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Eben Moglen — GPLv3 Not About MS and Novell
Linux.com's Joe Barr was recently able to sit down with Professor Eben Moglen at the San Diego Red Hat Summit and discuss the GPLv3 and what it means beyond the Microsoft/Novell deal on video. "Professor Moglen explains briefly about GPLv3's work on globalization of the software license, preventing harm to others by members of the community, and the most contentious in earlier drafts, DRM."
I should hope not... I expected it to be about open-source software and Linux...
It was also being drafted long before the MS/Novell agreement IIRC
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/758004/0000 95013407012375/0000950134-07-012375.txt
The FSF has as much as said that they will target the Microsoft-Novell deal. http://gplv3.fsf.org/rationale, and since it's not a matter of "if" GPLv3 becomes more than a draft, as much as it is "when"...
The current draft of GPLv3 can affect Novell's biggest source of cash - Microsoft. (and may also affect SUSE gaining more market share in the enterprise) If the final GPLv3 impacts the patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell, Novell has big problems. And (IMHO) increasing SUSE acceptance among enterprise customers suffers a setback.
...Neither should these ****ing tree-hugging, Prius-driving free software zealots... Wow. I wonder what OSS has done to you, for you to hate it so much? I hope you are not loosing sleep over this..."Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
As long as...great great tinkerers need to worry about the freedom to tinker, http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/;
...the powerful such as Bill Gates keep investing in long-term research on how to lock people down;
...we leave it to the U.S. government to following the Constitution, including recovering the real purpose of copyright and patents by, e.g., repealing the DMCA;
We will need the likes of the GPL3 to give an option to reduce the inevitable temptation of vested interests to use DRM to subjugate people.
Maybe someone should sit _you_ down and explain to you why you are an idiot. Novell and all the other companies use Free software to make a profit. In exchange, they are asked only to maintain the Freedoms granted by the GPL. That is the _cost_ of using Free software. As long as they maintain the Freedom, no one is after their business. Could you explain to me why commercial entities think you can take GPLed software and use it as you please without obeying the license, or trying to find loopholes?
First, I am NOT the hate-filled idiotic Annomynous Coward. While I am from the good ol' US of A, (Still the most free country in the world despite what Bush Jr has done to try not to make it so) I believe that Open Source through the GPL is the only way to get a REAL competitor to Windows. Despite how important Microsoft was to the OS Revolution (I won't deny MS's contributions to getting a 'computer in every home'), Microsoft will easily help a competitor to make a standard (i.e. Embrace), adding new stuff that the competitor doesn't have (i.e. Extend), and then preventing said competitor from using their stuff when it becomes a defacto standard (i.e. Extinguish). Of course, the GPL prevents this because if you modify the code and publish the product, you accept the conditions of the GPL, which includes having to share the source code with the user, including the modified parts. However companies like Tivo and Novell have created ways to short-circuit GPL v2, by using DRM and Patents... thus GPL v3 closes these two loopholes. Novell and Tivo can gladly stick with GPL v2, but they will have to fork to avoid GPL v3. Meanwhile, most end-users would not care about GPL v2 or v3, just that it is free as in beer, rather as in freedom.
Right now it's still voluntary, yes...but if you know anything about Stallman and/or Bradley Kuhn, then you also know that they are very adamant in their belief that the GPL is the only license with the right to exist. You can be very sure that if Stallman had any ability whatsoever to dictate that the GPL were the only scenario under which software could be distributed or used at all, he would exercise it with great enthusiasm.
What's so great about a world where Bill Gates and Co. are basically entitled to my money because that is the only legal way to use a computer? FOSS doesn't put them out of business but it sure forces a degree of honesty out of them. Bottom line is that he who writes the code chooses the license. That is TRUE freedom whether apparent fascists such as yourself like it or not.The real reason for publishing these five videos separately is so that they are searchable separately by topic.
This makes them more useful, long-run, for people who are just learning about free software -- or about Eben Moglen, for that matter.
- Robin