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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 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.
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.
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.
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
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"
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
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.