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Will Stallman Kill the "Linux Revolution?"
frdmfghtr writes "The October 30 issue of Forbes Magazine has an article speculating that Richard Stallman's efforts to rewrite the GPL could threaten to 'tear it apart.' The article describes how the GPLv3 is expected to be incompatible with the GPLv2, causing trouble for Linux vendors such as Novell and Red Hat. The article wraps it up: 'And a big loser, eventually, could be Stallman himself. If he relents now, he likely would be branded a sellout by his hard-core followers, who might abandon him. If he stands his ground, customers and tech firms may suffer for a few years but ultimately could find a way to work around him. Either way, Stallman risks becoming irrelevant, a strange footnote in the history of computing: a radical hacker who went on a kamikaze mission against his own program and went down in flames, albeit after causing great turmoil for the people around him.'"
Linux is going to stick with GPLv2 regardless of what the FSF does with GPLv3. That has little to do with Linus disliking GPLv3, and much do to with not being able to track down all the contributors and get them to agree to a license change. GPLv3 is not going to cause any trouble for Linux vendors. It's certainly not going to "kill the Linux Revolution". There is nothing in GPLv2 or GPLv3 that prevents a Linux distribution from containing various programs under various licenses, just as Linux distributions today contain code under GPLv2, BSD, MIT, and other licenses. And GPLv3 doesn't make Stallman himself any more or less relevant that he's been in the past. The only point of bone-headed sensationalist reporting like this is to try to sell more copies of the magazine. Next month they'll tell us the GPLv3 will contribute to global warming, and the following month that it will promote slavery.
Many of us have already moved away from Linux to BSD. Besides the many technical advantages of FreeBSD, the portability benefits of NetBSD, the extreme security of OpenBSD, and the massive scalability of DragonFly BSD, we don't have to deal with unreasonable licensing nonsense.
If somebody wants to take BSD code, modify it and not release those changes, then so be it. It doesn't hurt the rest of us, as we still have FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and DragonFly BSD to use. Beyond that, such use may make somebody else better off. Thus, there's a net benefit overall. We lose nothing, yet others gain.
And I'd be very happy if Microsoft were to use more BSD code in their products. Doing so would result in a vast increase in the quality of their codebase. That, in turn, will result in fewer infected Windows systems that send terabytes of spam to my mail servers. The less spam my servers have to filter, the more money I save in bandwidth and processing costs. I may even be able to reduce the number of mail servers I have.
The Linux kernel may not switch, but that will not doom V3, nor will it doom the FSF or Stallman.
That's not the issue. The problem is that it's becoming likely that GPLv3 will split FOSS software in two, with half the people going with GPLv2-only and the other half going with GPLv3-or-later. This means no possible exchange of code between the two pools and possibly lots of forks, especially for libraries. I hope the worst case scenario doesn't happen, but GPLv3 has potential for doing much more damage than any gain it can provide (even it you think it's good in itself). As far as I'm concerned all the (L)GPL software I write will be GPLv2-or-later, making GPLv3 useless, but mitigating the incompatibility problem.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I find it hard to take Frobes seriously when they start out by misrepresenting the postion of the person they are talking about (Stallman).
"Richard M. Stallman is a 53-year-old anticorporate crusader who has argued for 20 years that most software should be free of charge. He and a band of anarchist acolytes long have waged war on the commercial software industry, dubbing tech giants "evil" and "enemies of freedom" because they rake in sales and enforce patents and copyrights--when he argues they should be giving it all away."
C'mon, people! This is a Dan Lyons article. He's been writing anti-Linux FUD for years. Groklaw and /. have eviscerated this guy's credibility on this subject repeatedly (do a search, you'll see). Quoting him on this subject is like asking Bill Gates if he thinks Linux is going to beat Windows in the marketplace: you know the answer before you ask the question.
The article is from a Daniel Lyons talking about "restricting business"
b allmer_cz_dl_0322mi...
4 sounds like he
though the real point of GPL v# seems to be is to keep free software from
restricting users (at the expense of shady business lock-in practices).
Lots of FUD about how this will hurt the (business) economy, etc. A
lot of the gist sounds like a push to privitize the previous work of
the community.
Also a bunch of exploitave tabloid-style character attacks on Stallman.
Seems Daniel uses this simliar muck raking style with other platforms:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/22/vista-microsoft-
Some people have written about the author:
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/17
equally pisses off eveyone he reports about.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The author of the piece, Daniel Lyons, has a history of not exactly being friendly to Free Software and open source.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
but calling him "a strange footnote in the history of computing" is just idiotic.
Anyone who polarizes people to such a large degree, has generated so much passion, and has served as the point man of the free software movement deserves to be regarded as a towering figure in the history of computing. Whether GPL 3 succeeds or fails, Stallman has already left his mark. Again, it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with him; he's no footnote.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think you are missing the point to some extent. Almost all of the 'legal language' that gets argued over was, when it was originally written, "present-day common usage". In 50 or 100 years, what you are suggesting would only lead to lawyers fighting over the interpretation of our "common day language" interpretation of laws that are another 100 years old. Just from your own example, I could see the meanings and usage of a word like 'duplicating' shift significantly in 50 years time.
I am not a lawyer, but I know enough to think twice about complaining about the specialized language of another profession. No one goes to work wanting to use obscure and hard to understand terms. Every odd usage and non intuitive phrase has a reason for existing and most of the time I would be willing to bet that it is a good reason.
Early on in the lawsuit, Daniel Lyons writing for Forbes heavily backed SCO against IBM, however like SCO they cited no evidence to back up the claim that Linux developers stole code from Unix and put it into Linux. They simply assumed that since the people behind the SCO suit were successful with lawsuits in the past they would be successful again.
And of course like many of us called it back in 2003, SCO's stock first skyrocketed on the hype from articles like Forbes' and then plummeted as it has become public knowledge that their case is completely without merit. Naturally those people in on the action early cashed out early and big, leaving the pointy hairs' who listened to Forbes holding the bag. So they may well have had some level of credibility in 2003, but the zealots wearing the blinders at Forbes called it wrong, and they didn't miss by a hair, they missed by a mile.
The thing is, that FOSS doesn't make it's money by "selling software". It makes it's money by selling "non-copyable" services.
It seems true that few - if any - open source companies make money by just "selling bits." But it could be done. If a company creates a GPL'd program (let's say it's a case where it's GPL by virtue of incorporating other GPL'ed works) they are not required to give free binaries to anybody. They can sell the binaries for a bazillion dollars if they want... but must distribute the source, under the GPL, *with* the binaries (or include a written offer to provide the source).
The only real fly in the ointment here is that there customer can take the program and turn around and redistribute it, for any price they wish, including free. So most people look at that as precluding making money from selling GPL'd programs... but if your customer(s) have no real incentive to try and undermine your business by redistributing your program, it's entirely possible that it will never come up. And the more niche / specialized (and therefore less generally useful) your program is, the less likely it seems that your customer would want to bother with doing something like that.
The counter-argument, of course, is that you have no way of knowing whether or not your code will eventually leak into "the wild." And you have no way of guaranteeing that it won't happen. But even if it does, that still doesn't necessarily mean you can't still make money. Red Hat makes money selling RHEL Subscriptions, where part of what you're paying for is an entitlement to download ISOs, even though CentOS binaries are freely available.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
There is a Linux revolution? Last I checked, Linus is still in control, as much as ever anyway, and Alan Cox stepped down peacefully, without any coercion :]
Joking aside, let's all keep in mind who is publishing this garbage. Do you think the readers of Forbes are, just maybe, on the capitalist, monetize everything, even if you can't possibly hold an exclusive license side of the debate?
You do realize that a large portion of the system utilities in linux come from FSF, right?
Sure, you can sign over your copyright to the FSF, and people even have. You could also sign your copyright over to your employer or your mother. But nothing about the GPL requires you to reassign it to anyone. The original poster sounded like he might not realize that.
Actually, yes, Stallman is opposed to copyright, _per se_, at least as far a software is concerned. He's quite open about that; he believes deeply in something he refers to as "the freedom to tinker". Copyright, if it applies to software packages, completely breaks the freedom to tinker.
Then why does he copyright all his stuff instead of releasing it into the public domain free of copyright?
Because, all the fashionable slashdot trolling to the contrary, he's an eminently practical man. If he released it PD he knows someone would just grab it, modify it a little, and close it off. He knows this because he learned the hard way - this was done with much of his early work.
He'd like to change copyright law, but being unable at least for the moment to do that, he came up with a way to hack copyright law to serve his purposes instead.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Let me see ... how many Ecumenical Councils were there? So the Nicene Council around 325 - oh, wait, the Nicene Creed was amended a little at the later Constinopolitan Council ... so it has only been unchanged in the last 1500 years. Besides the creed itself, they passed a whole lot of provisions of canon law. Then there were the provisions of the other councils, and the later Orthodox and Catholic Councils that still have force as canon law. The laws of England include provisions going back to the reign of Edward III (1300s) that are still in force (or were until recently). Hmmm Magna Carta - now there is a document to make your Constitution look like a juvenile.
History wasn't invented in America. Some places have been around longer, and have a longer tradition of unchanged principles. Jewish law goes back, in some matters, over 3,000 years. America is just a Johnny-come-lately in the world of legal history.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Show me where in copyright law, I can before expiration, remove my copyright.
You know how on a lot of things there's a line that says "All rights reserved"? You just do the opposite - you publicly waive all rights and considerations concerning the thing you want to release into the public domain. For example, "I hereby release this comment (the one you are now reading) into the public domain, and renounce all claims to copyright upon it" should work (IANAL, etc).
Copyright law confers rights upon you; if you want to give up those rights, just say so.
The reason Stallman doesn't is the same as the reason why he doesn't use the BSD licence - because then others could build upon his work and not release the source back to the community.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It has never changed. The translations from the original Hebrew are slightly different. Exodus 20:13 in various translations:
NIV: "You shall not murder.KJV: Thou shalt not kill.
The Message: No murder.
NKJV: "You shall not murder.
It seems as though the most widely agreed upon translation from the original Hebrew is "murder." Despite the various translations, I don't think anyone has ever misunderstood this or any of the other Commandments.
It was always that way. Killing is perfectly justified for a large variety of reasons in the Torah. Capital punishment is common, there are fairly complex rules for retribution, and plenty of times G-d Himself says "go out and win a glorious victory" if you read the assorted Prophets and Writings. If all killing were outlawed, there'd be a heck of a lot of contradiction here.
Murder, though, is unjustified killing. It breaks one of the Ten Commandments to pick a child at random and bash his head in. It does not break one of the Ten Commandments to kill your enemy in battle.
I prefer to reading which doesn't cause G-d to be commanding His people to break the Ten Commandments, personally.
For the nitpickers:
The Hebrew word in question is 'ratzach' (which is conjugated to tirtzach in the text; Exodus XX, 13). Modern usage (according to my dictionary) clearly indicates murder as the first definition, and 'kill' as secondary. There is another verb 'harag' which can also mean 'kill', unfortunately I'm not as up on my Hebrew, so I can't say for sure whether this word is: a) used for more general killing, b) used more for killing of animals, or c) a modern invention.
Here's just some of what Linus says about binary modules.
"I'm a complete non-believer in binary modules"
"Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules, it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules."
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
It's different, but not all that different really.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Practically everyone recognizes that, if private individuals are allowed to own fully-automatic AK47s, there will be serious problems enforcing civil order.
z erland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Swit
" it is noted that there are about 420,000 assault rifles stored at private homes, mostly SIG 550 types."
I never hear about any serious problems enforcing civil order in Switzerland.
That doesn't mean their right to do so was protected by Amendment II.
Of course that's what they wanted. One of the first significant things the new federal government organized under the Constitution did was go suppress a rebellion.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood