This raises interesting questions about how Skype and eBay together will try to avert cyber criminals from using security flaws in either system to their advantage.
Look at what Yahoo! did to the alleged Chinese "spy"—work with the Chinese government to release information posted online via Yahoo! servers. Reporters without Borders was surprised how easy it was for Shih Dao (forgive my misspelling) to be caught, but it turns out that Yahoo! handed the Chinese government information on this reporter that was widely miscited as a spy after the reporter used Yahoo!'s hosting service to report on censorship activity. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's radio program "Counterspin" has a report on this that is worth listening to (about 6 minutes and 40 seconds into the file). Unfortunately this is only available in proprietary and patent-encumbered formats, but perhaps it airs on a local radio station near you.
The GNURadio homepage shows samples of HDTV images received and decoded successfully. If we give up because we suspect opposition, we'll surely lose our rights. If we fight technologically and politically through organized action we may secure our rights.
Systm has a show on MythTV in a variety of formats including Ogg Vorbis+Theora. The show is licensed to share under a Creative Commons license, as are the other episodes of Systm.
There's nothing to stop the harm as long as you run non-free software. The reason spyware, adware, and such can work is that nobody but the proprietor can inspect, share, and modify the program. This means that nobody else can distribute an improved version without the annoying or malicious parts of the program.
So, even if one runs a free software operating system and runs non-free software on top of that, one is not safe from the harm of malicious software. The solution is to run a free software OS and run nothing but free software on top of that.
As for DRM, the EFF has pointed out how DRM is already being leveraged against users. Fighting this will require more organization around the idea that one's customers don't deserve to be treated so shabbily.
E-books don't deserve to become mainstream so long as they are implemented in a way that makes readers lose the freedoms they have with paper books, which appears to be the main concern for publishers who push for e-books. The publishers and proprietary software development businesses are hoping you'll make this decision on price and forget about what you're losing along the way.
RMS has postulated that some publishers would prefer to get us used to e-books where lending, copying, reselling, and other freedoms are not allowed. Then, after we're used to e-books being available, paper books can be discontinued leaving only e-books. Thus a new regime can be established where people become used to the lesser freedom they have with e-books without really noticing the switch and people will be less likely to question that loss in freedom.
I don't need to rely on the argument that Firefox is more secure or has more features than Microsoft Internet Explorer. I prefer the argument that cannot be trumped by getting lost in a horse race of technical features; George Ou arguments aren't his alone and I'm sure that similar arguments will be made as time goes on.
Instead, I choose to acknowledge that Firefox lets me keep my software freedom and Microsoft Internet Explorer does not. Software freedom means that I can inspect, fix, and share the program (or improved versions of the program) instead of relying on a proprietor to do that for me. This matters for non-programmers despite their inability to directly leverage the freedom to modify the program because they distribute copies of the program, and they can get programmers to do the work the work that they cannot do themselves. Collectively, this means we all benefit from an improved browser and treating each other in an ethically justifiable way. Proprietary software, by comparison, keeps users helpless and divided. The Mozilla Foundation should have been using these past years to educate users about the power and social importance of treating users right by valuing freedom for its own sake as well as leveraging the practical benefits of freedom.
...and software freedom is left out of the picture entirely, users have no reason to stick with free software. After reading the list of items Scott Berkun posted and noticing the lack of software freedom as a point of discussion, even amongst Firefox proponents, I think there is little reason to keep users like Berkun on Firefox. The FSF warned us of this years ago:
"Years ago, free software developers noticed this discomfort reaction, and some started exploring an approach for avoiding it. They figured that by keeping quiet about ethics and freedom, and talking only about the immediate practical benefits of certain free software, they might be able to ``sell'' the software more effectively to certain users, especially business. The term ``open source'' is offered as a way of doing more of this--a way to be ``more acceptable to business.'' The views and values of the Open Source movement stem from this decision.
This approach has proved effective, in its own terms. Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn't all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step.
Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage. Countless companies seek to offer such temptation, and why would users decline? Only if they have learned to value the freedom free software gives them, for its own sake. It is up to us to spread this idea--and in order to do that, we have to talk about freedom. A certain amount of the ``keep quiet'' approach to business can be useful for the community, but we must have plenty of freedom talk too."
The Mozilla Foundation doesn't discuss software freedom when they discuss their software, and their silence encourages their users to remain quiet on the issue as well never learning what software freedom is or how it makes a difference in their lives. The Mozilla Foundation talks about how they support choice in the browser marketplace and they talk about how their browser is more secure than others. Neither of these are terribly compelling reasons to switch to Firefox because they're, respectively, not true and not a competitive advantage. Now that Microsoft Internet Explorer will gain some of the features Firefox touts (tabbed browsing, increased standards conformance, increased security, etc.) users will have little reason to stick with Firefox.
Before Firefox and the Mozilla suite were available, one could choose from a variety of browsers including Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Opera. Having a choice in the marketplace only requires two alternatives, but here were at least three. Thus choice was satisfied. Choice is a very weak and easily subverted criteria as well—none of these web browsers were free software. In practical terms, this means that none of the users of these browsers had any chance to learn what these programs were really doing on their computers, nor any chance to change what those programs were doing if they learned the program was not doing what they wanted the program to do. Finally, this means that if users figured out a way to change the program (extremely difficult to do because most users only have a binary), users had no legal way to share their improved version with their community. The users were kept unable to help themselves or their community.
Microsoft Internet Explorer will continue to come with Microsoft Windows and Firefox will continue to be a download away. Coupled with the lack of any discussion on software freedom, this means that as MSIE gains more features that make it more competitive with Firefox, there is less reason for any MSIE user to switch away from MSIE.
You missed the jist of the grandparent's remark. The grandparent poster realizes what you said but was pointing out how "intellectual property" ("IP") is overbroad. This case is actually, according to the grandparent, limited only to trademark law.
This is part of the reason why discussing anything in terms of "intellectual property" is a bad idea. People don't really understand what they're talking about and the term is also used as a way to speak overbroadly. If we are to mount an effective critique of these disparate laws, as is called for so frequently in the instances that reach/. readers, we cannot afford to lose sight of the many elements which separate the diverse laws referred to by "intellectual property". Lawyers and courts know the difference between, say, copyright and patent infringement. As these cases increasingly involve ordinary people, not just businesses, it behooves people to learn how these laws work so they can defend their interests.
It's hardly convincing to speculate on what a license will say and then contemplate the outcome of scenarios from one's own speculation. I prefer to review the GPLs we have available to us here and now and then give the new GPL the same consideration. This requires waiting for the new GPL to be published.
Is FileVault a free software program? I ask because parts of MacOS X are proprietary and parts are free software; if the program is non-free software, then I'd be curious to know how anyone could answer the question about how it encrypts in such a way that the answer would be informative.
I have an Epson Perfection 1260 flatbed scanner and it works perfectly, right out of the box under GNU/Linux. The only tricky part had to do with Epson's programming that resides inside the scanner--old SANE software would do something with the stepper motor that it would burn itself out if you scanned above 200DPI or so (if you kill your Epson Perfection 1260, it can be fixed). I figured that it's silly to call this a SANE bug because no device should allow any series of commands to burn itself out. I mention this only in the unlikely event that you plan to use the scanner on an old free software system (circa Red Hat GNU/Linux 9). If you're running some free software system that is more recent, ignore this caveat.
SANE's motor settings (since version 1.0.10) have been changed to not do what this scanner cannot handle correctly, and now you can use this scanner at whatever resolution it will support, plug and play.
One problem with GNOMEmeeting is that its decentralized design makes it harder to set up and use than Skype for non-technical users in common network configurations. Being behind a NAT (which a lot of users are) makes GNOMEmeeting more difficult to configure. Skype works right out of the box, even behind a NAT, but Skype is more of a risk because if the central Skype server is unreachable for any reason, the simplicity of the client vanishes too. A central call routing server also makes it easier for third parties (like the organization that runs the central server) to record phone calls since all calls pass through their servers.
Also, you get to keep your software freedom with GNOMEmeeting and you don't with Skype. Practical implications of this are inspection, sharing the program with others, and changing the program to suit your needs. So, if Skype's client software is doing something that you don't want to do, not being able to inspect the program (or get someone to inspect it for you) means that you probably won't figure out the bad behavior until it is too late and has been doing the bad behavior for some time (assuming you ever figure it out at all). There is a trustworthiness barrier to including malevolent code in free software and GNOMEmeeting is no exception. Anyone who wants to learn programming can inspect GNOMEmeeting to make sure it's not doing something it shouldn't be doing. Finally, Skype's license demands unreasonable monitoring of the Skype website if you distribute a copy of the software. This is one element of the license that makes the program non-free: if two people are unable to access the Internet but can share programs with each other, one person cannot give a copy of Skype to the other because they cannot constantly monitor the website to see if there's an update as the Skype license requires.
Your post would have been more productive had you avoided calling the GNU General Public License "viral". What you think of the GPL is not on topic here, as this discussion primarily concerns how the public domain works, not your views on how distributed GPL derivatives are licensed. Similarly, a previous poster used the word "fell" to describe entry into the public domain. I'd argue that the popularity of the term in this context is irrelevant and that we are better served by examining the connotation that being in the public domain is somehow lower or lesser than being in copyright.
Getting back to your point raised by calling the GPL "viral", there is a bit of this for the public domain as well. Works in the public domain remain in the public domain even if fragments of them are built upon in other copyrighted works. There are parts of the movie Amelie which come from the Prelinger archives. These fragments are in the public domain and one can extract them from Amelie and end up with a series of public domain fragments. So, the public domain is self-preserving but this effect doesn't extend as far as the power copyright holders have in licensing derivative works. Of course, it's possible to transform the work so completely that such extraction is impossible.
Along that line, I highly recommend reading the new EFF essay on DRM limitations in popular music services (iTunes music store, Microsoft's music store, Napster, and RealNetworks' music store). I forsee this page becoming a reference on why it is a bad idea to do business with these music stores. The license terms on the songs are sufficiently restrictive that I'll never buy anything from them, but to know that I'd have to overcome some technological hurdle to regain a sliver of the rights I have with records, tapes, and audio CDs, I'm sure to recommend to my friends that they avoid these places entirely.
Jonathan Zdziarski makes many claims with nothing to back them up, then draws incorrect conclusions based on those claims.
One of the things I've heard, which doesn't make much sense to me, is the idea of changing the GPL to deal with 'use' rather than 'distribution', which would affect companies like Google and Amazon.
"At a fundamental level, the APSL makes a claim that, if it became accepted, would stretch copyright powers in a dangerous way: it claims to be able to set conditions for simply *running* the software. As I understand it, copyright law in the US does not permit this, except when encryption or a license manager is used to enforce the conditions. It would be terribly ironic if a failed attempt at making a free software license resulted in an extension of the effective range of copyright power."
Zdziarski continues:
The argument seems to be that some people feel building your infrastructure on open source should demand a company release all of their proprietary source code which links to or builds on existing GPL projects.
First off, the GNU GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation with an eye toward software freedom, and it was written well before there was such a thing as the "open source" movement. Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman made it very clear that software freedom, not mere "open"ness, would be the measuring stick by which the GPL3 would be judged a success. Hence, the GPL is properly credited as a free software license. This is important not only to tell the truth about who wrote the GPL and why, but to understand what it says and why. Software freedom is the very thing the open source movement was build to not discuss. To this day, the Open Source Initiative (which coined the term "open source", defined it, and determines which licenses comply with its terms) belittles the FSF in their FAQ as "ideological tub-thumping". Which movement you side with (if either) is your business. But it should be important to be fair to the differences that exist between the movements. One practical difference between the two movements is that free software licenses guarantee private derivatives ("You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way."), OSI-approved licenses do not guarantee private derivatives, hence the FSF's unwillingness to give their imprimateur to the early revisions of the Apple Public Source License.
Second, no American company can legally distribute proprietary derivatives of GPL'd software. If they don't like this, they should write their own software or find something under a license which they can build on and distribute without also distributing their changes.
They argue that the open source community hasn't benefited from companies like Google and Amazon. Well, from a source code perspective that might be somewhat true - but if you take into consideration the fact that we all have a good quality, freely accessible search engine, cheap books, and employment for many local developers (many of whom write open source applications), the benefits seem to balance out the deficiency. Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find it - we couldn't find much of anything we were looking for on the Internet as a matter of fact, i
Non-free software carries all sorts of anti-user limitations which are often quite clear if one takes the time to read the license for the program. To me, this underscores the need for a Free Flash player and Free Flash development kit so that we can play the Flash files out there without giving up our freedom to share and modify the software. It looks like the hackers at GPLFlash could use some assistance.
Just a few minutes before making the parent post, you said I was right and that you hadn't made yourself clear. Now you're saying I'm taking your words out of context. That is confusing because you're addressing the same issue--granting users the freedom to modify MultiMAD for plugins.
Yes, I would prefer to not have any MultiMAD forks, but I can live with that, so it would be free software. On the other hand, what I definetely want to forbid is plugins that need to fork MultiMAD to run.
Users can't have it both ways. Either users have the freedoms of free software or they don't. They don't have free software if they are forbidden to change MultiMAD for a particular purpose.
Perhaps you would benefit from spending some time reviewing why free software is important (I suggest the many essays at www.gnu.org/philosophy/). I suggest this because I think after some time collecting your thoughts you will recognize that your fork of MultiMAD serves the users best when it can compete with the other forks out there. You might even discover that users appreciate cooperative developers and welcome programs which are licensed to share and modify. The GPL would be fine for this task because it will increase the chances you have to incorporate any distributed derivative of MultiMAD into your fork.
It is a sign of disrespect to give someone's work a name other than that which the author gave it. Perhaps some don't care to ask you to call their work by the name they gave it, but this is not a generally recommendable stance. Giving credit where credit is due should be routine in any discussion of anything. Such behavior would lead to far fewer misunderstandings.
Those Star Wars fan films exist at the behest of Lucasfilm. That permission can be withdrawn at any time and one can lose their permission to legally redistribute the fan films. This is part of the power a copyright holder gets--the power to set terms for derivative works. Sometimes this power is used for maximizing benefit for the many (such as the GNU GPL's implementation of copyleft which aims to preserve the freedom to share and modify for all recipients of the covered program), most of the time it is not.
The same situation exists for Paramount and Star Trek--Star Trek New Voyages is legally made and distributed so long as Paramount does not deem it a threat (like the Borg when people beam on board one of their cubes and walk around carrying big guns). And this doesn't even begin to get into trademark issues.
For copyright law, all the real power is with the copyright holders unless the fan film is a parody (which Star Trek New Voyages is not). I'd hardly call such a situation "safe" for the fan filmmakers. Even the permission Star Trek New Voyages receives appears to be selective and revocable.
Our copyright and trademark laws don't have to work this way, but they are structured to give more power to businesses. Multinational corporate publishers like Lucasfilm and Paramount have the means to sue and have lobbied the US Congress to make sure that copyright law is on their side. If you look at this in terms of one or two particular instances where smaller filmmakers get the permission they seek (for now), you're missing the point. Richard Stallman has been talking about a more sanely structured copyright regime, one which draws a clear line between commercial and non-commercial activity. Examples like Star Wars fan films and Star Trek New Voyages have a profound effect on his thinking. He ends up arguing for allowing all sorts of non-commercial activity that most copyright regimes prohibit by default.
It seemed to me that the program was not to be modified in order to make any plugin run, if that is so, that would constitute a non-free program:
It's written in Java and it has a plugin architecture in order to support different mobile device platforms (WAP, J2ME, PalmOS, etc). I want to give the freedom to anybody write their plugins, even closed-source, as long as the tool itself is not modified for them to run.
Perhaps the poster should be more clear about what is to be allowed.
The poster wants to deny users the freedom to modify the MultiMAD program ("[...] as long as the tool itself is not modified for them to run"). Thus, MultiMAD is to be licensed under a non-free license.
The GNU GPL is a free software license; it allows users to modify the licensed program and to distribute those modified versions.
They will not be able to make commercial applications based off of your code, and they can make all the plugins they want, closed or open source, so long as they don't modify the host application's (MultiMAD's) code.
The GPL is not anti-commercial software development, it's pro-free software development and distribution. The moment a GPL'd program is used in a business context (such as distributing copies of GPL'd programs for a fee), that program becomes "commercial". Commercial and non-free are not the same thing. Not being able to change MultiMAD means denying users a freedom they ought to have. The GPL denies users the ability to distribute non-free derivatives. These are not the same issues and there's a good reason why the GPL does this--in order to preserve software freedom for derivatives, there had to be a choice between what was valued more and the FSF values giving more users software freedom.
Whether to infringe upon someone's copyright is far more complex than that. Free software licenses use copyright law to do something ethical -- allow users the freedoms they need to be good neighbors. Non-free licenses use copyright law to restrict users freedoms to share and modify, thus making users unable to help themselves or their neighbors.
There is also a tough position which isn't addressed by a view of copyright law which says that since the copyright holder's power can be used as they wish, it is sacrosanct or beyond question regardless of how it is used. If a friend asks you for a copy of a proprietary program that you don't have a license to share, you can either choose to abide by the law and not be a good friend by not sharing, or you can disobey the law and distribute a copy. This is not a position anyone should ever have to be in, hence free software.
The FSF's former executive director, Brad Kuhn, has a far better response for why people should not engage in copyright infringement of proprietary computer software without a license. At about 1h42m into the talk, he says that people should see the full costs to them for obtaining and using proprietary software. If you get the software without paying the license fee, you don't see the impact it has on you and others around you. You should not be shielded from the true costs of what proprietary software imposes on you.
I didn't get anything backwards, but you misstated the reason the new BSD license (and similar non-copylefted free software licenses like the MIT X11 license) are considered to be a "gamble".
Private derivatives are derivative works which are not distributed; changes are made and not sent back upstream. Private derivatives allow people to help themselves by improving their programs or getting someone to do it for them. Not everyone is in a situation where they can effectively send back changes (people who live in repressive countries, and people without email and web access, for instance). Surely we should not work to stifle anyone's freedom to improve their copies of programs.
The gamble with the new BSD license is that a popular incompatible proprietary derivative will be made and the programmers of the new BSD-licensed program will have to compete with what is, in part, their own work. This risk is thought to be tradeoff--trying to leverage a network effect for maximum popularity by trading away most of the power copyright law grants. The Vorbis and Theora codecs are purposefully distributed in such a way that will maximize popularity so that more people can have free codecs and reduce or eliminate their reliance on proprietary and/or patent-encumbered codecs.
Some, particularly those who champion free software freedoms for derivative works, stress that this tradeoff can effectively treat a business like a charity, or deny any user of that proprietary derivative their software freedom. They also cite that it is not the free software community's job to look out for the interests of proprietors. It is the free software community's job to look out for the interests of software freedom. Thus, they use a license that stipulates that distributed derivative works must distribute complete corresponding source code as well.
Finally, there is no "force" in the GPL and merely executing software doesn't fall under the terms of the GPL. The GPL is a distribution license; its terms, particularly its implementation of copyleft, don't kick in until distribution happens. One chooses what software to distribute, and so long as copyright is the only barrier to contend with (as opposed to patent law), one has the freedom to reimplement whatever software one wishes to reimplement and the power to license that software any way one wishes. Proprietors know this very well, which is one reason why we have so many programs that broadly do the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at what Yahoo! did to the alleged Chinese "spy"—work with the Chinese government to release information posted online via Yahoo! servers. Reporters without Borders was surprised how easy it was for Shih Dao (forgive my misspelling) to be caught, but it turns out that Yahoo! handed the Chinese government information on this reporter that was widely miscited as a spy after the reporter used Yahoo!'s hosting service to report on censorship activity. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's radio program "Counterspin" has a report on this that is worth listening to (about 6 minutes and 40 seconds into the file). Unfortunately this is only available in proprietary and patent-encumbered formats, but perhaps it airs on a local radio station near you.
The GNURadio homepage shows samples of HDTV images received and decoded successfully. If we give up because we suspect opposition, we'll surely lose our rights. If we fight technologically and politically through organized action we may secure our rights.
Systm has a show on MythTV in a variety of formats including Ogg Vorbis+Theora. The show is licensed to share under a Creative Commons license, as are the other episodes of Systm.
There's nothing to stop the harm as long as you run non-free software. The reason spyware, adware, and such can work is that nobody but the proprietor can inspect, share, and modify the program. This means that nobody else can distribute an improved version without the annoying or malicious parts of the program.
So, even if one runs a free software operating system and runs non-free software on top of that, one is not safe from the harm of malicious software. The solution is to run a free software OS and run nothing but free software on top of that.
As for DRM, the EFF has pointed out how DRM is already being leveraged against users. Fighting this will require more organization around the idea that one's customers don't deserve to be treated so shabbily.
E-books don't deserve to become mainstream so long as they are implemented in a way that makes readers lose the freedoms they have with paper books, which appears to be the main concern for publishers who push for e-books. The publishers and proprietary software development businesses are hoping you'll make this decision on price and forget about what you're losing along the way.
RMS has postulated that some publishers would prefer to get us used to e-books where lending, copying, reselling, and other freedoms are not allowed. Then, after we're used to e-books being available, paper books can be discontinued leaving only e-books. Thus a new regime can be established where people become used to the lesser freedom they have with e-books without really noticing the switch and people will be less likely to question that loss in freedom.
I don't need to rely on the argument that Firefox is more secure or has more features than Microsoft Internet Explorer. I prefer the argument that cannot be trumped by getting lost in a horse race of technical features; George Ou arguments aren't his alone and I'm sure that similar arguments will be made as time goes on.
Instead, I choose to acknowledge that Firefox lets me keep my software freedom and Microsoft Internet Explorer does not. Software freedom means that I can inspect, fix, and share the program (or improved versions of the program) instead of relying on a proprietor to do that for me. This matters for non-programmers despite their inability to directly leverage the freedom to modify the program because they distribute copies of the program, and they can get programmers to do the work the work that they cannot do themselves. Collectively, this means we all benefit from an improved browser and treating each other in an ethically justifiable way. Proprietary software, by comparison, keeps users helpless and divided. The Mozilla Foundation should have been using these past years to educate users about the power and social importance of treating users right by valuing freedom for its own sake as well as leveraging the practical benefits of freedom.
The Mozilla Foundation doesn't discuss software freedom when they discuss their software, and their silence encourages their users to remain quiet on the issue as well never learning what software freedom is or how it makes a difference in their lives. The Mozilla Foundation talks about how they support choice in the browser marketplace and they talk about how their browser is more secure than others. Neither of these are terribly compelling reasons to switch to Firefox because they're, respectively, not true and not a competitive advantage. Now that Microsoft Internet Explorer will gain some of the features Firefox touts (tabbed browsing, increased standards conformance, increased security, etc.) users will have little reason to stick with Firefox.
Before Firefox and the Mozilla suite were available, one could choose from a variety of browsers including Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Opera. Having a choice in the marketplace only requires two alternatives, but here were at least three. Thus choice was satisfied. Choice is a very weak and easily subverted criteria as well—none of these web browsers were free software. In practical terms, this means that none of the users of these browsers had any chance to learn what these programs were really doing on their computers, nor any chance to change what those programs were doing if they learned the program was not doing what they wanted the program to do. Finally, this means that if users figured out a way to change the program (extremely difficult to do because most users only have a binary), users had no legal way to share their improved version with their community. The users were kept unable to help themselves or their community.
Microsoft Internet Explorer will continue to come with Microsoft Windows and Firefox will continue to be a download away. Coupled with the lack of any discussion on software freedom, this means that as MSIE gains more features that make it more competitive with Firefox, there is less reason for any MSIE user to switch away from MSIE.
You missed the jist of the grandparent's remark. The grandparent poster realizes what you said but was pointing out how "intellectual property" ("IP") is overbroad. This case is actually, according to the grandparent, limited only to trademark law.
This is part of the reason why discussing anything in terms of "intellectual property" is a bad idea. People don't really understand what they're talking about and the term is also used as a way to speak overbroadly. If we are to mount an effective critique of these disparate laws, as is called for so frequently in the instances that reach /. readers, we cannot afford to lose sight of the many elements which separate the diverse laws referred to by "intellectual property". Lawyers and courts know the difference between, say, copyright and patent infringement. As these cases increasingly involve ordinary people, not just businesses, it behooves people to learn how these laws work so they can defend their interests.
It's hardly convincing to speculate on what a license will say and then contemplate the outcome of scenarios from one's own speculation. I prefer to review the GPLs we have available to us here and now and then give the new GPL the same consideration. This requires waiting for the new GPL to be published.
Is FileVault a free software program? I ask because parts of MacOS X are proprietary and parts are free software; if the program is non-free software, then I'd be curious to know how anyone could answer the question about how it encrypts in such a way that the answer would be informative.
I have an Epson Perfection 1260 flatbed scanner and it works perfectly, right out of the box under GNU/Linux. The only tricky part had to do with Epson's programming that resides inside the scanner--old SANE software would do something with the stepper motor that it would burn itself out if you scanned above 200DPI or so (if you kill your Epson Perfection 1260, it can be fixed). I figured that it's silly to call this a SANE bug because no device should allow any series of commands to burn itself out. I mention this only in the unlikely event that you plan to use the scanner on an old free software system (circa Red Hat GNU/Linux 9). If you're running some free software system that is more recent, ignore this caveat.
SANE's motor settings (since version 1.0.10) have been changed to not do what this scanner cannot handle correctly, and now you can use this scanner at whatever resolution it will support, plug and play.
Interesting that you have drawn a conclusion without having read the text of the new GPL.
But it seems you're not alone in judging the book by an unauthoritative review of its cover.
One problem with GNOMEmeeting is that its decentralized design makes it harder to set up and use than Skype for non-technical users in common network configurations. Being behind a NAT (which a lot of users are) makes GNOMEmeeting more difficult to configure. Skype works right out of the box, even behind a NAT, but Skype is more of a risk because if the central Skype server is unreachable for any reason, the simplicity of the client vanishes too. A central call routing server also makes it easier for third parties (like the organization that runs the central server) to record phone calls since all calls pass through their servers.
Also, you get to keep your software freedom with GNOMEmeeting and you don't with Skype. Practical implications of this are inspection, sharing the program with others, and changing the program to suit your needs. So, if Skype's client software is doing something that you don't want to do, not being able to inspect the program (or get someone to inspect it for you) means that you probably won't figure out the bad behavior until it is too late and has been doing the bad behavior for some time (assuming you ever figure it out at all). There is a trustworthiness barrier to including malevolent code in free software and GNOMEmeeting is no exception. Anyone who wants to learn programming can inspect GNOMEmeeting to make sure it's not doing something it shouldn't be doing. Finally, Skype's license demands unreasonable monitoring of the Skype website if you distribute a copy of the software. This is one element of the license that makes the program non-free: if two people are unable to access the Internet but can share programs with each other, one person cannot give a copy of Skype to the other because they cannot constantly monitor the website to see if there's an update as the Skype license requires.
Thank you, you're very kind. I'll stop by in #GNU on freenode.
Your post would have been more productive had you avoided calling the GNU General Public License "viral". What you think of the GPL is not on topic here, as this discussion primarily concerns how the public domain works, not your views on how distributed GPL derivatives are licensed. Similarly, a previous poster used the word "fell" to describe entry into the public domain. I'd argue that the popularity of the term in this context is irrelevant and that we are better served by examining the connotation that being in the public domain is somehow lower or lesser than being in copyright.
Getting back to your point raised by calling the GPL "viral", there is a bit of this for the public domain as well. Works in the public domain remain in the public domain even if fragments of them are built upon in other copyrighted works. There are parts of the movie Amelie which come from the Prelinger archives. These fragments are in the public domain and one can extract them from Amelie and end up with a series of public domain fragments. So, the public domain is self-preserving but this effect doesn't extend as far as the power copyright holders have in licensing derivative works. Of course, it's possible to transform the work so completely that such extraction is impossible.
Along that line, I highly recommend reading the new EFF essay on DRM limitations in popular music services (iTunes music store, Microsoft's music store, Napster, and RealNetworks' music store). I forsee this page becoming a reference on why it is a bad idea to do business with these music stores. The license terms on the songs are sufficiently restrictive that I'll never buy anything from them, but to know that I'd have to overcome some technological hurdle to regain a sliver of the rights I have with records, tapes, and audio CDs, I'm sure to recommend to my friends that they avoid these places entirely.
Jonathan Zdziarski makes many claims with nothing to back them up, then draws incorrect conclusions based on those claims.
Where did he hear this? The FSF understands that setting conditions for running software is not allowed under US copyright law:
Zdziarski continues:
First off, the GNU GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation with an eye toward software freedom, and it was written well before there was such a thing as the "open source" movement. Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman made it very clear that software freedom, not mere "open"ness, would be the measuring stick by which the GPL3 would be judged a success. Hence, the GPL is properly credited as a free software license. This is important not only to tell the truth about who wrote the GPL and why, but to understand what it says and why. Software freedom is the very thing the open source movement was build to not discuss. To this day, the Open Source Initiative (which coined the term "open source", defined it, and determines which licenses comply with its terms) belittles the FSF in their FAQ as "ideological tub-thumping". Which movement you side with (if either) is your business. But it should be important to be fair to the differences that exist between the movements. One practical difference between the two movements is that free software licenses guarantee private derivatives ("You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way."), OSI-approved licenses do not guarantee private derivatives, hence the FSF's unwillingness to give their imprimateur to the early revisions of the Apple Public Source License.
Second, no American company can legally distribute proprietary derivatives of GPL'd software. If they don't like this, they should write their own software or find something under a license which they can build on and distribute without also distributing their changes.
Non-free software carries all sorts of anti-user limitations which are often quite clear if one takes the time to read the license for the program. To me, this underscores the need for a Free Flash player and Free Flash development kit so that we can play the Flash files out there without giving up our freedom to share and modify the software. It looks like the hackers at GPLFlash could use some assistance.
Just a few minutes before making the parent post, you said I was right and that you hadn't made yourself clear. Now you're saying I'm taking your words out of context. That is confusing because you're addressing the same issue--granting users the freedom to modify MultiMAD for plugins.
Users can't have it both ways. Either users have the freedoms of free software or they don't. They don't have free software if they are forbidden to change MultiMAD for a particular purpose.
Perhaps you would benefit from spending some time reviewing why free software is important (I suggest the many essays at www.gnu.org/philosophy/). I suggest this because I think after some time collecting your thoughts you will recognize that your fork of MultiMAD serves the users best when it can compete with the other forks out there. You might even discover that users appreciate cooperative developers and welcome programs which are licensed to share and modify. The GPL would be fine for this task because it will increase the chances you have to incorporate any distributed derivative of MultiMAD into your fork.
Happy hacking.
It is a sign of disrespect to give someone's work a name other than that which the author gave it. Perhaps some don't care to ask you to call their work by the name they gave it, but this is not a generally recommendable stance. Giving credit where credit is due should be routine in any discussion of anything. Such behavior would lead to far fewer misunderstandings.
Those Star Wars fan films exist at the behest of Lucasfilm. That permission can be withdrawn at any time and one can lose their permission to legally redistribute the fan films. This is part of the power a copyright holder gets--the power to set terms for derivative works. Sometimes this power is used for maximizing benefit for the many (such as the GNU GPL's implementation of copyleft which aims to preserve the freedom to share and modify for all recipients of the covered program), most of the time it is not.
The same situation exists for Paramount and Star Trek--Star Trek New Voyages is legally made and distributed so long as Paramount does not deem it a threat (like the Borg when people beam on board one of their cubes and walk around carrying big guns). And this doesn't even begin to get into trademark issues.
For copyright law, all the real power is with the copyright holders unless the fan film is a parody (which Star Trek New Voyages is not). I'd hardly call such a situation "safe" for the fan filmmakers. Even the permission Star Trek New Voyages receives appears to be selective and revocable.
Our copyright and trademark laws don't have to work this way, but they are structured to give more power to businesses. Multinational corporate publishers like Lucasfilm and Paramount have the means to sue and have lobbied the US Congress to make sure that copyright law is on their side. If you look at this in terms of one or two particular instances where smaller filmmakers get the permission they seek (for now), you're missing the point. Richard Stallman has been talking about a more sanely structured copyright regime, one which draws a clear line between commercial and non-commercial activity. Examples like Star Wars fan films and Star Trek New Voyages have a profound effect on his thinking. He ends up arguing for allowing all sorts of non-commercial activity that most copyright regimes prohibit by default.
It seemed to me that the program was not to be modified in order to make any plugin run, if that is so, that would constitute a non-free program:
Perhaps the poster should be more clear about what is to be allowed.
The poster wants to deny users the freedom to modify the MultiMAD program ("[...] as long as the tool itself is not modified for them to run"). Thus, MultiMAD is to be licensed under a non-free license.
The GNU GPL is a free software license; it allows users to modify the licensed program and to distribute those modified versions.
The GPL is not anti-commercial software development, it's pro-free software development and distribution. The moment a GPL'd program is used in a business context (such as distributing copies of GPL'd programs for a fee), that program becomes "commercial". Commercial and non-free are not the same thing. Not being able to change MultiMAD means denying users a freedom they ought to have. The GPL denies users the ability to distribute non-free derivatives. These are not the same issues and there's a good reason why the GPL does this--in order to preserve software freedom for derivatives, there had to be a choice between what was valued more and the FSF values giving more users software freedom.
Whether to infringe upon someone's copyright is far more complex than that. Free software licenses use copyright law to do something ethical -- allow users the freedoms they need to be good neighbors. Non-free licenses use copyright law to restrict users freedoms to share and modify, thus making users unable to help themselves or their neighbors.
There is also a tough position which isn't addressed by a view of copyright law which says that since the copyright holder's power can be used as they wish, it is sacrosanct or beyond question regardless of how it is used. If a friend asks you for a copy of a proprietary program that you don't have a license to share, you can either choose to abide by the law and not be a good friend by not sharing, or you can disobey the law and distribute a copy. This is not a position anyone should ever have to be in, hence free software.
The FSF's former executive director, Brad Kuhn, has a far better response for why people should not engage in copyright infringement of proprietary computer software without a license. At about 1h42m into the talk, he says that people should see the full costs to them for obtaining and using proprietary software. If you get the software without paying the license fee, you don't see the impact it has on you and others around you. You should not be shielded from the true costs of what proprietary software imposes on you.
I didn't get anything backwards, but you misstated the reason the new BSD license (and similar non-copylefted free software licenses like the MIT X11 license) are considered to be a "gamble".
Private derivatives are derivative works which are not distributed; changes are made and not sent back upstream. Private derivatives allow people to help themselves by improving their programs or getting someone to do it for them. Not everyone is in a situation where they can effectively send back changes (people who live in repressive countries, and people without email and web access, for instance). Surely we should not work to stifle anyone's freedom to improve their copies of programs.
The gamble with the new BSD license is that a popular incompatible proprietary derivative will be made and the programmers of the new BSD-licensed program will have to compete with what is, in part, their own work. This risk is thought to be tradeoff--trying to leverage a network effect for maximum popularity by trading away most of the power copyright law grants. The Vorbis and Theora codecs are purposefully distributed in such a way that will maximize popularity so that more people can have free codecs and reduce or eliminate their reliance on proprietary and/or patent-encumbered codecs.
Some, particularly those who champion free software freedoms for derivative works, stress that this tradeoff can effectively treat a business like a charity, or deny any user of that proprietary derivative their software freedom. They also cite that it is not the free software community's job to look out for the interests of proprietors. It is the free software community's job to look out for the interests of software freedom. Thus, they use a license that stipulates that distributed derivative works must distribute complete corresponding source code as well.
Finally, there is no "force" in the GPL and merely executing software doesn't fall under the terms of the GPL. The GPL is a distribution license; its terms, particularly its implementation of copyleft, don't kick in until distribution happens. One chooses what software to distribute, and so long as copyright is the only barrier to contend with (as opposed to patent law), one has the freedom to reimplement whatever software one wishes to reimplement and the power to license that software any way one wishes. Proprietors know this very well, which is one reason why we have so many programs that broadly do the same thing.