Slashdot Mirror
Tech Writers Spreading FUD About GPLv3
Tookis writes "Tech writers are spreading FUD about GPLv3 because they fear its take up will slow the adoption of Linux, according to this open source writer. "A large number of tech writers — I wouldn't call them journalists and sully my own profession — are fearful that the license will slow adoption of Linux in the workplace. And that would lead to a lessening of their own importance and influence."" So by posting this, am I spreading fud about spreading fud? I think I broke my brain.
Journalism is well beyond being unsullied these days.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Remember, if you are not for GPLv3 then you are for the terrorists, or something...
Sometimes, I wonder if people even know what GPLv3 is. How is it possible for this license to slow adoption of GNU/Linux in any way possible?
InformationWeek published an old mail claiming that it was "latest" post-GPLv3 news.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
True.
That doesn't mean that his arguments don't have merit. It certainly doesn't, but just because these 'tech bloggers' are the other side of the equation and they have a pay check at stake doesn't mean that their argument isn't equally as valid--does it?
I've never even heard the arguments and underpinnings against the GPLv3 concerning the adoption of Linux! Perhaps you should include both sides of the discussion in your article if you wish for me to consider you a journalist.
If I ever saw FUD of FUD, this is it.
My work here is dung.
This is a rumor, not a story. Who are these journalists, and why is it FUD if they opine that GPLv3 is a bad idea?
I'd like to complain about the implied slur on our profession. Heck, I'd far prefer writing man pages for APIs to the sort of "this is the mouse/hello computer" writing that is usually associated with "tech writers." Bleh.
Of course, with many of my fellow writers bearing a closer resemblance to "Tina" from Dilbert than technophiles, maybe I'm speaking for the small minority.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
A large number of tech writers -- I wouldn't call them journalists and sully my own profession
But sullying mine isn't a problem, huh? Technical writer == someone who writes technical documentation, e.g. product manuals. Technical writer != FUD-spreading blogger.
--
hcdejong
(technical writer)
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/ 2007/07/open_source_is_1.html
1 92403106
;-)
In support of TFA: the above Iweek story really takes the cake for "most clueless" author on the subject of the GPL. One can take it as evidence that the GPL3 has become such a buzzword in the community that tech writers feel forced to comment even before they have even the slightest clue what the fuss is all about.
PJ over at groklaw politely stomped the author into the ground as one can see here:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070713
Whle always a fan, I admire her tact here: she did it a lot less painfully than some in comments section of the original article
You, sir, submitter of this "story" are an idiot.
You should have said "tech pundits", not "tech writers". There is an entire profession known as "Technical Writing", sometimes referred to as "tech writing", which has NOTHING to do with self-proclaimed journalists who write about the technical industry.
Get it straight, please. The title of your story shows that you are almost as ignorant as they are.
...I don't agree with the new clauses in GPLv3 as opposed to GPLv2 and although my current licenses contain the "or higher" clause, I am going to be removing that in the coming weeks and leaving the code at GPLv2 only.
I'm paricularly against the "Tivoization" clause and cannot for the life of me see what benefits it gives to the copyright holder or user of the code. All it seems to do as far as I can see is take away the freedom to use my code in the way I originally granted.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Anyone who's installed Feisty Fawn side by side with Vista will tell you quickly, that if FOSS is going anywhere, and Ubuntu and Linux in particular, it's on MORE hard drives than less. I've had less problems finding drivers and getting things up and running in Ubuntu on several machines now, and I've been a die hard Windows user for the last decade.
FUD isn't going to do anything when FOSS is rapidly becoming the easier, cheaper, faster, and better choice for John Q. Public.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
What a useless article, he dismisses people who criticize GPLv3 as people spreading FUD, but offers no rebuttal to their claims. I really have no strong feelings one way or the other about GPLv3, but if you want to convince your readers that the anti-GPLv3 people are wrong, you have to explain why you think that.
How does the reasoning work? GPL3 may be adopted by Linux. This may slow adoption of Linux in the workplace (although I have no idea why - very few people will be affected by the licence, except perhaps a few hardware developers). Somehow this lessens their importance.
These people are tech writers. They write about all sorts of technology. The GPL is just one of many subjects of interest.
Mr. Varghese,
You spend some time in your article attacking various unnamed tech writers for their work on GPLv3, and hold up Brian Profitt of Linux Magazine, and Eben Moglen, as examples of good writing on the topic.
Can you identify a specific column that you disagree with? Or a specific author? Or at least something more specific than the general doom-and-gloom nonspecific "end of FOSS" warning that you quote?
I am far from expert on GPLv3 (haven't even read it), but it strikes me that a large number of the people concerned about version 3 aren't exactly slouches, unless you're prepared to call Torvalds a hack. I'd like a concrete example of a claim you're trying to debunk.
Oh, and while we're at it: when you're looking down your nose at other tech writers that you deem unworthy of the title "journalist," you should probably start trying to observe some fairly basic journalistic principles yourself. For example: Eben Moglen, whom you correctly identify as having worked for the Free Software Foundation, is a co-author of the GPLv3 draft , which doesn't exactly position him as an unbiased observer.
Another '2-page' article (you're welcome for the ad revenue, mate)
n tent&task=view&id=13525&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=1090
So here's the print version
http://www.itwire.com.au/index2.php?option=com_co
I'm not sure what "you'll won't" is supposed to mean.. in "You'll won't have much success in convincing them - play has to go in one direction for them to move forward". Must be Aussie. Then again, the article is incoherent overall.
I'm not entirely sure what the article is about;
is it about the misunderstandings of the GPLv3?
If so - then why doesn't it list and address these misunderstandings? He links to a talk by Moglen in the end and recommends listening to it - but doesn't say why beyond saying that Moglen is a demi-god and by jove you should listen to him.
is it about the purported FUD being spread by other 'tech authors'?
If so - then why doesn't it give examples of this FUD?
is it about the reasonings behind this purported FUD-spreading - namely that the tech authors feel that they would become less relevant if GPLv3 were to become a 'success' in that it would slow adoption of the GPLv3 (huh?) ?
if so - then maybe he could explain -why- he thinks those 'tech authors' are using these reasonings, and how they are flawed in them?
The whole article reads like a bad blog posting.
But goob job on Slashdot for making it front-page material.. must be that 'GPLv3' keyword.
Could someone explain the key differences between GPLv2 and GLPv3? I'd appreciate it and I'm sure many other non-lawyer types would as well. Thanks in advance scholarly slashdotter...
I listened to a talk RMS gave about the GPLv3. It was long and painful. Basically he added clause after clause to take care of cases that he had not thought of before (eg Tivo). But to me it makes it far less elegant and basically impossible to understand by the masses. I think it would be better to keep GPLv2 which can be understood. Sure some Tivo-ish companies may abuse the spirit of it be its better to keep it simple. In RMS's talk he said they changed some wording to make it more international and defined all the terms better. I am OK with that. So lets move to a GPLv2.1 instead of 3.
Let's take Linus Torvald's opinions for one. He, with Stallman, are the two principal (and principle) authors of software covered by the GPL. They could have chosen BSD licensing, and so on if they'd wanted to. The GPL made sense for both. Stallman's leadership and a sense of danger on his part helped evolve the very strict (yet very free) GPLv3 to where it is today. Linus doesn't believe it's necessary at all, and is more purist hubris than actual protection.
I can see both views, and both views make sense given the freedom of the author's to do whatever they please with their code. The GPLv3 makes more sense for me personally, yet others I know think it's potentially highly confining, if 'purist'.
That tech writers think it'll slow down adoption is more of a Microsoft fantasy than reality. That the GPLv3 closes odd loopholes is all the better. I hope that Linus figures out that he actually needs to consider that a GPLv4 needs his input might get him the goals he's seeking. He's going to have to lift his head out of the sand one of these days and help form what he's inadvertenly made (along with Stallman and thousands of others), the most highly viable OS. What was once a ego fantasy is now a reality far beyond anyone's wildest imaginations. There's a maturation point where you're a leader, or a follower of what you've inspired. I hope he picks "leader" and gets off the kernel kick long enough to make corrections suggestions that he can 'lead' with. Simply bashing something (pardon the pun) isn't constructive. It might work in coding, but not when you have to gain consensus.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
FUD isn't slang for something you don't agree with. The article in question might be awful but the story on /. is even worse. It sounds like it was written by a 12 year old involved in a schoolyard scuffle. Any coherent counter argument would have been better than sounding like a goddamned whiny child. If you fight legitimately bad arguments so stupidly it makes your point of view, no matter how valid, sound childish. The person who submitted this story has done GPLv3 no favours.
For goodness sake people. Troll does not mean "I don't agree with him". "Flamebait" is only flamebait if it's written for no other reason than to upset people. FUD is only FUD if it was intended to spread unfounded Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Tech writers too? Does this mean that, the next time I read a software manual, I'll have to endure an anti-GPLv3 diatribe in between descriptions of items in the Edit>Preferences menu?
This article decries critics of GPLv3, dismissing their rants as FUD. The author, however, gives no examples of these critics and offers no evidence for why he considers them to be wrong, nor any ideas of why they would choose to spread their FUD. Besides the terrible writing, formatting and grammar of this article it is needlessly split into two pages, annoyingly prompting you to log in if you want to read the second page. Oddly enough though they will provide you with the full text of the article if you click on the links to print it or view it as a PDF (which, by the way, has even worse formatting than the web formatting).
The Firefox article, while an interesting topic, was really just a regurgitation of a study done by another site rewritten so that it was less informative and more difficult to read. Besides that, it included several obvious typos such as the following:Really, there are countries where IE has not yet reached 20% market share? Are you sure you don't mean Firefox?Ah yes, the beautiful country of Australasia, I hope I can visit it someday!
but I don't see that one going out of fashion.
Linus may have the goal to see his baby widespread, RMS, the FSF and the license they use don't need to win a popularity contest. As long as there is "free code" (in the Nelson Mandela sense) the license is doing its job. If people don't want to agree to the ideals, then write your own license. RMS won't say you can't, although it looks like the people against the GPL3 want to control what license you're allowed to write or use.
hypocrites
Technical writers, sometimes called "tech writers," write manuals and help systems and procedures to help make sense of technology. We are unrelated to "technology writers," who depending on which one you encounter, may be people who failed to fill out admission papers correctly at the asylum or intelligent commentators.
technical writing / development
Not trolling here, just being half serious/half funny--
"...they fear its take up will slow the adoption of Linux..."
I started going to LUG meetings over nine years ago. As much I love Linux, I don't think its rate of adoption could go much slower than it already is.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
One is simply causing confusion. Previously, the GPL seemed to universally mean GPLv2. It was well understood what it meant for something to be GPL'd. People grasped the concept and what rights and restrictions were involved, and thus it was fairly easy to make a informed choice of if it was acceptable in a given situation or not. Now things are confusing. Is it old GPL or new GPL? How does this affect things? This confuses non tech savvy managers, make lawyers scared, and makes it harder for tech people to sell to their bosses.
Another is that the GPLv3 IS more restrictive. I appreciate that the reason for it is to try and give the public more freedom, however for companies making use of it, its more restrictive. It is possible that those companies will find it unacceptable and thus dump Linux. Don't think they can't do it either, Linksys dumped Linux for vxWorks on its routers (allegedly for memory reasons). There are other options out there, and those options will get used if companies decide, rightly or wrongly, that the license on Linux makes it unusable for them.
Yet another would be by creating a perceived problem with OSS. We've seen a real giant (Linus) come out and blast the GPLv3. While that doesn't mean anything ultimately, it can to companies. Now there's concern about a coming divide and what could happen. The "But you've got the code!" argument doesn't hold any water for places that don't have many/any programmers. They want a product that works and is supported. Now while this isn't actually likely to change that, it can create concern that it will.
Mostly it is just a perception thing. Confusion and disagreements are never good, especially if you are the little guy. It makes PHB types nervous and they are the ones who ultimately make the decisions. You can scream till you are blue in the face that it shouldn't be like that, but that is how it is and we have to deal with that reality.
Simply because you are being even worse than the government or media at overusing the word terrorist. For fuck sake people, everyone you dislike is NOT a terrorist. There's nothing wrong with being pissed at the government, especially our current one, but calling them terrorists is the height of stupidity and is to buy in to the very crap they are selling.
This where a strange world if one could coerce others to enter into an 'agreement'. On the face of it the Fear argument is warped. Perhaps it is more the Loathing for the restrictions of the new GPL and the implicit commercial motivation that keep some from adopting it.
Groklaw had a thing to say... and the author of the article then retracted some of his errors (but not all in the Corrections part of the thread).
1 92403106
i d=20070713192403106&title=Dear+David+-+RE%3A+your+ comment+%26quot%3Bperipheral+to+my+opinion+that+th e+GPLv3+may+do+long-term+harm%26quot%3B...&type=ar ticle&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=594620#c594677
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070713
There was a comment following this that was interesting regarding the author still not liking GPLv3 - that concludes that all that GPLv3 does is make software pure as math (the same as the UK Court of Appeal, th UK high court, has done by outlawing software patents)!
see: http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&s
Why does Slashdot run FUD that is incorrect? It really should not see the light of day in the first place?
Nah, it's a different flavor. This one has peanuts in it!
(I should've resisted the urge to post this, but for some reason I find compelled to foist this unpleasant analogy onto Slashdot.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Now, IANAL, and there's probably something really basic I'm missing that would prevent this hack from working, but I'll throw it out there as food for thought:
Some universities have a lot of patents and some of them offer free mirrors for things like kernel.org and sourceforge.net projects. It may be that the act of offering a mirror is protected under the DMCA safe harbor, but if copyright license law is as powerful as some GPLv3 proponents claim, it's not even clear that the DMCA safe harbor would override section 10 of the GPL. In any case, some mirrors work by pulling code rather than letting code be pushed, so that seems like an affirmative act of copying the software and then creating and giving copies to the general public, so an entity operating a mirror might be "conveying" under the GPL.
So, for example, if MIT has a patent I want to use, maybe all I have to do is get committer rights to some relevant project, code up something which infringes the patent, get the patch accepted (never mentioning the patent, of course), and it gets distributed to all the mirrors, including MIT's.
I download it from MIT, and voila! I have a license to use that patent inside that program (and apparently inside any GPLed derivatives I make of that program. Being the proprietary sort of guy I am, I wrap the GPL project's code with another completely proprietary program which controls it and lets the GPLed code do the patented dirty work.
I don't know whether this would work or not, but I'm starting to understand why companies are now marketing "open source" license scrubbers.
The FSF is certainly free to do this with the GPL. But while the consequences of just distributing source under v2 might have been intended to convey patents in this same way, a lot of people didn't realize that because the wording there is not as clear, and the remedies don't appear to be as onerous. V3 section 10 seems to make it very clear that if you convey code which implements a patented invention, you cannot sue anybody over using that invention in that code, and that "convey" would cover the act of proactively operating a mirror site.
This should give pause to a lot of people, not just Microsoft. Right now, "everybody knows" that GPL2 is a safe license, in the same category as BSD, well away from the category of any proprietary license, for being able to freely redistribute source code.
Those who assume the same about GPLv3 do so at their own peril, perhaps to their own detriment. It appears that, for an entity with a valuable patent, inadvertently distributing one copy of GPLv3 software could easily be much more costly than inadvertently distributing a few hundred copies of a Microsoft product.
The way universities work, it is unlikely that the legal counsel stays on top of things like kernel.org mirrors, but it seems that anybody with a patent portfolio who is running a free software mirror of any type ought to take a serious look at their policies and at the terms of GPLv3.
Perhaps one valid component of licensing strategy would be to repudiate GPL v3 (and any similar licenses which purport to appropriate your own patents), just like Microsoft has done. That would basically be a public announcement that, if anybody catches you distributing GPL v3 code, please let you know right away because it is not your intention to ever do so and you will stop distributing immediately, and if anybody thinks they're getting one of your patents out of the deal, you plan on fighting it every inch of the way.
Stallman's ranting and MS's FUD have already made Open Source persona non grata in a big part of the business community.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
And now InformationWeek have replied with a badly executed straw man:
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I don't understand why this wasn't published as a new story! That other /. story lead me to believe one of the most important people in the Linux world hated GPL v3... why is this not corrected? That's a pretty major issue, IMHO.
The universe have more than just one clan of BORG. We use to have just Microsoft Borg. Now I believe we also have FSF Borg, and the Standard Linux BORG.... Or I may just be completely BORGED this monday morning....
One could perfectly well have a Linux system without Gnu tools, and no, it wouldn't be useless. Embedded systems often run a single application and this could be done with tools other than Gnu's.
Yes, and in that case you wouldn't call it GNU/Linux. In fact, they don't really call it anything most of the time because most people don't really care about the operating system of their embedded devices as long as it works. The point isn't that Linux can or can't be packaged with other things. The point is that the linux kernel by itself is not an operating system (neither is GNU for that matter).
Linux uses Gnu for the simple reason that Gnu existed, if it didn't exist it wouldn't be very hard to write. A lot of work, yes, but not as difficult as writing an OS kernel, the hurd is there to prove that.
No, I don't think that is true at all. Writing a kernel is hard, but writing a compiler and toolchain isn't easy either. The Hurd has been slow to get off the ground for a lot of reasons. The difficulty of the task is really only one of them.
The Gnu project needs Linux more than Linux needs Gnu.
That's a pretty stupid statement to make. It's like saying strawberry shortcake needs the shortcake more than the strawberries. No, they both need each other equally. You can package Linux with BSD or GNU with Solaris, but very few people do. Most people package GNU with Linux. Seriously, why do people fight this. It's just a name. RMS wants credit for his part in the creation of the modern linux distribution. Why is that so difficult for people to accept?
For the record, I never refer to my operating system as GNU/Linux because it is tedious, and I prefer to just shorten it to Linux. But it is understandable for RMS to request that people refer to it as GNU/Linux. And, if I was ever writing or speaking about it in some sort of official capacity, I would probably extend him that courtesy.
So let's modify the scenario a bit and see how it fits:
Assume that party A (MIT in the original discussion) has a really valuable patent, and as a service to the community, performs automatic copying of open source projects (mirroring).
Renegade party B slips some infringing code into one of the projects, and party A automatically picks it up and distributes it. Party B gets it on the redistribution and starts disseminating it widely, claiming they have a license for the patent from party A.
So far, this is the original scenario. Now, according to your addition, party A sues party B for damages, for putting the infringing invention in the code in the first place. And I agree that there may be a good chance that party A could win a suit against party B for this.
But, according to a literal reading of the GPL, parties C, D, E, F... who also downloaded the code (written by party B) from party A, directly or indirectly, have now been granted licenses from party A for use of that patent in that code, and they don't suffer from the "unclean hands" of party B.
If party B does not have enough resources to make party A whole for the infringement (basically for letting the entire world use the patent), party A still loses, unless you can show that the last paragraph of section 10 is somehow undone by the suit filed by party A against party B.
So upon reflection, I agree that the unattractive prospect of being sued for the initial infringement makes the deliberate hack I described legally very risky, but if party C is profiting handsomely off the patented code, and party A cannot show any connection between party B and party C, it seems like this clause in the license might be able to provide income for trial lawyers for years.
No, I understand his point. It sounds like it's a company he either works for or has close ties too. I've sometimes been tempted to post on stories related to the company I work at with information that is not public knowledge, but then I remind myself that impressing some geeks on Slashdot with insider knowledge they might want is never worth it.