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The Free Software Foundation's Statement On Canonical's Updated Licensing Terms
New submitter donaldrobertson writes: After two years of negotiations, Canonical has updated the intellectual property rights policy for Ubuntu Linux to address a disagreement over how the software is licensed. The FSF announcement reads in part: "In July 2013, the FSF, after receiving numerous complaints from the free software community, brought serious problems with the policy to Canonical's attention. Since then, on behalf of the FSF, the GNU Project, and a coalition of other concerned free software activists, we have engaged in many conversations with Canonical's management and legal team proposing and analyzing significant revisions of the overall text. We have worked closely throughout this process with the Software Freedom Conservancy, who provides their expert analysis in a statement published today." Richard Stallman thinks there are still other issues to address saying: "While the FSF acknowledges that the first update emerging from that process solves the most pressing issue with the policy ... the policy remains problematic in ways that prevent us from endorsing it as a model for others."
While I am not 100% in agreement with Stallman all the time (EG I am vehemently against toe cheese), where the hell did the quote from him in the TFS originate? It is not in TFA.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Yes, Stallmann is an extremist and I am extremely grateful that he does take that part.
Without people willing to be extreme and to pay the price for that, we would have a much smaller outlook on the world. We would lead smaller debates and go for smaller goals. And yes, we probably would applaud canonical for being very explicitly about them granting you the rights you already had before.
Due to the stupid decisions of Canonical, we have decided to migrate our 3095 Ubuntu boxes to Debian. The future of Ubuntu looks unclear with the clusterfuck that is going on with both the corporation and its community.
He may not be the only voice in the free software world, but he is one of the most proactive.
Linus is sometimes willing to give his $0.02 about something outside the kernel, if you ask directly. RMS may be highly opinionated and abrasive, but at least he's out there pushing back at those that would take away rights. That's certainly more than a couple complaints on some tech forum (said the AC).
I'm still trying to figure out why Stallman can't be mentioned without a dozen users spewing the same cliched tirades, against a person who... has done what, exactly? Advocates a distro (gnewsense) that virtually nobody uses because it unnecessarily removes free software? Yeah, God damn him. He's ruining everything. Well, except for giving us the license that led to Android being an open source project, instead of being another locked down iOS-ish experience. And for giving us the license that's given desktop and server Linux users to millions upon millions of dollars of corporate-sponsored contributions that would have otherwise been locked down and lost in obscurity (also, absolutely destroying what very well might have been a Microsoft monopoly in the x86 server market before it had a chance to take off) whilst the BSD-based OSX remains locked down and illegal to use if you don't buy overpriced Apple hardware.
But no, the man has some 'extreme' personal views, which he does not try to involuntarily foist on any users anywhere and he occasionally tries to convince companies to voluntarily behave in ways that are healthier for the free software ecosystem, so therefore he must be bashed every time his name is mentioned. Oh, and he expects that people who voluntarily agree to the GPL to abide by its terms.
Goddamn terrorist.
* unnecessarily removes unfree software
GNU is nice, but his real contribution was the GPL. Without the GPL, Linux (including servers, x86, and Android) would be nowhere near where it is today. I'd argue even BSD wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today without spillover effects from what the GPL has wrought. In the early days of the GPL, the concept of a corporation giving away source code for free was utterly foreign and many people even argued that it would be legally infeasible for a public corporation to do (responsibility the shareholders, blah blah blah.)
If the GPL didn't exist, corporations would not voluntarily open source ANYTHING for ANY reason and in that 'tragedy of the commons' situation all would suffer (including most IT corporations... except the ones who were already doing well building their own monoliths, e.g. Microsoft.)
Just follow your link, then click on "FAQ". Search for link named "Agreement".
http://assets.ubuntu.com/sites/ubuntu/1473/u/files/section/legal/Canonical-HA-CLA-ANY-I_v1.2.pdf
but he is one of the most proactive.
Nuclear bombs are proactive, but we can both agree they are pretty much never a good thing, can't we?
He takes the nuclear approach, ALWAYS. More harm than good.
Nuclear bombs are not proactive. Nor are they reactive. Nuclear bombs are just that -- nuclear bombs. However, they can be used proactively or reactively, but it is the human person that makes that choice, not the bomb.
He makes everyone else in the industry look normal and well adjusted.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
What price is he paying? Do not get me wrong - I like what he has done but, really, it is not like he has been burdened by it really. He is an extremist and he gets push back from that but that is just the way things go when you are an extremist. I am grateful for him, I am glad that he has the vision he has. I just do not see it as a burden. You say "pay the price for that" like it has been hard. No, he has gained more from his position than he would have had he been just a moderately concerned person where software freedoms are concerned.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Umm... I seem to recall a different story than you. Software was free, source and all. You paid for the hardware and the support.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The thing is, there's really three forms of free/libre/open source and what Linus wanted and what RMS wanted happened to overlap, but RMS is preaching something far beyond the actual requirements of the GPLv2.
1. People will contribute back on their own (non-copyleft)
2. I want your code for my project, no keepsies (Linus)
3. Users should be able to modify everything (RMS)
Linus chose the GPLv2 because he as a developer wants to incorporate additions or modifications others have made into his own project, he doesn't care if end user devices like TiVo lock it down to signed binaries. This seems to be a common sentiment among kernel developers which is why they have made no move towards migrating to GPLv3. That of course puts RMS on full tilt as it's completely contrary to his vision, but he's not getting a lot of support.
The kernel isn't budging, Google seems to prefer the Apache license, LLVM is almost ready to replace GCC and none of the major toolkits have gone GPLv3 only, it's only the GNU projects under FSF control and they're becoming less and less essential for the whole system. Also increasingly more and more of the interesting code moves to services in the cloud, an Android phone is just a front-end to Google. And those are nearly all closed source, the AGPL is a rare beast.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Um. What software are you referring to? Because I remember "don't copy that floppy".
If you're talking about some kind of 80s Sun-ish setup where you paid 5 figures for a workstation, well, despite its success at the time this was not representative of the industry as a whole and that business model obviously was not viable with the rise of the "x86 compatible". I'm specifically talking about the environment surrounding commodity hardware, not early (and doomed) business models that merely shifted the restrictions from software to hardware.
I mean, IBM compatible
I'm fine with debate and criticism of specific points. I even agree with several criticisms of RMS; the point is, he doesn't pose a threat to anyone of importance. His fringe ideas hurt no one. He's done nothing but huge, massively huge good things for the computing world and the few entities he has hurt were the abusive, monopolistic companies holding the rest of us (including plenty of for-profit businesses) back. So, my main point is simply to highlight the hysteria that seems to come up every time his name is mentioned. It seems disingenuous at best, and some kind of demented, pointless paid-shill program at worst.
As for the GPL3, well, RMS is obviously correct in principle. In practice, there are political issues involved involving corporate contributions and Linus's apathy.
Google's dogged preference for Apache (replacing GPL components as quickly as possible) is nothing short of terrifying to anyone who understands how the mobile device market wars are shaping up. Whittling out the GPL components gives them a kill switch for AOSP, which they will use if and only when they need to. Until then, they're going to ride their OSS geek cred for all it's worth and hope no one kicks up too much of a fuss over their very troubling war on microSD slots.
Anyway, I reiterate: permissive licenses didn't see significant corporate contributions until after GPL projects (and in particular the success of companies like Red Hat) proved that it could be work. If permissive is the future then so be it; the fact still remains that it was the GPL that opened the door to this revolution, and where permissive licenses are being preferred they are preferred precisely to the extent that businesses want to steer the community away from GPL alternatives.
In all I don't necessarily disagree with the majority of your post, but stating things as they are at this moment in time is not really the point. The pendulum has swung back and forth a lot over the past couple of decades, and we're still in the middle of a major slugfest over the mobile / cloud markets. Nothing can be known for sure until the dust from that battle begins to settle and Google/Amazon/Apple/MSFT/[other survivors] begin to look around, tighten belts, and decide what their long term policies are re: OSS and user freedom in general.
You realize this kind of thing is like endlessly mocking Gandhi for being bald and barefoot, right? I'm not implying that RMS's actions put him on par with Gandhi; I am merely pointing out that the more you mock the man for his eccentricities (including some of his personal political opinions, which aren't harming anyone), the more shallow and trivial and insincere you appear. If you have something to say about the history or impact of OSS or the current state of affairs, feel free to say so.
If you publicly do things that most people find extremely bizarre, it affects your credibility, even on completely unrelated things.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Ghandi was, as I said, weirdly barefoot... and he also liked to sleep in the same bed as teenage girls (with both naked), sometimes including his niece, in order to test and prove his commitment to celibacy. This, I believe, qualifies as "bizarre" and yet I think the man may have effected a few concrete changes in the world that are worth mentioning.
Linux without RMS ==> Linux without the GPL ==> Linux without significant contributions from Red Hat, Suse/Novell, IBM, Canonical, etc. That doesn't mean you need to support everything that comes out of the man's mouth, but he has an extremely good track record on predicting what will and what won't be healthy for free software re: corporate contributions, which is what this article is about. (See also: Trolltech, BitKeeper)
RMS ain't no Ghandi.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Congratulations on your wonderful reading comprehension. I anticipated and explicitly rejected that lamely predictable misreading of the analogy in my first reply.
It goes further than that. It's the difference between "free" (as in speech) and "free" (as in beer). Its been increasingly the case that you don't own software you paid for, you merely license it.
That's the same with Free Software, it is licensed to you.
At least with Linux you are free to do whatever you want with it.
Within the terms of the Gnu Public License v2.0.