Slashdot Mirror
Stallman Unsure Whether Firefox Is Truly Free
Slatterz writes "Among the theories Stallman bandies about in this Q&A are: Facebook may not share private data with the CIA, Firefox isn't really 'free software,' and his dreams of a day where nobody is involved in developing or promoting proprietary software. Agree or disagree?"
He is sure Firefox was not free.
He is knows the problems have been corrected.
He is not sure right now because he uses lynx.
He in fact says:
It is not. The Firefox logo is not free. Thus, any software that includes that logo is non-free also, and Debian developers know it very well
MOD THE CHILD UP!
All of the code is open source and tri-licenced. Do with it what you want.
No, they aren't, because the Firefox name and logo are registered and well-defended trademarks, so you can't modify them, etc. Iceweasel is Free, though.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
What about gaming?
Yeah, what about it? Wesnoth rocks and many old game engines are "free" already (well, Open Source for now). Companies could keep the content proprietary if they like and charge for serving it from their servers, I suppose. Meanwhile you could play with your own homemade content... Sounds good to me.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
You are talking about in-house software which employs about 90% of programmers out there. People will continue to commission that sort of software regardless of the copyright model or lack of one. The only difference free software makes is that they will have a pool of free libraries to use which will make development cheaper and the end product more reliable.
"You can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid." Richard Stallman
"Programmers could develop custom software by day, develop general purpose free software for fun. Or pay people for developing free software. Or sell support, or copies of free software." Richard Stallman
It seems RMS fully supports the idea of paid software development. I wonder why so many people think differently - poor reporting, or just personal bias?
How does he restrict how anyone licenses their software? All he has the power to do is choose how the software he writes is licensed. Considering this, his ideals must mean a lot to people considering the extraordinary amount of free software out there today.
Your answers:
"Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
Yes, because the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover the code you write. Using them does not place any restrictions, legally, on the license you use for your code.
Some programs copy parts of themselves into the output for technical reasons - for example, Bison copies a standard parser program into its output file. In such cases, the copied text in the output is covered by the same license that covers it in the source code. Meanwhile, the part of the output which is derived from the program's input inherits the copyright status of the input.
As it happens, Bison can also be used to develop non-free programs. This is because we decided to explicitly permit the use of the Bison standard parser program in Bison output files without restriction. We made the decision because there were other tools comparable to Bison which already permitted use for non-free programs."
No, it isn't. It is generally accepted that the copyright of user generated output of a program is controlled by that user. Some rare (inevitably proprietary) licenses do claim copyright over output of the program, but no open source license does that.
You are ignorant and wrong. Software up to 1979 was not copyrighted (it was an "innovative" use of copyright by Bill Gates at the time that started this trend).
No, but be fair: there were various software programs protected as trade secrets. And I'm not entirely sure if Gates' use of copyright protection for software was a first or not.
If anything, the involvement of for-profit corporations using closed-source has crippled the progress of software, as you would expect exponential progress in a field such as software, but arguably software progress has slowed down since 1979.
Not really so much, I don't think. It's just that we've arrived at some fairly mature and stable ideas about software that just aren't likely to be changed. Foremost among those is the concept, design, and philosophy of Unix.
My blog
It's ok to get some other sap to commit unconscionable behavior on your behalf?
He had the "sap" delete the offending software and replace it with something he wanted to use.
He is not able to install Linux? (Possibly because he keeps looking in the library under 'G'.) Installing Linux is not worth his time, but he has a sap with less worthy time to do these things?
I promise you RMS is capable of installing Linux. I imagine the conversation went something like this: "This thing doesn't have a CD-ROM. I have three speeches in the next two days - could you figure out how to get Linux onto it while I'm packing?"
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You're referring to an issue that was solved earlier by altering the User-Agent string to reflect that it was a Debian fork, and you didn't mention that the main reason for this was back-porting later Firefox security fixes to older Firefox versions. The issue at hand is that the Firefox logo has a branding license (see grandparent post) which is incompatible with Free Software licenses and thus it cannot be wholly released as Free Software. (If I recall correctly, the branding license is more clearly incompatible in small part due a policy change on these forks, amplifying the logo issue that had been largely ignored up until that point).
This issue surfaces with Debian because they, like Stallman (but unlike Shuttleworth for Ubuntu), will not make compromises in their definition of Free Software. The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) are not compatible with the Firefox branding licenses, and that will not change in the future (DFSG is also not compatible with the GFDLv2, another non-code license, which causes similar issues).
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
You also gain nothing from their work. The BSD license gives you more freedom to simply hand out your work and not have to worry where it goes to, but the GPL gives you the opportunity to see some benefit out of someone else deriving your software.
Your freedom remains intact when someone derives your code and slaps an EULA on it, but not the user's or the code's (if you believe software has rights of it's own.)
Neither the GPL or the BSD license is there to save your ass, it's to protect the end user.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
> Well, you better erase that Linux distro off your hard drive if you'll only use software that doesn't use trademarked names.
It is a matter of how the trademark is licensed. I can rebuild everything in a typical Linux distro and redistribute it. Yes the Debian or Fedora trademarks are an exception but there is an easy method provided to deal with that because modification and redistribution is encouraged. And note how the whole respin scene IS being brought into the fold in both projects and the trademark issues are being dealt with. The single exception is Firefox. Rebuild the unmodified sources and you have a package that can't be redistributed without entering into a legal agreement with Moz Corp. See the difference?
Rebuild, modify an rebuild, do whatever you want within reason and you can still redistribute the Linux kernel package and still cann it "Linux", you can even use the mods with the Penguin on the boot screen.
Rebuild Samba and you can redistribute it. Add some patch ya got from the Internet (perhaps a security patch) and yup, you can still redistribute it and even call it Samba.
Just rebuild Firefox and you can't call it Firefox anymore. All binary copies of Firefox must originate from a source under contractual control of Moz Corp. Not Free.
Democrat delenda est
One of the things he argues for is that copyrighted works that function as tools should have GPL like freedoms. So yes, he does argue that developers should loose freedom to exploit their work in the way they see fit because he's got his eye on a much bigger freedom.
You can agree or disagree if that's a good thing but he is honest about what he believes and why he believes it.
Nick