Stallman Absolves Novell

A few days ago we linked the transcript of Richard Stallman's talk at the Tokyo GPLv3 meeting . Now bubulubugoth writes to point us to an analysis of what Stallman said in Tokyo. In particular, these quotes: "Microsoft has not given Novell a patent license, and thus, section 7 of the GPL version 2 does not come into play. Instead, Microsoft offered a patent license that is rather limited to Novell's customers alone." And, apparently resolving the conundrum of whether GPLv2 and GPLv3 licenses can be commingled: "There's no difficulty in having some programs in the system under GPL2 and other programs under GPL3."

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Shame on you Slashdot..

[QuantumG]

Doesn't seem logical but Novell won't discuss it preferring, it says, to wait and see what happens in the GPL3 negotiations, clinging to the notion that Stallman and company - anarchist fanatics said to be cut from the same all-or-nothing cloth as suicide bombers - won't do anything to derail Linux. Quite apart from the partial title, which is misrepresentative of the article, why would you post a link to anything that contained statements like this?

Re:Shame on you Slashdot..

[MarkByers]

why would you post a link to anything that contained statements like this?

I'm guessing it's for the hits. Hits = advertising dollars. Controversial articles are often more popular.

Or maybe they just didn't read the article.

Re:Shame on you Slashdot..

[Otter]

Between this and "Clinton Prosecutor Now Targeting Free Speech", they're really off to a quick start for a Sunday morning, no?

Re:Shame on you Slashdot..

[bmo]

"Quite apart from the partial title, which is misrepresentative of the article, why would you post a link to anything that contained statements like this?"

Because I guess that the editors know nothing about sys-con. I had sys-con blackholed for a while and last time I cleaned my hosts file, I took them out. Looks like they're up to their same old BS. Sys-Con (system of a con) is a troll organization and most of what I have ever read WRT their attitude toward Linux and the GPL in general has been inaccurate and just plain nonsense. There was _no_ "absolution" of Novell. There was a "It's a good thing they did this now, so we can disallow it in V3." Even the title of the article is a troll. They publish articles "for the clicks and the lulz" like Dan "Lyin'" Lyons and Rob "I'll give a keynote speech for SCO World drunk" Enderle. How articles like that wind up on Slashdot? The editors don't do the least amount of due-diligence - not even a cursory reading of the articles themselves, apparently.

--
BMO

Re:Shame on you Slashdot..

[Tim C]

The editors don't do the least amount of due-diligence - not even a cursory reading of the articles themselves, apparently.

Well, that's certainly true, but don't forget also that anything that's controversial is going to generate a lot of discussion, which generates a lot of page hits, which generates a lot of ad impressions.

Don't forget that Slashdot is for-profit, and has been for years now.

Re:Shame on you Slashdot..

[oxymor00n]

Well, that's certainly true, but don't forget also that anything that's controversial is going to generate a lot of discussion, which generates a lot of page hits, which generates a lot of ad impressions.

Yeah, but if they manage to piss of everybody the ad-dollars are going bye bye sooner or later.

Stallman's entire comment on novell's deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for the karma whoring, but the article seems to imply that RMS thinks that there's nothing wrong with Novel's deal, which is not quite the case, as can be seed below.

However, there's another way of using software patents to threaten the users which we have just seen an example of. That is, the Novell-Microsoft deal. What has happened is, Microsoft has not given Novell a patent licence, and thus, section 7 of GPL version 2 does not come into play. Instead, Microsoft offered a patent licence that is rather limited to Novell's customers alone.

It turns out that perhaps it's a good thing that Microsoft did this now, because we discovered that the text we had written for GPL version 3 would not have blocked this, but it's not too late and we're going to make sure that when GPL version 3 really comes out it will block such deals. We were already concerned about possibilities like this, namely, the possibility that a distributor might receive a patent licence which did not explicitly impose limits on downstream recipients but simply failed to protect them.

What if one company pays Microsoft for a patent licence where Microsoft says "Alright, we won't sue you, but we're just not making any promises about your customers if they redistribute it". We had already written a downstream shielding provision into GPL version 3 saying that if you convey the program, and you are benefitting from a patent licence that is not available, that does not extend to the downstream users, then you have to do something to shield them.

This is, it turns out, inadequate in two ways. First of all, "shielding them" is vague. We're replacing that with a specific list of methods, and second, once again it assumes that the distributor has received a patent licence, so the Microsoft/Novell deal cunningly does not give Novell the patent licence, only Novell's customers.

Well, now that we have seen this possibility, we're not going to have trouble drafting the language that will block it off. We're going to say not just that if you receive the patent licence, but if you have arranged any sort of patent licensing that is prejudicial among the downstream recipients, that that's not allowed. That you have to make sure that the downstream recipients fully get the freedoms that they're supposed to have. The precise words, we haven't figured out yet. That's what Eben Moglen is working on now.

Re:Stallman's entire comment on novell's deal

[Mostly a lurker]

As I understand it, the Novell-Microsoft agreement does not protect either Novell or Microsoft directly. It only states that Novell's customers will not be in the firing line if Microsoft goes after Novell or Redhat, for instance. This advantage that Novell's clients would have is seen by some open source advocates as against the spirit of the GPL which, apparently, is that everyone should be equally vulnerable. I am sort of curious. Let us say that Microsoft unilaterally decides to offer protection to Red Hat's clients, but not any downstream recipients of those clients. Does Red Hat suddenly have responsibility to provide protection for those downstream recipients that they would otherwise not have? If the answer is "no", then presumably the problem with the Novell-Microsoft deal is not that some users are at less risk, but purely that this is as a result of an agreement between the parties. The fact that non-Novell customers are in precisely the same position they would have been if this agreement to which they are not a party did not exist appears irrelevant. I can understand why some free software extremists dislike the Novell-Microsoft agreement, but I am bound to say that I do not find their position very logical.

Say what?

[Lavene]

Reading the headline I almost instinctivly looked out of the window to see if there were any pigs or penguins flying by... but then I remembered that I was reading /.

This is joke, right!

[Karaman]

Stallman is some kind of a pope, and M$ are buying indulgence from him?

Re:This is joke, right!

[Coeurderoy]

Stallman might be a sort of pope, but he is not selling indugence to M$.
Well I guess that if the bill and melinda fondation would offer to give him ALL their money, he would at least think about it.

Of course the way he would be using this money might be even more irritating to the current US rulers thant what he is currently doing,
since I suspect that he would still have the same choice of entertainments (playing irish flute in front of a large crowd rather than buying a large mansion in beverley hills :-)).

Stallman Absolves Novell. Absolves?

[zotz]

As in, really did find a loophole that let's them legally stab everyone in the back? One that we will be sure to fix in v3 and then they can't play such games anymore.

That kind of absolves, or did he say they what they did was perfectly fine and such practices will be ok going forward?

Just asking.

all the best,

drew

irresponsible journalism

[idlake]

Doesn't seem logical but Novell won't discuss it preferring, it says, to wait and see what happens in the GPL3 negotiations, clinging to the notion that Stallman and company - anarchist fanatics said to be cut from the same all-or-nothing cloth as suicide bombers - won't do anything to derail Linux.

This statement is ambiguous; is it saying that Novell made these statements about Stallman, or is it the journalist's own statement?

Either way, likening someone who takes a principled stand on intellectual property to "suicide bombers" is highly irresponsible. By the same reasoning, you might liken the Founding Fathers, Microsoft Management, or the US Supreme Court to "anarchist fanatics ... suicide bombers".

This sort of shitty journalism shouldn't be rewarded with ad impressions.

Re:Comingling

[LiquidCoooled]

Of course they can be compiled together.
Distributing that executable to the public is where the problems start...

Mod parent up

[matt me]

We now need a new tag, shittyjournalism.

Move along!

[albertost]

DELETE FROM articles WHERE date = 06/12/02 AND id = 2259227;

What's the big deal with forking?

[bl8n8r]

FTFA: ".. will create a schism in the open source community and fork Linux."

What's the big problem with a fork? So you have Microvell Linux and the real Linux.

Microvell Lizard Linux is going to be a pregnant toad injected full of politics, DRM and Microsoft IP. Microsoft will have the option that way of killing it then with litigation, or letting it stick around to sell to Windows people that think they are smart switching to (MLL) Linux.

The real Linux will still be around, minus whatever Microsoft pays the courts to tell everyone they can't use anymore. The inevitability of all this is approaching like a garbage truck, so what is the problem with forking? M$ has been preparing for this for a long time buying up patents and everything else. Beginning over with a forked code base may be the only alternative. Either that, or put all your computer gear in front of the garbage truck and let it have it's way.

Novell, we smell poniez: http://techp.org/

Re:What's the big deal with forking?

[Stalyn]

You do understand that the Novell hackers frequently contribute code to many open source projects such as xorg, gnome and the Linux kernel. If you truly wish to separate yourself from whatever Novell touches you will have a hard time doing so and keeping a competitive modern desktop. Also it's totally unfounded that Novell is going to start injecting Microsoft IP into their code submissions.

But if you are still designed on isolating Novell from the rest of the community I suggest you get on the devel mailing lists and argue for a fork. AFAIK no one other than the vocal minority at Slashdot has suggested such a thing.

Re:trying to care...

[bmo]

"I never really found a use for SUSE before, still haven't now. I use Gentoo. About as far off that I'll go is Fedora, and even then it's only for work. That RMS approves of it, or that it fits with GPLv3 doesn't really matter. RMS doesn't use SUSE. Why does he care?"

Because there are programmers at Novell that write stuff that winds up in _all_ distributions. Don't forget that Novell has the Mono and Ximian crew. Other distributions using Mono and Ximian software are downstream from Novell (such as Gentoo). Since Microsoft is saying "we won't sue you or your customers, but we're thinking about suing other people" tells everyone else that maybe they're tainted because they've got code that Novell employees wrote for Gnome and Mono. Whether that matters or not remains to be seen, but the chair throwing howler monkey that is Steve Ballmer has everyone involved with this stuff looking askance, to say the least.

So just because you're not a SuSE user doesn't mean that you're unaffected.

"0 right to use as you see fit
1 right to share
2 right to modify
3 right to share modifications"

You forgot

4. Right to restrict downstream users/programmers rights, which the downstream doesn't participate in 0 through 3.

Suppose I make AnAwesomeProgram and distribute it freely under the BSD license, thus releasing it to the world uninhibited. SomeoneElse comes along, takes the code he didn't write, adds some trivial functionality, and resells for $$$$, but doesn't allow his customers the same rights he had (thou shalt not reverse engineer, thou shalt not decompile, thou shalt not redistribute, thou shalt worship only me and live).

To me, that would be unacceptable.

In a perfect world, the BSD license would be ideal, but the world is neither perfect and not all people have good intentions, imo. That's why there's the GPL. The world is also full of choices, which is why there's more than just the GPL.

--
BMO

Re:trying to care...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine, but what do you mean by "available"?

It is the GPL license of Linux that has forced companies like IBM, Intel, Sun, SGI, etc. to contribute valuable codes like enterprise-level schedulers and >128-way SMP support, RCU, great compiler optimizations, etc. Linux people aren't smarter than BSD (I'd even say it's the opposite), but GPL helps them to use the market forces to their advantage.

My guess would be that the only reason you share your code is because you have no business interest in it, so from your point-of-view it is commercially worthless. In contrast, GPL is both encouraging and forcing people to share even software that is of central commercial interest to them.

Re:trying to care...

[tomstdenis]

See that's the difference. You write software to prop up a cause. I write software to solve problems and have the software out there.

More often than not, a lot of my fixes come from users who stick my software in places you can't even imagine (from IPMI controllers, DSL modems, video games, etc...). Their improvements make it into the public domain code which benefits everyone (even GPL/BSD hippies).

I don't write my software to make GNU or FSF more popular. To me, free means just that. Free. As in, fuck off with your "this is what you can do with my software, but it's free" bullshit.

It's not free, it's just "more accessible". Freeer is probably a more correct term. Heck you get to keep the acronym FSF!

Tom

sys-con trolling

[_dani3l]

More Sys-con trolling. This page is classified as "News," but how can any journalist use the phrase "said to be?" How can this be taken at all seriously: "...Stallman and company - anarchist fanatics said to be cut from the same all-or-nothing cloth as suicide bombers..." Three fallacies in one sentence: Ad Hominem, Ad Baculum, and the Appeal to the Unnamed Authority.

Don't feed the trolls. As we found out last year, there is little point in complaining to the management of Sys-con: Another LinuxWorld Resignation

Re:trying to care...

[tomstdenis]

All I'm saying is if you wrote the software to be truly free you'd not use the GPL. GPL is nice, but it's not free in the sense RMS claims.

Part of being a magnanimous participant in the OSS movement means supporting people you don't like.

I personally hate DRM and proprietary software. I hate it a lot. But I'll let them use my software just the same. I wrote it to be out there and used [because I think for the most part it does more good than harm and the stuff is of high quality].

If I were to sit down and pick and choose who is "free" to use my software, it ain't free no more is it?

Tom

Written by Maureen O'Gara!

[KillerDwarfFromHades]

It should be noted, since Sys-Con is hiding it as "by Linux News Desk", all articles with that by-line are written by none other than PJ-stalker Maureen O'Gara.

The proof? It's currently the free article on Maureen's poorly-named LinuxGram website: http://www.linuxgram.com/

That's all her.

(For those who live in a cave, only surf for porn, etc., Maureen O'Gara wrote a slanderous piece about Groklaw's PJ, wherein she literally tried to stalk PJ, peeking in windows, generally making an ass of herself.)

Sys-Con swore they'd never publish an O'Gara piece again. Good thing noone believed them, since they just hid her behind a "Linux News Desk".

Re:Written by Maureen O'Gara!

[_dani3l]

It isn't James Turner who lied. He actually took a stand against the publisher demanding that Maureen O'Gara's material be removed from all of Sys-Con. If Sys-Con is publishing her again, it is the publisher, Fuat Kircaali, who went back on his commitment.

Reference: Sys-Con Dumps Maureen O'Gara

But at least one editor from LinuxWorld still resigned less than a week later: Another LinuxWorld Resignation

Re:Comingling

[kripkenstein]

Stallman didn't actually give us ANY new information about GPL v2/3 compatibility. He only said that some programs could be v2, and some v3, and exist on the same system. He didn't say they could work together (they can), and he CERTAINLY didn't say their code could be compiled together (this is the issue, and I say they can't).

Well, we can just read the GPL3 draft ourselves. Assuming no big changes in that area (and I doubt there will be any), it will not be possible to link GPL2 and GPL3 code together (except for cases of LGPL2 code or GPL3+a suitable exception).

What Stallman was quoted as saying is the simple fact that a system can have various licenses on it, GPL2, GPL3, Apache, BSD, Python, etc. etc. Which is of course true. What we will see, in all likelihood, is a GPL2 kernel and GPL3 GNU tools (compiler, etc.), which virtually every Linux distro will use happily. Novell, on the other hand, will have some problems with the GNU tools.

Sys-Con Killed the Story!

[KillerDwarfFromHades]

And it magically disappeared.

First the "Feedback" page disappeared, interestingly less than 15 minutes after I posted there that the true author of the drivel was Maureen O'Gara.

Now the entire story is gone.

The power of proving hypocrisy strikes again!

Re:Comingling

[sumdumass]

I don't think GPL3 toold like a compiler would work with a GPL2 kernel. One of the things the GPLv3 was trying to address was the shirking around obligations imposed by the GPLv2. A compiler will depend heavily on the kernel and all it's libaries to work making the operations of a GPLv3 compiler contrary to it's own license when using a GPLv2 kernel.

In my opinion, this is nothing different from TIVOs attempt to lock people out. If the GPLv3 can taint the hardware to the points it forces signed keys to become GPLed it will definatly tain a kernel running under a former GPL. I don't see why these requirments should be "waived" just because it is OSS people doing it and not TIVO.

GPLv3 is bad news at it currently exists. It doesn't follow the spirit of the former GPL versions. It introduces too many unneeded problems and is more or less going to make the GPL weaker in the end. Some people are ok with that, some aren't. It isn't to hard to guess were i'm at on it.

Re:trying to care...

[kimvette]

I run Linux almost exclusively, or did until very recently (until I get Myth and my PVR-150 and TV@nywhere to cooperate on SuSE I boot Windows frequently now, running it while posting this in fact since I am recording a movie in the background). I have NO problem with running proprietary software. I LIKE Diablo, I LIKE Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I LIKE Video Wave and Media Studio Pro (cinelerra and klives both suck, VideoWave is great for very simple edits, and MediaStudio Pro blows the hell out of Adobe Premier and anything else I have tried at the consumer price level).

What I DIS-like is proprietary operating systems and proprietary formats.

What I dislike about proprietary operating systems such as Windows is:
  - The tendency to be available in any color I like, so long as it's blue, or a Microsoft-approved alternate theme (or hex edit Windows binaries to eliminate the DRM which will then allow me to create my own theme, at the risk of introducing incompatibilities)
  - Vendors' insistance that ONE license is tied to ONE machine, so if I upgrade a motherboard, I'm forced to buy a new license according to the EULA (illegal since it's a commodity good, not a work for hire under contract, and first sale doctrine applies, thus such tying is not legal, EULA or not)
  - The ability of the proprietary vendor to disable my machine at whim, or by mistake (e.g., upgrade from a M$-supplied video or NIC driver triggers activation, resulting in waiting on hold TWICE for twenty minutes but getting my call dropped due to their fluky system, then calling PSS and telling them I want to be transferred to a SUPERVISOR in the activation department so I can talk directly to a human)
  - The lack of support for ancient or newer hardware (If I want to run an ancient device from a vendor which went belly-up during the dot-bomb, there's a 99.999% chance that hardware supported by the 1.xx Linux kernels is supported even in 2.6.19, and likewise, if I keep this machine I'm on now when the Linux 3.0.0 kernel and Xorg 38.1.5 comes out, this hardware will STILL run very happily, AND it will STILL make a great HTPC)

In short, I hate forced obsolescence and forced upgrades, because while I usually do periodically build a new bleeding-edge PC (I'm chomping at the bit for 2.6.19 so I can finally get full hardware support on my new machine), it's nice to be able to run new software on ancient machines. Older != useless for every task.

Now, the MAIN reasons I hate working in Windows is:
  - Explorer sucks as a file manager. Konqueror is downright orgasmic by comparison because it's so fast, flexible, and extensible

  - Explorer (the GUI) sucks because Microsoft has it locked down so tightly. I know about Windowblinds, WinFX, and so forth, but when you come down to it, those are hacks. In kwin (or even metacity) I can make KDE look like an artsy-fartsy wet dream, I can make it look like Windows 95 or even Windows 3.1, or I can make it look exactly like the latest Windows Vista builds. I stick with the plastik theme unless running XGL, but the flexibility is there to do ANYTHING I want with it, without having to pay Microsoft additional fees for the right to modify MY OWN SYSTEM, or without having to "violate" the EULA by hex editing system libraries to enable unsigned themes to be installed.

  - The command line environment sucks wind. Powershell would have been a nice inclusion in Vista (that and WinFS would have been the main selling points for me) but sadly it was dropped, and it's probably not as comprehensive as bash on Linux or BSD. The reason? On *nix everything maintenance-oriented is a CLU, and apps are usually front ends for the CLI. on Windows, even with Powershell, the CLI is an afterthough, and the CLUs are generally calls to the COM interfaces, and not standalone utilities of their own, forcing one to learn COM anyhow. If you need to go through that trouble to begin with, why don't they just tell everyone to hard-code C++ utilities for maintenance tasks?

Re:Comingling

[NickFortune]

So what, we can use scripts that will download source code and compile it for us, that is legal.

Hard to say before the final draft of GPLv3, but that seems the most likely scenario. The GPL has never had a problem with people compiling and running software for personal use. It's just when they distribute that the GPL comes into play.

Of course, you could argue that distributing such a download-compile-and-link program would be an attempt to violate the intent of the new licence, but I still think that's unlikely. The main point of GPLv3 seems to be aimed at hardware locked down against modification. If the user can compile the two lots of source together, I don't think GPLv3 has a problem. It's when you want to mod a GPLv3 program distributed with hardware, and the hardware won't let you run the result that you hit problems. Think "Tivo".

Also, most GPL2 projects will simply relicense.

Ones with the "...or later" boilerplate at the top won't need to, although I think some will explicitly re-licence as GPLv2 only. Not so many as I would have expected before recent shady dealings between MS and Novel, but some will. If nothing else, there are a lot of prominent FOSS devs being paid by large corporations. It's got to be difficult not to let something like that influence your thinking.

The interesting question is which projects will prosper and which not, post GPLv3. Which will attract developers, which will be bundled, and which wil fal by the wayside. Interesting days ahead, I feel