join :)
I'm not saying that this is always better, but it does matter to a lot of people.
I'm beginning to wonder if SCO's second biggest negative impact (after the FUD it spreads) is all the time it is taking away from folks that would otherwise be having fun making open source software better.
I can't even begin to imagine how many man-hours have been blown obsessing about, discussing, worrying, or protesting SCO's latest actions. It really is appalling.
Furthermore, it doesn't seem like there's much point in "fighting" SCO any more. There isn't anyone in the tech community that takes them seriously. They are going to run out of money unless they get more cash influxes. It seems really unlikely that they will ever win even a minor lawsuit, much less something that will impact Linux. To the best of my knowledge, they aren't doing much to prevent Linux adoption -- there were a lot of journalists talking about how SCO might have a chance a couple of months ago, but it seems like everyone is pretty negative now (though I haven't read pure business publications for a while, so I might just be out-of-touch here).
Is there really any point to dealing with SCO any longer? It just wastes our time, and frankly, if I'm going to waste an hour of my life, I'd rather do it playing a video game or modeling something or writing software or cooking something than agonizing over SCO.
Unlike most Slashdot topics, SCO usually doesn't bring anything new or interesting to the table. A SCO article doesn't let me know about new LED displays that haven't existed before or a new VM about to be released or anything, really. Most comments in SCO articles are just jokes about SCO or McBride -- real analysis mostly happens at groklaw.
I just think -- every time Alan Cox posts about SCO or an indignant open source author spends a day disproving an new fabricated SCO claim so that they can come out with an analysis on groklaw, that's a driver patch that doesn't get applied, or a bit less threading work that can be done.
Frankly, even if the whole tech world started talking negatively about Windows, the kernel coders at Microsoft are unlikely to notice or care -- to them, that's just some crap for the PR people to deal with. They wouldn't let it affect them. SCO is wasting a good deal of time, time which actually does have value. Aside from passively providing the opinion that SCO is full of it when they come up in conversation, there doesn't seem to be much useful stuff that can be done any more.
Now, if you're really into IP law, of course, the case is interesting. But I just have a really hard time getting upset over whatever latest outrage SCO has come up with to stay in the press. I mean, who *cares* anymore? Noting we're going to say is going to stop them from making claims and getting quoted. Everyone in the tech world already thinks SCO is absolutely ludicrous, and IBM and Red Hat and Novell and God knows who else are already busily dealing with the situation. I'm sure the moment SCO crosses a legal line somewhere (and sooner or later, they have to), there will be a countersuit, maybe with a preliminary injunction against SCO stopping them from making new claims. My time is too valuable to me, and Darl McBride too worthless of a human being, to spend it on him.
The strength of the Open Source world is that one person contributes thoughts, code, analysis, whatever, and then that work propagates and is used and built upon by as many other people as are interested. Finding SCO's logical fallacies is work that is useless by the end of next month, as they're onto something new. It doesn't feel *good* when you're done with it. It's terribly inefficient and ineffective, even if it feels cathartic at the moment.
May we never see th
Are you sure gathering so much leadership is wise? You know, when you have armed enemies?
You should do like they do at the State of the Union address, and leave one* of the members at an undisclosed location, in case the FSF is bombed or something.
*: The rest of the FSF might hope to leave RMS out of there because of BO considerations, but, alas, he is too important not to attend. It would be like Dick Cheney staying away from State of the Union.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
BSD/MIT-style licences are inherently libertarian: they maximize individual liberty, and leave it up to the individual to decide whether or not to contribute their work to the public commons.
The GPL is inherently socalist: it maximizes social benefit by forcing individuals to contribute their work to the communal body of code.
Socialism isn't necessarily a bad thing, just be honest and admit what you are doing -- taking property rights away from the individual and giving them to society as a whole.
It is one thing to say "My code is free; therefore you may use it however you wish"; it is an entirely different thing to say "My code is free; but only if you use it the way I want you to."
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
...The kernel coders at Microsoft are unlikely to notice or care...
Nope. I've heard that not much phases the kernel coders at MS... unless somebody forgets to bring them their bananas for lunch, or accidentally leaves a mirror within reach...
No, this is why the GPL is MORE free than BSD style licenses- because the changes made to them will remain free as well. Freedom that can be taken away at someone else's whim is not free. Its like claiming we'd be more free if the government could take away our right to free speech or public assembly at will.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
So, anyone care to take odds on whether RMS can find anything to talk about other than yelling at everyone to say GNU/Linux?
The GPL doesn't force anyone to do anything. If you don't want to contribute your code to a GPL project, then don't distribute any modifications you've made. You're always able to use it for yourself or within your organization as you see fit. And of course, you're free not to use it at all
The GPL is as libertarian as any other contract freely entered into by informed sentient beings. You seem to have a rather broad definition of socialism. I've always understood socialism to be the state whereby the workers own the means of production, or more generally the excercise of significant economic control by the "people". If socialism means "anything socially beneficial", then it seems to be a less useful term in political and economic discourse.
It's absolutely nothing like that.
Under a license like the BSD license, a company could take the code and make modifications to it and not release the changes. Okay, their particular set of changes is not freely available. So what? This has not deprived you of anything. What did you have before the company made the changes, that you no longer have afterward?
"taking property rights away from the individual and giving them to society as a whole."
I think that you should actually read the words on GPL. For example, how does GPL control the useage by the end user? Perhapes in the redistrubution but not in the useage. Second, GPL does not take property rights away as the creator must chose to use GPL.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
"Joey! Man! He's right there... I dare you. Say it..."
"I dunno, man... It sounded like fun on the way over here, but now... I mean, LOOK at these guys. It's like a cult. We'd probably get skinned alive. I dunno..."
"Joey, you puss... You ain't gonna wuss out on me now, are ya? Come on, he's RIGHT THERE. Ya GOTTA say it."
"I'm tellin ya, man, I dunno. These cats are WEIRD. Something weird is gonna happen. Let's just go."
"You big puss."
"Come on, man, you don't have to be like that."
"You're a wuss. Just admit it: say 'I'm a great big wuss'".
"Dude, it's not cool, ok? There are like a million of 'em, and only two of us. It'd be a slaughter."
"Ok, if you're not gonna do it, I'm gonna. You big puss."
"Dude! DO NOT SAY IT."
"I'm gonna say it."
"DUDE, I'm SERIOUS. Dude, come on, don't do it."
"I'm gonna say it..."
"If you say it, I'm leaving."
"HEY, RICHARD! Sign a copy of this here Linux book? It's for my boss, DARL MCBRIDE, who's RIGHT OVER HERE!"
"YOU FUCKING IDIOT!"
"RUN, JOEY, RUN! GO FOR THE DOORS!"
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!