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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
Go to hell, communists. You democrats are trying to destroy the United States' only hold over China: They need Microsoft software. When they can get crappy free solutions to do the same, the United States will just continue to become indebted to China and other countries. And it will be all your fault, you Hillary fanboys. For the sake of national security, free software efforts must become against the law. Besides, free software destroys our free market, creating monopolies, by selling at excessively low prices. Would Microsoft get away with giving away free products to take competitors' market share away? No. Neither should these ****ing tree-hugging, Prius-driving free software zealots. The captcha is appropriately "planking."
I'd like someone at linux.com to explain the rationale behind publishing one brief clip per day over the course of the week, instead of just publishing the interview. I'm not saying its a horrible thing to do.. just can't figure out why.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
That's fine and dandy until somebody takes your markets your application and sells it for millions, while you're slaving away. Perhaps you could argue that selling it is "messing with it" -- but that's not necessarily true. And then comes the legal-speak...
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/
That's far too complicated. My "license" simply says, "Go nuts." I won't let anybody prohibit me from using and copying and distributing anything that contains any code that I wrote. You can't steal the sun from me...or something like that.
What?
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.
The value might not be immediately recognized. Plus, by not giving away something like MySQL or Apache, you're hurting the community. All to avoid some extra text at the top of a file? Totally not worth it.
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/
So, you're using the BSD licence.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
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.
I suppose so, but I grant no exclusivity.. Whatever has a piece of me is mine also.
What?
I'll stay out of the capitalist vs. anti capitalist argument if you please. (because not all "Capitalists" are "free marketers" and not all "Anti Capitalists" are "anti market", and generally discussions of which is which and when can get heated and quickly go off topic)
No Flame here...
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?
Maybe they want the story present for multiple days without appearing to have stale news so that more people will become aware of the information.
Maybe they want search engines to return more hits for solid GPL3 related info, so they will pepper the sight with multi-part articles for a while... if a casual browser hits one they will see links to the others w/out having to use more searching.
Maybe they are more concerned about casual users educating themselves on this issue as the hardcore ones are already involved... and they fear a casual user's buffer will fill up half way through the full interview.
Just saying maybe it isn't about profit, which is what a lot of other posters seem to attribute this behavior.
Regards.
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.
That wasn't my response...that was an AC. ;)
Presumably, you'd be OK with that, since you deliberately chose a license knowing that could happen. GPL fanatics always came across as spiteful and greedy to me; BSD licensors, on the other hand, have achieved a state of Zen where they're happy to know others are benefiting from their code. And really, isn't that the real spirit of sharing?
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
The GPL is not anti-bussiness nor anti-capitalist. It is just against one kind of business, that is selling the same software again and again for huge profits at each copy. A business plan that can not be sucessfull on a free society.
Rethinking email
I'm sure that you're pleased to hear that they do.
Pirate Party UK
what usually stops someone is money. it takes money to advertise and push a marketing plan. yes there are free ads and internet space but to push something it usually takes money. where as if you give it away and the community adopts it everything is great, but if someone makes millions you feel like crap and pissed off. just my 2 cents
you bring up a decent view. you shouldn't be modded down or given stupid answers so i'll try to give a good one. i can definitely understand the feeling of wanting money for selling one's work.
i can try to give a rebuttal, but to do so requires primarily me giving an anti-intellectual-property speech. well, here it is. the argument here is that having a world of all free software is _more_ according to capitalist ideals than having a world that is all or mostly proprietary software. the capitalist ideal involves a lot of different things, but a large part of it is that the government should stay out of the workings of things and keep order. second, a big part of capitalism is having people invest in something then get a benefit later because they invested wisely in some corporation.
if we get rid of software (or other stuff) patents or copyrights or whatever, there will be fewer laws. this means that people are, literally, freer to do stuff. since copyright and patent involve governments stepping in and telling people not to do stuff (much like with real property), a person who desires smaller government would prefer property laws be there only for situations that disrupt the system (in other words, it primarily depends on whether you think an idea can be property).
a big thing about capitalism that separates it from the simple ideals anarchy or libertarianism is the concept of capital-- that is, one invests in a way that he wishes to see returns. this spirit would live on in a world without sofware patents and software copyright, and we already see the beginnings of it. many corporations hire people to work on open source stuff (probably the biggest example is ibm, though they're not the best example since they have a huge stake in keeping z/os and aix proprietary). basically, if someone wants some software, he and others who want software to do something would invest in some group of coders who would then produce the software. the benefit to the investors is not as obvious as investing in stocks and bonds, but it would produce the same net effect; if the investors were wise in their choice and thus the software is useful to them, they benefit.
at the same time, software or information freedom has all the benefits of communism without the downsides. if i and some friends want a program, we can code it or hire people to code it. then, if we give it away, we are not made worse off, while the world can benefit from it. communism didn't work because the efforts of a person weren't seen by that person.
basically, it's got the best elements of laissez-faire and communism. it's pretty compelling if you look at it that way. businesses that have built up on intellectual property would be harmed, and significantly so. but the practice of coding would definitely not die, or even diminish (most coding and/or computer science is done for in-house stuff, not for sale of a software product).
ok, that got kind of disorganized, but anyway, my 2 cents.
the privacy of one's mind is important.
you do have something to hide.
No, no it is not It is against people putting restrictions on the use of software once it has been obtained. These rescrictions can include restriction to modify, redistribute, or even just use in a way other than originally intended. They are against this because they feel it directly affects the freedoms of you and me. Most people in the modern world use computers, many on a daily basis. They say that if restrictions are placed on how the computers are used, then restrictions are placed on how people live their lives.
"sudo rm -rf your-face"
If we take freedom to be the ability to make decisions that mainly affect you, and power to be the ability to make decisions that mainly affect others, then we could say that the choice of license is an exercise of power. For more on this opinion, see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.ht
>that Novell would have to suffer though? Sure they earned money from m$ but is that so bad? they shouldnt have gpl3 hurt novell imho.
Money from MS in itself has nothing to do with it. Indeed, of the three parts of the deal--business, technical, and patent, it is just the patent agreement that is the problem. Fixing the loophole that it exploited is far more important than the fates of corporations, particularly ones that have shown willingness to exploit find and exploit such loopholes.
If you are unconvinced about the badness of the patent agreement, just do a search--microsoft novell patent agreement--to find links of outrage about it.
Someone needs to sit a few people from Novell down at some point and explain to them that a desire to ensure that businesses suffer harm was arguably one of the main motivations behind the GPL having been written at all.
Tell that to the thousands of companies saving billions of dollars by using GPL software.
For once, I wish someone could actually give me a reasoned rebuttal on why they believe that I'm wrong in believing that (at least the intention behind) the GPL is largely anticapitalist
The GPL is neither capitalist nor socialist. Capitalism and socialism are systems for allocating scarce resources. Free software attempts to bypass that issue by removing scarcity altogether, specifically the artificial scarcity imposed by copyright.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Please explain to me how a developer choosing to license software with the GPL is "anti-capitalist?" All the GPL does is grant additional rights to the user, provided they abide by the terms of the license. If they don't abide by those terms, they are not entitled to those additional rights.
How is this different from commercial software? It comes with a license as well, outlining the terms under which you may use it. If you do not wish to abide by the terms of the license, you are free to try another product with a different license (BSD, for example). Nobody is forcing you to use this particular software. And nobody is preventing another business from releasing software under the license of their choice.
What is "anti-capitalist" about users and developers having choice?
I don't care why you're posting AC
I think there is a good argument to be made that software is generally so cheap(one guy can write an app in a month or two that doubles the productivity of thousands of people for years, that's cheap), that the market for software is mediated by factors other than price. For commodity software(Operating systems, web servers, most other servers), the cheapest way to obtain value may well be to share code with other consumers. In that situation, the GPL is equivalent to a fairly simple contract - "I'll help you, but you have to help me too".
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Most that I know who write their code under the GPL just want to have a good life and share with like minded.
Sharing != giving away.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Others have said it, probably better, but the GPL is not really aligned with either socialism or capitalism, merely with the idea that software (and perhaps more generally information, but it only deals with software) should not have artificial restrictions placed on its duplication. This embraces aspects of socialism ("share the wealth") and capitalism (only scarce commodities have value, and information by its nature is not scarce). You can argue about whether it's beneficial to an economy to enforce artificial scarcity through patents and copyrights, but that's really not a question of capitalism vs socialism.
Now, many people argue that the FSF is hypocritical because in a very real sense, GPLed software is less free than, say, Berkeley or MIT Licensed software. However, IMO this is consistent with their aim not merely to create free software, but to rid the world of non-free software. Basically, you can embrace their view that software should be free (as in freedom) and reap the benefits of their efforts. If they did not choose a license that required you to join the movement by making your derived software free, then they'd merely be aiding those who use their software and give nothing back to the community.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. As a proprietary developer, you lose nothing due to the existence of GPLed software. You're not free to use that code in your product, but in your view you had no right to expect anyone to license you software that would do what you needed anyway. I frankly don't understand the argument that the GPL somehow takes something away from would-be proprietary developers. Sure, it's harder to sell your program when someone can download a GPL competitor for free (neglecting support costs), but hey... that's capitalism at its finest. If someone is willing to sell for $0, only a broken market would allow you to sell at >$0.
It's not exactly rocket surgery.
when reading about the Red Hat Summit, did anyone else wonder if he was going to be sitting around with a bunch of elderly women wearing red hats and purple boas?
SRY
However, you need to keep in mind that those "huge profits" are paying off the costs of development. There's an old joke that in the software business, the first copy costs $1 million, and every copy after that costs $1.50. When you consider profits, you have to factor in cost. Of course, that's obstensibly why the GPL exists: without it, you'd have companies "borrowing" code, significantly reducing the cost of development but contributing nothing back.
I agree that the ultimate goal of groups like the FSF in eliminating commercial software is targetted against one particular business model. However, I personally think that it's wrong-headed. There is a place for both commerically developed and supported software, and a place for open-source, free (as in beer, and freedom) software. If you remove the "profit motive" from software development entirely, the overall quality of software will eventually go down, and there will be less innovation. Certainly people will continue write software because they enjoy it, but one has to prioritize one's ability to eat. If writing software doesn't allow you to meet your financial needs, then it's effectively downgraded from being a profession to being a hobby. I don't think that's a good road to travel down, for programmers or for end users.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein
And THAT right there is why it's not completely crazy to suggest that the (intention behind the) GPL is anti-capitalist. It's not crazy to suggest that if Stallman could, he would prohibit all licenses but the GPL. (There are quotes from the FSF website and from FSF people earlier in the topic that explicitly say as much.)
Yes, plenty of companies save/make tons of money via Free software. Stallman does not care. Stallman has shown in many ways that he cares not about people, and especially not about companies, but about only his own ideas. One of his ideas is "All software everywhere has to be Free." There is no room in his worldview for "Free software over here, proprietary software over there." Not even as a temporary situation until the Free products are better than the proprietary products. He has to live with it for now, but if he had the power he wouldn't. He would make it GPL or nothing; and that's what makes Stallman's ultimate idea of Free software communistic: its lack of voluntariness.
I'm not saying, however, that he's completely anti-capitalist. As I said above, he could not care less how money is made or saved with Free software; he does, however, see it as an evil that companies can make selling proprietary software a primary source of income, because he is not just for Free software, but vehemently AGAINST proprietary software.
So far as I can see, the OSI is an attempt to keep all/most of the benefits of the FSF's position while moderating their worldview and not coming across as wacko as Stallman does. I think this is fine, and I think most "open-source"y people are fine living alongside Stallman AND alongside proprietary software. They just want to make the best software they can and help the most people they can. Free software just happens to be their best way of doing that. They DO care about people, not just their own ideas.
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
nt
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You start talking about openness and choice and they feel threatened by that for some reason.
They're too dumb to figure out how to make money without keeping secrets, and perhaps they don't think they could convince somebody their ideas are correct without the coercive use of force.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Just a thought. Something to discuss about...
FSF writes GPL and FSF holds copyrights to GNU software? This means that FSF has very large influence on GPL licensed software. Not directly of course but when they choose to move GNU stuff from v2 to v3 others are most likely to follow, some maybe even forced to. Could one even say FSF has monopoly on GPL? Just kidding :)
So FSF isn't actually forcing developers to move to v3 but they sure has a strong influnce on this matter. Maybe that's what's bugging some people?
You don't know what you don't know.
***i watched you change into a fly***
But don't forget that the only reason FOSS is sucessfull is because it have much lower development costs than proprietary software. Otherwise, you wouldn't even listen about it.
Anyway, if there is a place for proprietary software (I think there is, but it is so small that we won't miss it if copyrights go away), that development model will continue to be sucessfull, GPL existing or not.
Rethinking email
The goal is NOT to eliminate commercial software!
If it's trying to eliminate anything its proprietary software.
You might say, 'Well what's the difference?' The difference is that Free Software can still be commercial software. It would just be commercial software which does not restrict the user. Sure, it requres a different business model, but it can still be done.
"sudo rm -rf your-face"
Large corporate "end users" of gplv3 software will use this provision to contract directly a seperate patent peace with large non-distributors with possibly bogus patent claims. (This time they will not go through a conveyor intermediary like Novell).
The "end user" will not be subject to the anti-patent provisions because they only "receive" and "run" the program. The non-distributor will not be subject to the anti-patent provisions, because as a non-distributor, non-copyer, non-everything elser, they do not require a license under copyright law.
In order to protect its patent peace, and in order not to run afoul of the gplv3 anti-patent provisions, the corporate "end user" must insure that it remains a pure "end user", that is, a person that "receives" and "runs" the program only. It will prevent its employees from making any contribution to any gplv3 project, even bug reports, so that it does not become a "modifier". The corporate "end user" must become a pure "free rider" in order to protect its patent peace.
This can not be what the authors of draft gplv3 intended.
The existence of this scenario, actually makes the Novell-MS deal a "good thing". Apologies to Martha Stewart.
Consider a situation that Eben Moglen has recently discussed.
Suppose there is a corporate "end user" so politicly dangerous to MS, that MS must make a peace with it before proceeding with the FUD war. Like say, the NY stock exchange.
Which method is preferable, from the point of view of the Free software community, for the NY exchange to receive it's patent peace? Remember these are corporate suits we are talking about; They care nothing about principles for freedom or the free software movement, They WILL make a separate peace if it seems advantageous from a financial prospective and not too risky.
Under my scenario, direct agreement with MS, the section 11 anti patent provisions would apply to the NY exchange, if it lost its "pure end user" status. Therefore the NY exchange will zealously guard this status, preventing its employees from making any contribution to a gplv3 project.
If the NY exchange, gets its patent peace through the Novell-MS deal, then the NY exchange has not made any agreement with MS, and its agreement with Novell probably does not even mention the Novell-MS deal. So the section 11 provisions would not apply to the NY exchange, so the exchange could go ahead and agree to the gplv3 and allow its programmers to make contributions to gplv3 projects.
Clearly the second scenario, is preferable from the point of view of the free software community.
There are reference books at the library that list the contact information for every fortune 500 company. MS has the money on hand to pay someone to look up this info and try to make agreements with them all.
Let's stop being so mean to Novell. Novell has only done what corporations can be expected to do: Exploit every loophole and ambiguity, just like water flows into every crack, crevice and fissure, as it moves down hill.
Do we really want there to be only one corporate free software distributor?
You raise an interesting point. The FSF does swing a big hammer, but ultimately the developer and user still have the choice to move on to something else, just like with commercial software. The advantage free software has over its commercial counterpart (and the reason I believe it does not conflict with capitalism) is that it provides opportunities for small businesses to fill a niche by adding something of value (training, support, implementation etc) to an existing project to differentiate themselves from the competition, or to use an existing tool to create something new. People can do this with commercial software too, but the price of admission is often too high, and there is less flexibility (freedom?) with regard to how the tools are used.
If you think about it, copyright itself is actually "anti-capitalist." It is an artificial restriction placed on the market to give an advantage to a particular entity (the copyright holder). But you won't hear proponents of commercial software arguing against copyright. And all software licenses are really just extensions of copyright (if you do this, you will get these additional benefits).
It's funny, the people who always talk about Capitalism and free markets seem to be more interested in maintaining the status quo, rather than creating conditions where entrepreneurs can actually thrive.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Someone mod the parent up. Scary read.
Indeed, since copyright is a violation of Laissez-faire economics by being a coercive monopoly (specifically a government-granted monopoly), it is obviously anti-capitalist. It may be fruitful to contrast your opinion of copyright as "anti-capitalist" with the Copyright Act of 1790, which begins with the introductory words "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning". Its motivation was stated in the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution, but looking at the rationale (see Senate Report No. 104-315) for its extension (see Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act) from the original total of 28 years to today's 95 years (corporate ownership), "the continued economic benefits of a healthy surplus balance of trade", there is an obvious shift towards a economic mindset. Actually, there is a complete shift I would rather say. When devised, copyright was never intended as a direct instrument of economics, so its effect as "anti-capitalist" would have been subordinate to its original goal of being an instrument "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Instead, what we see today is rather bizarre. For a truly eerie prospect of what to expect, consider this statement by Mary Bono (see Congressional Record No 139, pages H9951 and H9952):
Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed of by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress.
(Yes, the evidence is there, despite denials). In plain english, and for all practical purposes, there is no limit to copyright protection anymore - by 2018, both houses of the United States Congress will pass a new act to further extend copyright, as a formality. How one concludes that "securing for limited Times" should mean "forever less one day" rather than a reasonable amount of time, as in reasonably within ones life-time, or more meaningfully as in reasonably useful within ones life-time (such as, say, 6 years for software), is beyond me. The economic reasoning behind perpetual copyright is explained by professor Neil W. Netanel (see Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society):
This "neoclassicist" approach posits that, far from simply inducing the creation and dissemination of new expression, copyright serves as a vehicle for directing investment in existing works. Neoclassicists would accordingly treat literary and artistic works as "vendible commodities," best made subject to broad proprietary rights that extend to every conceivable valued use. In this manner, neoclassicists contend, market pricing can direct resource allocation for the marketing and development of existing creative expression in an optimally efficient manner.
I would be inclined to conclude that, in a world of conglomarates, market forces replace Learning as the "optimally efficient manner" by which creative expression can be developed. Obviously, this is utter nonsense, but I would say it captures the essence of what proponents of perpetual copyright would have us believe. The true and unstated objective is, of course, to preserve existing monopolies. As pointed out by Timothy R. Phillips, "The framers assumed, as did Adam Smith, th
This goes little offtopic and I'm sure this has been discussed here earlier but...
You're propably right. This is one reason why if I ever release any code into the "wild" I use BSD license. But without copyright laws I don't think I could add any restrictions to my code and how it is distributed among people and I would have to take extra measures to prevent my code from leaking outside my domain. I'm not a lawyer, but I've taken couple of lessons on business law, and my understanding is that if there is no law preventing copying (copyright law) then it's OK to copy whatever you like and this prevents GPL or any other license from working since there is no-one holding rights to that copy. At least here in Finland where anything that is not explicitly forbidden is implicitly permitted :)
You don't know what you don't know.
The difference is that Free Software can still be commercial software.
Not really in any kind of a practical sense for small ISVs. When people are given the option of paying (obstensibly for support), the vast majority of them choose not to. They'll happily use whatever you've written and pay you not a nickle for it. If the last 10+ years have shown anything, it's that people really don't make the distinction between "free, as in freedom" and "free, as in beer". To the vast majority, free is free. And depending on the charity of strangers to eat and pay your bills is not a business model.
What it would do is shift everything to a service model, moving software off the desktop. Some aspects of the business are already going that way of course, but I'm just not sure it's a good thing for independent developers.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein