which begs the question, is anyone ever going to update their internet explorers to criple the plugin functionality that exists today ? I think Not.
If users are sued for patent infringement (like the RIAA is suing ordinary people for copyright infringement), they just might. Part of the reason patents on algorithms used in software are onerous and should be abandoned is because patent holders can go after ordinary computer-using members of the public. Paul Heckel, a patent holder on some algorithm that was implemented in Apple's Hypercard, was able to get Apple to license his patent after telling Apple he would sue Apple's users for patent infringement. Apple, rightly, took this threat seriously because they did not want to lose their customers to legal hassles.
Unlike the RIAA's lawsuits against ordinary music consumers, the fix for MSIE would ostensibly be a few clicks away. Download a downgrade to MSIE and you're in the clear (from this patent). Given that the cost of infringement is so high and evasion is so inexpensive and easy, I think a lot of people would obtain a changed MSIE.
The DRM management in both the Microsoft and Adobe Readers made it so annoying that it took days for me to be able to read what I purchased.
I'm glad to see more people mention DRM and engage in discussions about the social problems with it. But I worry that the public is remarkably undereducated about what DRM can mean in the long run. To me, it's comments like the ones here (overwhelmingly talking about convenience) that shows how much work we as a society have yet to do to get people to understand and defend their freedoms.
If the DRM worked better in eBooks and the technology allowed the portability and legibility of paper books (which, someday, it will), I think more people would still overlook the planned loss in freedom to copy, resell, share, read aloud, and do all the other things we commonly do with paper books. We're already seeing this disappear with music (services like iTunes are paving the way). We'll end up going through another round of some poor 12-year old being sued for copyright infringement and fined thousands of dollars (or perhaps jailed) by some greedy book publisher association because she violated the license on the eBook by reading her eBook copy of Alice in Wonderland aloud in class. If you buy into DRM-encumbered technology now you'll get used to not having the freedoms you currently enjoy and then miss them when they're gone (when it's too late to go back to paper books).
Let's take the time now to alert people of the freedoms they have and warn them against what they stand to lose with DRM. Do you really want the copyright holder to take your eBook away (via your GPS-enabled eBook reader) because you went across town to the wrong side of the tracks? Do you want the ability to fully share, copy, modify, publish, publicly perform, and sell copies of works in the public domain? If so, you'll probably want to stay away from DRM no matter how attractive or convenient the packaging because DRM can take all this away from you and keep the public domain a dim memory.
The FSF takes GNU GPL violations seriously.
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SkyOS GUI Contest
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· Score: 4, Interesting
From the parent poster's quote of the older SkyOs so-called End User License Agreement ("EULA"):
SkyOs includes ported software that is GPL'd this means that it is open source, these binaries/drivers/libraries are widely available on the internet, and as such you should not harass SkyOs Inc. or any contributor for the Source code of these ported apps, also these GPL'd binaries/drivers/libraries do not in anyway affect the SkyOs Kernel or SkyGI and as such you have no right as a user, developer or other party to demand to view the Source Code of SkyOs.
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) does not allow anyone distributing the covered software to withhold the complete corresponding source code of the program or to point somewhere else and essentially say "get it from them, not us". Perhaps Andrew Youll should spend some time reading the GNU GPL FAQ, if the license's text isn't sufficiently clear. Distributing binaries alone is insufficient for compliance with the GNU GPL. It doesn't matter if SkyOs comes with only a port of the applications or changes the software's feature set.
Youll's EULA demonstrates Youll is trying to place more restrictive terms on GPL-covered software than the GPL allows. His EULA suggests he is quite unclear on what the GNU GPL's terms are and how to work within them. But overall, it's sad that someone who draws value from the GNU project's contribution to their own work is being dealt with in such a manner. Leveraging one's rights is never "harass[ment]". The GNU GPL does not aim to make SkyOs free software (although SkyOs would do their users a favor by making the entire operating system free). Proprietors have successfully used and distributed GCC as their main compiler for years.
Notice how cleverly Apple sneaks in how it will not assist in transferring the song's ownership.
Notice how we all gain a very important reason for telling people to not do business with Apple, iTunes, and any DRM-encumbered technology. Apple wants it both ways here, they want to get you into a system that somewhat mimics what you could otherwise do with CDs but leaves out some of your rights. This reminds me of Adobe's eBooks--the eBook license on many eBooks prohibits things you expect to be able to do with a physical book: reading the book aloud, or copying more than the prescribed amount of data from the book, to name a couple things. The system Adobe created for reading eBooks enforces some of their prohibitions. I think it's time to reread "The Right to Read".
Is SkyOS free software?
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SkyOS GUI Contest
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· Score: 3, Informative
It's clear from their description that SkyOS is getting a considerable amount of help from the free software community--the list of features includes support for POSIX so GNU software can be used including the GNU compiler collection, GNU binutils, and GNU shell tools. But is SkyOS free software too? I looked around the website and could not find any clear indication SkyOS is free software.
I found Google cache of a license page clearly indicating this is proprietary software, but that page isn't being published on SkyOS' webserver anymore, so I'm not sure if it still applies. In light of this and because I could not find links for SkyOS' source code, I'm inclined to not recommend SkyOS (or any other non-free software).
Consider linking to the bill in a way that will work once the entry expires from their cache. From their FAQ on this issue:
How do I link a particular part of THOMAS to my own web site?
You can create a permanent link to a bill, a list of bills, a committee report, or any other search result by using UNIX GET or POST protocols. Details about how to do this are found in the Direct Links to THOMAS Documents document. It is necessary to use these protocols because the URL addresses you see when you execute a search, are temporary addresses and will expire in about 30 minutes. Thus, there is no point in bookmarking a search result.
All the material on THOMAS is in the public domain, and no special permission is required to use it in any way.
People who care about concepts such as "Software Freedom" do not tend to rise to positions of decision making authority in business.
Then it is up to us to make businesses where this does not happen. Nobody said the fight was easy or that one could afford to wait to be elevated to a decision-making rank. Like any other social movement, the Free Software movement has to build their own way and defend it. I think most people in the Free Software movement understand this (after all, most free software copyright holders choose the GNU GPL and apparently a lot of people in Europe talk to their elected officials about software patents in Europe).
For those who are in free software organizations, more people are seeing that if they want their business to survive, they had better care more about software freedom. It is not profitable to watch their niche being taken over by some larger corporation leveraging a larger patent portfolio or the DMCA. Cross-licensing patents means losing the exclusivity patenting was invented to ensure. Businesses who are victims of software patent cross-licensing gain a competitor in exchange for keeping their patent-dependent project viable. This helps open people's eyes to the dangers many in the Free Software movement and Open Source movement have been speaking about for some time now.
The people who seem to know so much about what's right for technology, sure don't seem to be rising to positions of authority where they could just lay down the law.
Then it is our job to make that happen by talking about software freedom more and making it an issue with elected officials and business leaders. It's a tough row to hoe, but history shows it is not impossible. Perhaps some people have unreasonable expectations on how long social movements take to make progress and how much work is involved in making sure the progress is not eroded.
What do you care what operating system people run?
Of course, I don't speak for the poster you're responding to but I care about making freedom available to people. You have more software freedom on a Free Software OS (such as GNU/Linux) than you do on a proprietary system (such as Microsoft Windows). I have no interest in giving people more reason to stay with non-free software. But if you're approaching this from the Open Source movement's mentality of merely delivering faster, cheaper, better programs, I can see why you might reach the conclusions you do. I approach this from the desire to make self-determination possible for more people using their computers. Only the freedoms of Free Software helps me do this. Free Software and Open Source don't speak to the same concerns.
And if you're so bent on having people move from Windows to Linux, why don't you concentrate on making Linux as easy to use and as comfortable as Windows is these days [...]
I don't care which operating system people run as long as it is a free OS. People have been working on making free OSes more user-friendly for a long time and there is much progress to show for the effort. But this is a difficult task (made artifically harder by oppressive copyright and patent law) and so this requires a lot of effort. But for those who are committed to freedom, not mere practical convenience, the sacrifice and the fight are worth it.
But five years from now, when everybody buying a Dell or Gateway machine has the latest version of Office bundled with their machine, I will likely be the only guy who can't read their documents, and their sympathy will have disappeared. I'll have to upgrade.
There's no particularly good way out of this using the marketplace; the marketplace will dictate it.
If you give up on freedom, precisely what you describe is likely to happen because people are not going to give up word processing or editing databases, so they'll go with whatever software is available to meet their needs. There is another path: teach people the value of software freedom.
The Free Software movement proves that "the marketplace" is not the almighty immobile force you describe (or perhaps you're just interpreting too much in terms of the marketplace in order to make it appear unchanging; hence whatever happens it will be seen through that lens). When the GNU project began, many people said nobody would write software without being paid and when people are paid to write software, they are being paid to write non-free software. History clearly shows those people were wrong. In fact a number of the organizations that distribute non-free software now use the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc) as their chief compiler, and ship part of the rest of the GNU operating system too. People have been paid to write Free Software and governments are getting the idea that their people's ability to communicate freely using a computer rests on using Free Software.
I think the key is to teach more people about software freedom. Take this opportunity to show people that with Free Software you won't be beholden to any proprietor's interests. As the pool of people using Free Software grows your chances for being able to get by with Free Software grows too.
How ironic it is that in order to gain the pratical advantages Jones wants us to have, we must leverage the freedoms the free software community has fought so hard for over decades--the very freedoms Jones downplays:
To do that, the open source community must recognize that its primary goals: freedom of choice, freedom of source code, and freedom to alter applications, are not the goals of the average user. [...]
They don't care that they can't see or change the source code to their current programs. They don't care that they don't actually own the software, as long as they only have to pay for it once. They don't care that most of their software comes from a single source. In short, they don't care about the fundamental issues behind open source software at all. But they do care about price, quality, availability, security, simplicity, and interoperability. Supply these, and open source will be the software choice.
Software freedom is championed by the Free Software movement (hence the name "Free"), not the Open Source movement. Perhaps Jones is unaware of the philosophical differences between these two movements. The Open Source Initiative has done valuable work in bringing people to freedom by endorsing free software licenses (including the GNU GPL, the most widely-used Free Software license). However, the Open Source movement focuses on telling business that they can develop better programs by making their source code available to the community of hackers willing to do good work without charge. This is considerably different from backing the freedoms to share and modify programs that, in turn, allow us to enjoy these practical advantages.
The Free Software Foundation tells us that we need more freedom talk so when we bring people into the free software commnuity through practical gain we give them a reason to stay with free software--when some proprietor offers a temptation (which might offer a better practical advantage), they'll be able to recall that software freedom is the one advantage proprietors can never provide.
Increasingly users do care about software freedom, though perhaps it takes some bad times with a proprietor to make them think about the ways in which the non-free alternative is poor. This is why we see governments pushing for Free Software, like the Brazilian government is doing. You don't get government officials like Peruvian Congressman David Villanueva Nunez writing a scathing letter to Microsoft and standing behind Free Software (not Open Source, as he was clear to point out) without understanding the advantages of self-reliance and freedom.
This is a classic example of why Linux is still not quite ready for prime time on the desktop.
I saw that same entry in the release notes and concluded that is why the community either needs a free software RealPlayer replacement or a free software video/audio solution to compete with RealPlayer so we can simply recompile the programs we need and become more self-sufficient.
I'm guessing Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis will come in handy toward reaching the second goal.
Qmail is non-free software; distributing modified versions is prohibited. One can distribute patches to an unmodified Qmail and acquire the same result, but some people are unwilling to give up the freedom to publish modified versions of programs. By contrast, Sendmail and Postfix are free software.
There is also an enormous amount of support for the product available.
I don't know what constitutes an "enormous amount of support", but support is also available for Sendmail and Postfix online and through consultants.
Spoken like a person that has not spent years of his life devloping an IP.
Spoken like someone who thinks that their ideas are original, like they didn't get ideas from anyone else. There are plenty of people who spend a lot of time developing something but a lot of them recognize that their work is just like everyone else's--their work is fodder for the next incremental advance in expression. There's nothing new under the sun, as Shakespeare said; no idea comes from nothing and you have no legitimate sole claim to the expressions of your ideas. You benefit from a leaky copyright system--fair use helps preserve freedom of speech. Copyright power is supposed to be limited.
Second, you cannot understand how ideas work by thinking in terms of "IP" (intellectual property). That phrase is prejudicial and a mish-mash of laws that can sometimes conflict with one another. What we're talking about in this thread primarily concerns copyright policy and the anti-social idea that copyright is property (which even the law doesn't completely agree with), so call it by its name.
Ironically, Itagaki's concern would seem out of place in other areas of life, maybe even an outright affront to people's right of expression--nobody would balk at you modifying a recipe to suit your needs (even a recipe from a copyrighted recipe book published commercially), adding a room on to your house, or changing the brake pads on your car without going to the manufacturer's garage. Nor would they balk at helping other people do any of these things by distributing information or kits on how to do it. But modify a videogame? Maybe we should take the lessons from the dojinshi market more seriously. According to the Dojinshi article, artists (who I'm sure "have a financial and emotional investment" in their work) all effectively share with each other and cultivate a comic book market that consumers apparently enjoy.
I really like the fact that 3 paragraphs into the article there is a huge biline[sic] on how and why linux is good. It also explains the GPL, BSD, and it all seems accurate! I don't know who 'Daniel James' is (the author of the article), but it is obvious that he has done research...
I had some problems with that section of the article. In general, I found the section could have been significantly shorter and less confusing had it referenced clearly written essays distributed by the GNU project.
The way "Linux" is used confuses the reader because James uses the term to describe an operating system and a mysterious project somehow related to "Linux". James never clearly identifies that Linux is and always was a kernel--a typically user-invisible chunk of a complete GNU/Linux system. It is now possible to run the GNU operating system under a kernel replacement (such as the GNU Hurd). When James talks about "GNU" you don't really know what relationship GNU and Linux have to one another:
It's a common misconception that Linux was created by a lone student in Finland. In fact Linus Torvalds still leads the project to this day, more than 10 years after he began it, but the operating system has been contributed to by thousands of people. It builds on the considerable work of developers who had dreamt for many years of making a free UNIX, many of whom worked on the GNU project.
The project Linus Torvalds works on is the Linux kernel. James would be better served by referring to any of the GNU project's works on the topic ("Why GNU/Linux", "Linux, GNU, and freedom", and the "GNU/Linux FAQ") more clearly explaining the distinction between GNU and Linux. These essays also introduce and link to essays on software freedom (which James addresses later on).
Later James talks about "open source software" even though he just spent time explaining software freedom. Perhaps James is unaware of the differences between the two movements and that the GNU General Public License (which he talks about later) was written by and exemplifies the thinking of the Free Software Foundation, not the Open Source Initiative. The Open Source Initiative merely added the GNU GPL to a list of approved licenses years after the GPL was already in widespread use in the community. You can't understand what makes the GPL so special in terms of the Open Source movement. While it is true that the Open Source movement brings users to the GPL, and that's great, this movement champions a development methodology, not software freedom (the issue at the heart of the GPL).
James says, "It [the GNU GPL] insists that any improvements to GPL-licensed source code have to be made available under the same terms..." but that is not quite right--the GPL only compels publishing the source code to distributed copies and derivatives. Private derivatives are a requirement for software freedom, as the definition for Free Software points out:
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.
Perhaps this would have been a good place to point out the GNU GPL FAQ, another GNU project publication. If one is going to take the time to clear up Microsoft's distortions (as James does below), noting that the GPL allows private derivatives should be okay.
James also says, "This co
RMS "change[d] his mind" on Ogg Vorbis code?
on
Open Source at TiVo
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· Score: 1
Too bad he changed his mind over the BSD licensed OGG code.
First, you should consider posting with an account (even one tied to a throwaway e-mail address, if you wish to preserve your anonymity in that way). Slashdot makes it very easy to skip over most anonymously posted articles, such as yours.
CPAN Shell makes installation easy, yes. Now show us what the command for uninstallation is.
Also, it would be helpful if the CPAN Shell command you'll show us could warn of lingering dependencies (where package A strictly depends on B and if you uninstall B you'll be warned that if you proceed package A will not work anymore).
Don't be mislead by the language of the article.
on
Open Source at TiVo
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· Score: 2, Informative
The article gets some concepts profoundly wrong when it comes to discussing licensing (which is at the heart of the article). These items may confuse readers not already familiar with copyright law and the Free Software community.
Toward the bottom of the article "Public domain soft-ware [sic]" is
mentioned and the "X Window System and BSD operating system" are cited as "notable" examples. Then the article mentions a "license limitation" that
is only true for the old BSD license. This clearly illustrates the author
is confused about what the public domain is and that works cannot be both
licensed (as these examples are, under different but largely similar
licenses) and in the public domain. Placing a work in the public
domain is not a license, no matter how liberal the license's terms may be.
Putting a work into the public domain is the irrevocable abdication of all
copyright power over the work.
The terms "Linux" and "GNU/Linux" are used interchangeably, as if they
both refer to the same thing (early in the article "Linux" is meant to refer
to an operating system, later on "GNU/Linux" refers to an operating system).
The GNU Project asks (and simple fairness requires) that we give GNU a fair
share of the credit for their work in the GNU/Linux operating system.
Technical precision requires us to distinguish between the Linux kernel and
a GNU/Linux operating system. To these ends, the GNU Project publishes a FAQ on the issue of
naming GNU/Linux, and an older essay.
Finally, just to be clear, the Open Source and Free Software movements
are not the same. They have different philosophies, they began at different
times, they were started by different people, and they speak to different
audiences. The GNU
Project's essay on the two movements and their social implications is
helpful.
Foolish to defend one's terms for sharing?
on
Open Source at TiVo
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The FSF would be fools to force such an issue. Tivo is trying to work with the system as well and maintain their advantage over their competators. Jerking them around with the GPL would simply drive them and others away, thats not what we want, (right RMS?)
I'm not RMS, nor do I speak for him, the FSF, or any of the Linux kernel copyright holders. However, you appear to misunderstand a significant point about the development of the GNU Project and GNU/Linux in particular. There's nothing foolish about requiring compliance with the generous GNU General Public License, particularly nothing foolish about insisting that people cooperate in the commons the GNU GPL builds for us all. Nobody is more important than anyone else in this partnership (including Tivo). It is Tivo's job, not ours, to find a way to make money with GPL-covered programs if that is their desire.
Perhaps you aren't aware that the GNU Project (and the continued development of the GNU/Linux operating system in particular) is not about achieving mere popularity at the expense of user's freedom to share and modify. From this essay:
People justify adding non-free software in the name of the "popularity of Linux"--in effect, valuing popularity above freedom. Sometimes this is openly admitted. For instance, Wired Magazine says Robert McMillan, editor of Linux Magazine, "feels that the move toward open source software should be fueled by technical, rather than political, decisions." And Caldera's CEO openly urged users to drop the goal of freedom and work instead for the "popularity of Linux".
Adding non-free software to the GNU/Linux system may increase the popularity, if by popularity we mean the number of people using some of GNU/Linux in combination with non-free software. But at the same time, it implicitly encourages the community to accept non-free software as a good thing, and forget the goal of freedom. It is no use driving faster if you can't stay on the road.
Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising "more users for this library" if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all.
But we should not listen to these temptations, because we can achieve much more if we stand together. We free software developers should support one another. By releasing libraries that are limited to free software only, we can help each other's free software packages outdo the proprietary alternatives. The whole free software movement will have more popularity, because free software as a whole will stack up better against the competition.
There is no reason that they should be attacking the legitimacy of open source licenses like this when their dispute with IBM is supposedly contractual.
It wasn't the Open Source movement that carefully wrote the GNU General Public License and made it so likely to withstand legal attack by only leveraging the powers under copyright law (in fact part of the problem with other so-called "open source licenses" is that they aren't like the GPL because they try to place terms on powers not granted to licensors in copyright law). It's not the Open Source movement that champions the freedom to share and modify software. The Open Source movement added the license to a list of approved licenses and in so doing helped draw more people to using the GPL. But that movement did not exist when the GPL was written and the GPL was already in wide use in the Free Software community before the Open Source movement began. Let's give credit where credit is due and credit the GPL as a Free Software license so we properly understand what is at stake--the software freedom we've collectively enjoyed as a community.
Although RMS is obviously a very talented and intelligent individual, he seems hellbent on enforcing his ethics and morals on others.
What does this mean? How would you distinguish "hellbent on enforcing his ethics and morals on others" from presenting and implementing a compelling argument for free software?
He refuses to have anything to do with anyone who even has the slightest relationship with a non-free program. In effect he and his cohorts are effective enforcing their beliefs on others or cutting them completely off from their organization.
Is it required that RMS' deal with those that work against the goal to supply software freedom for all computer users?
How can you promote "free software" when you don't promote the "freedom to choose".
Choosing a license is often cited as the freedom to choose but can easily become the power to dominate users; choosing a free software license definately helps society. Choosing a copylefted free software license helps secure these freedoms for derivative works.
RMS and the FSF help help people choose licenses and software more wisely via the concept of copyleft. The FSF's licence list is quite informative and discriminating so people won't pick a license that doesn't serve their interests in the short and long term. From the look of some of the other posts in this/. thread, I'd say some still don't get the concept of why it is important to pay attention to the freedoms of derivative works.
Personally I think a person or company should be allowed to use free as well as non-free software together without reprimand from RMS and his organization.
Your subject header ("RMS promotes his views too strongly.") and this sentence suggest you are in favor of stopping RMS' freedom of speech. Is this what you are trying to convey?
It's better to use some free software then no free software [...]
RMS would agree here--in fact, he reiterated this in the interview when he answered a question about using WINE, a popular way to run Microsoft Windows programs without running Microsoft Windows:
"Taking a step towards freedom is a good thing--better than nothing. The risk is that people who have taken one step will think that the place they have arrived is the ultimate destination and will stay there, not taking further steps. Much of our community focuses on practical benefits exclusively, and that doesn't show other users a reason to keep moving till they reach freedom. Users can remain in our community for years without encountering the idea. As a result, I think that we should focus our efforts not on encouraging more people to take the first step, but rather on encouraging and helping those who have already taken the first step to take more steps."
[...]
and RMS is effectively limiting his friends and support by enforcing his views on them.
Saying this twice doesn't make this more clear to me. RMS clearly explains how non-free software divides users and keeps them helpless. The social movement he started has worked to create an entire operating system people use every day. This movement has inspired others to do good things (including the Creative Commons and the Free Library of Science. Even the Open Source movement, which stands for different things than the Free Software movement, works to bring people to use and develop free software). Do you have more specific counterarguments to raise?
You know, back in the day, when I first came to Slashdot, Open Source was all about the free, wild and woolly creation of software, about freedom from The Man, and doing stuff because it was a Nerd Mountain and by goddamn we were going to climb it.
Open Source was never about freedom, it was and is about pitching the Open Source development methodology primarily to businesses: when businesses share source code they ostensibly get better programs developed with less expense because they can tap a large community of programmers who are willing to work on their project for no fee. Open Source talks about the practical outcome of sharing source code, not the freedoms that make those practical ends possible.
Freedom to share and modify programs was and is the message from the Free Software movement which started over a decade before the Open Source movement began. I recommend this essay for an instructive look at the differences between the two movements. It was the Free Software Foundation that brought us the GNU General Public License which secures the freedoms to share and modify and the community the Open Source movement has leveraged to spread their message. The FSF did these things well before the Open Source movement got started. I'm grateful the Open Source Movement is bringing users to Free Software and encouraging use of the GNU GPL (one of many Free Software licenses), but let's not overstate what the Open Source Initiative did--adding a license to a list of approved licenses cannot compare with writing and defending the license (links to parts one and two of Eben Moglen's essay).
I'm never sure if I should be happy or sad that companies such as Red Hat and Oracle are essentially hijacking the popularity of Linux.
SCO FUD aside, is Oracle interested in what's in the Linux kernel, or were you referring to the GNU/Linux operating system? I don't understand what you mean by "hijacking" here either--Red Hat has contributed a great deal to Linux and (as far as I know) all in accordance with the GPL. Everyone is free to study, share, and modify their contributions as well as the rest of the kernel.
Linux and Stallman are staunch representatives of the freedom to code and share your code and have show[n] this during many years with deeds, not words.
One clarification: Linux is a program--a kernel commonly used with the GNU operating system. Did you mean Linus Torvalds here? Either way, that is quite incorrect. Linus Torvalds does not champion the freedom to share programs, he is a pragmatist who chooses whatever program he feels suits his immediate needs (for example, Torvalds' continued use of the non-free Bitkeeper program to manage his fork of the Linux kernel). Long-term considerations of software freedom seem relatively unimportant.
Richard Stallman (RMS), by contrast, founded the GNU project in 1984, years before Torvalds began working on Linux. RMS is the founder of the Free Software movement, and one of the authors of the GNU GPL, the most widely used license in free software. RMS wrote an informative essay about Linux, GNU, and freedom which explains his take on the matter.
There is plenty the free software community can do to protect themselves. All they have to do is publish their work before any of the "megacoporations" go out and file their patents.
This only describes part of the process (and thus only part of the problem with software patents). The other part is raising this prior art in court as a defense to patent infringement or to get a patent overturned. Either is very expensive, in fact it is so expensive I wouldn't be surprised if there were organizations who would rather simply not engage in the patented process than pay for a lengthy and possibly fruitless patent defense or overturning lawsuit.
At its heart, this is a part of the problem with software patents--people say software patents are okay because the court can resolve any problems in the system without acknowledging the adverse impact on those who can't afford lawyers. Court action generally discriminates against the poor (which can include the people who are ostensibly supposed to be so well-served by the patent system by allowing them to monopolize their "inventions"). The rich can afford to buy patents by acquiring organizations that have them. Large corporations probably have a lot of patents and can afford to cross-license (a practice which exposes an interesting fatal flaw with software patents).
The GPL could end up nullified in such a way that the Linux kernal became sort of a free-for-all public domain piece of code. In that case, IBM wouldn't lose, nor would they lose if the GPL as it's interpreted by most people is upheld. It could be a win-win situation for IBM.
I think that's highly unlikely. I think it's highly unlikely the GNU GPL will be found to be somehow invalid because I think the GPL is amazingly carefully prepared and worded so it only leverages what copyright law allows. My experience is that courts generally favor the copyright holder and interpret licenses such that the copyright holder's concerns are sustained.
But if the GPL were hypothetically invalid, I think a court would be bound to say that the would-be GPL licensee defaults to whatever copyright allows for. I can't find an example that supports the notion of a work forcibly entering the public domain because of an invalid license. I think they would be non-distributable, non-modifyable, and no derivative works would be allowed to be prepared. Copyright holders would have to relicense the works in a way that is consistent with the court's problems.
There isn't anything "nebulous" about the GPL, despite Blake Stowell's FUD. And it's not a social contract; it's a contract, pure, and simple, and legally enforcable. [...] Now, in the case of the GPL, instead of paying with cash or a portion of the profits from distribution, you pay by agreeing to certain terms and taking certain actions.
Eben Moglen would disagree with you in that the GNU GPL is a contract--it's a license. The licensee is given permission to copy, modify, and make derivative works and otherwise you have whatever copyright law allows for by default.
There is not necessarily payment being made by the licensee, there need not be agreement with the terms of the license (you might find the terms attached to distributing derivative works to be too onerous, for instance). The licensee either behaves according to the terms of the GPL or they only get what copyright law allows for.
It's this careful crafting of the GPL, leveraging only the powers that are granted to copyright holders, that makes the GPL very likely to survive any court scrutiny. It's also what makes other licenses seem relatively poorly worded (like those licenses that try to place terms on running a program, a power not granted to copyright holders).
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If users are sued for patent infringement (like the RIAA is suing ordinary people for copyright infringement), they just might. Part of the reason patents on algorithms used in software are onerous and should be abandoned is because patent holders can go after ordinary computer-using members of the public. Paul Heckel, a patent holder on some algorithm that was implemented in Apple's Hypercard, was able to get Apple to license his patent after telling Apple he would sue Apple's users for patent infringement. Apple, rightly, took this threat seriously because they did not want to lose their customers to legal hassles.
Unlike the RIAA's lawsuits against ordinary music consumers, the fix for MSIE would ostensibly be a few clicks away. Download a downgrade to MSIE and you're in the clear (from this patent). Given that the cost of infringement is so high and evasion is so inexpensive and easy, I think a lot of people would obtain a changed MSIE.
I'm glad to see more people mention DRM and engage in discussions about the social problems with it. But I worry that the public is remarkably undereducated about what DRM can mean in the long run. To me, it's comments like the ones here (overwhelmingly talking about convenience) that shows how much work we as a society have yet to do to get people to understand and defend their freedoms.
If the DRM worked better in eBooks and the technology allowed the portability and legibility of paper books (which, someday, it will), I think more people would still overlook the planned loss in freedom to copy, resell, share, read aloud, and do all the other things we commonly do with paper books. We're already seeing this disappear with music (services like iTunes are paving the way). We'll end up going through another round of some poor 12-year old being sued for copyright infringement and fined thousands of dollars (or perhaps jailed) by some greedy book publisher association because she violated the license on the eBook by reading her eBook copy of Alice in Wonderland aloud in class. If you buy into DRM-encumbered technology now you'll get used to not having the freedoms you currently enjoy and then miss them when they're gone (when it's too late to go back to paper books).
Let's take the time now to alert people of the freedoms they have and warn them against what they stand to lose with DRM. Do you really want the copyright holder to take your eBook away (via your GPS-enabled eBook reader) because you went across town to the wrong side of the tracks? Do you want the ability to fully share, copy, modify, publish, publicly perform, and sell copies of works in the public domain? If so, you'll probably want to stay away from DRM no matter how attractive or convenient the packaging because DRM can take all this away from you and keep the public domain a dim memory.
From the parent poster's quote of the older SkyOs so-called End User License Agreement ("EULA"):
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) does not allow anyone distributing the covered software to withhold the complete corresponding source code of the program or to point somewhere else and essentially say "get it from them, not us". Perhaps Andrew Youll should spend some time reading the GNU GPL FAQ, if the license's text isn't sufficiently clear. Distributing binaries alone is insufficient for compliance with the GNU GPL. It doesn't matter if SkyOs comes with only a port of the applications or changes the software's feature set.
Youll's EULA demonstrates Youll is trying to place more restrictive terms on GPL-covered software than the GPL allows. His EULA suggests he is quite unclear on what the GNU GPL's terms are and how to work within them. But overall, it's sad that someone who draws value from the GNU project's contribution to their own work is being dealt with in such a manner. Leveraging one's rights is never "harass[ment]". The GNU GPL does not aim to make SkyOs free software (although SkyOs would do their users a favor by making the entire operating system free). Proprietors have successfully used and distributed GCC as their main compiler for years.
Notice how we all gain a very important reason for telling people to not do business with Apple, iTunes, and any DRM-encumbered technology. Apple wants it both ways here, they want to get you into a system that somewhat mimics what you could otherwise do with CDs but leaves out some of your rights. This reminds me of Adobe's eBooks--the eBook license on many eBooks prohibits things you expect to be able to do with a physical book: reading the book aloud, or copying more than the prescribed amount of data from the book, to name a couple things. The system Adobe created for reading eBooks enforces some of their prohibitions. I think it's time to reread "The Right to Read".
It's clear from their description that SkyOS is getting a considerable amount of help from the free software community--the list of features includes support for POSIX so GNU software can be used including the GNU compiler collection, GNU binutils, and GNU shell tools. But is SkyOS free software too? I looked around the website and could not find any clear indication SkyOS is free software.
I found Google cache of a license page clearly indicating this is proprietary software, but that page isn't being published on SkyOS' webserver anymore, so I'm not sure if it still applies. In light of this and because I could not find links for SkyOS' source code, I'm inclined to not recommend SkyOS (or any other non-free software).
Consider linking to the bill in a way that will work once the entry expires from their cache. From their FAQ on this issue:
HR 2239 (from the 108th Congress) should get you what you want.
Then it is up to us to make businesses where this does not happen. Nobody said the fight was easy or that one could afford to wait to be elevated to a decision-making rank. Like any other social movement, the Free Software movement has to build their own way and defend it. I think most people in the Free Software movement understand this (after all, most free software copyright holders choose the GNU GPL and apparently a lot of people in Europe talk to their elected officials about software patents in Europe).
For those who are in free software organizations, more people are seeing that if they want their business to survive, they had better care more about software freedom. It is not profitable to watch their niche being taken over by some larger corporation leveraging a larger patent portfolio or the DMCA. Cross-licensing patents means losing the exclusivity patenting was invented to ensure. Businesses who are victims of software patent cross-licensing gain a competitor in exchange for keeping their patent-dependent project viable. This helps open people's eyes to the dangers many in the Free Software movement and Open Source movement have been speaking about for some time now.
Then it is our job to make that happen by talking about software freedom more and making it an issue with elected officials and business leaders. It's a tough row to hoe, but history shows it is not impossible. Perhaps some people have unreasonable expectations on how long social movements take to make progress and how much work is involved in making sure the progress is not eroded.
Of course, I don't speak for the poster you're responding to but I care about making freedom available to people. You have more software freedom on a Free Software OS (such as GNU/Linux) than you do on a proprietary system (such as Microsoft Windows). I have no interest in giving people more reason to stay with non-free software. But if you're approaching this from the Open Source movement's mentality of merely delivering faster, cheaper, better programs, I can see why you might reach the conclusions you do. I approach this from the desire to make self-determination possible for more people using their computers. Only the freedoms of Free Software helps me do this. Free Software and Open Source don't speak to the same concerns.
I don't care which operating system people run as long as it is a free OS. People have been working on making free OSes more user-friendly for a long time and there is much progress to show for the effort. But this is a difficult task (made artifically harder by oppressive copyright and patent law) and so this requires a lot of effort. But for those who are committed to freedom, not mere practical convenience, the sacrifice and the fight are worth it.
If you give up on freedom, precisely what you describe is likely to happen because people are not going to give up word processing or editing databases, so they'll go with whatever software is available to meet their needs. There is another path: teach people the value of software freedom.
The Free Software movement proves that "the marketplace" is not the almighty immobile force you describe (or perhaps you're just interpreting too much in terms of the marketplace in order to make it appear unchanging; hence whatever happens it will be seen through that lens). When the GNU project began, many people said nobody would write software without being paid and when people are paid to write software, they are being paid to write non-free software. History clearly shows those people were wrong. In fact a number of the organizations that distribute non-free software now use the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc) as their chief compiler, and ship part of the rest of the GNU operating system too. People have been paid to write Free Software and governments are getting the idea that their people's ability to communicate freely using a computer rests on using Free Software.
I think the key is to teach more people about software freedom. Take this opportunity to show people that with Free Software you won't be beholden to any proprietor's interests. As the pool of people using Free Software grows your chances for being able to get by with Free Software grows too.
How ironic it is that in order to gain the pratical advantages Jones wants us to have, we must leverage the freedoms the free software community has fought so hard for over decades--the very freedoms Jones downplays:
Software freedom is championed by the Free Software movement (hence the name "Free"), not the Open Source movement. Perhaps Jones is unaware of the philosophical differences between these two movements. The Open Source Initiative has done valuable work in bringing people to freedom by endorsing free software licenses (including the GNU GPL, the most widely-used Free Software license). However, the Open Source movement focuses on telling business that they can develop better programs by making their source code available to the community of hackers willing to do good work without charge. This is considerably different from backing the freedoms to share and modify programs that, in turn, allow us to enjoy these practical advantages.
The Free Software Foundation tells us that we need more freedom talk so when we bring people into the free software commnuity through practical gain we give them a reason to stay with free software--when some proprietor offers a temptation (which might offer a better practical advantage), they'll be able to recall that software freedom is the one advantage proprietors can never provide.
Increasingly users do care about software freedom, though perhaps it takes some bad times with a proprietor to make them think about the ways in which the non-free alternative is poor. This is why we see governments pushing for Free Software, like the Brazilian government is doing. You don't get government officials like Peruvian Congressman David Villanueva Nunez writing a scathing letter to Microsoft and standing behind Free Software (not Open Source, as he was clear to point out) without understanding the advantages of self-reliance and freedom.
I saw that same entry in the release notes and concluded that is why the community either needs a free software RealPlayer replacement or a free software video/audio solution to compete with RealPlayer so we can simply recompile the programs we need and become more self-sufficient.
I'm guessing Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis will come in handy toward reaching the second goal.
Qmail is non-free software; distributing modified versions is prohibited. One can distribute patches to an unmodified Qmail and acquire the same result, but some people are unwilling to give up the freedom to publish modified versions of programs. By contrast, Sendmail and Postfix are free software.
I don't know what constitutes an "enormous amount of support", but support is also available for Sendmail and Postfix online and through consultants.
Spoken like someone who thinks that their ideas are original, like they didn't get ideas from anyone else. There are plenty of people who spend a lot of time developing something but a lot of them recognize that their work is just like everyone else's--their work is fodder for the next incremental advance in expression. There's nothing new under the sun, as Shakespeare said; no idea comes from nothing and you have no legitimate sole claim to the expressions of your ideas. You benefit from a leaky copyright system--fair use helps preserve freedom of speech. Copyright power is supposed to be limited.
Second, you cannot understand how ideas work by thinking in terms of "IP" (intellectual property). That phrase is prejudicial and a mish-mash of laws that can sometimes conflict with one another. What we're talking about in this thread primarily concerns copyright policy and the anti-social idea that copyright is property (which even the law doesn't completely agree with), so call it by its name.
Ironically, Itagaki's concern would seem out of place in other areas of life, maybe even an outright affront to people's right of expression--nobody would balk at you modifying a recipe to suit your needs (even a recipe from a copyrighted recipe book published commercially), adding a room on to your house, or changing the brake pads on your car without going to the manufacturer's garage. Nor would they balk at helping other people do any of these things by distributing information or kits on how to do it. But modify a videogame? Maybe we should take the lessons from the dojinshi market more seriously. According to the Dojinshi article, artists (who I'm sure "have a financial and emotional investment" in their work) all effectively share with each other and cultivate a comic book market that consumers apparently enjoy.
I had some problems with that section of the article. In general, I found the section could have been significantly shorter and less confusing had it referenced clearly written essays distributed by the GNU project.
The way "Linux" is used confuses the reader because James uses the term to describe an operating system and a mysterious project somehow related to "Linux". James never clearly identifies that Linux is and always was a kernel--a typically user-invisible chunk of a complete GNU/Linux system. It is now possible to run the GNU operating system under a kernel replacement (such as the GNU Hurd). When James talks about "GNU" you don't really know what relationship GNU and Linux have to one another:
The project Linus Torvalds works on is the Linux kernel. James would be better served by referring to any of the GNU project's works on the topic ("Why GNU/Linux", "Linux, GNU, and freedom", and the "GNU/Linux FAQ") more clearly explaining the distinction between GNU and Linux. These essays also introduce and link to essays on software freedom (which James addresses later on).
Later James talks about "open source software" even though he just spent time explaining software freedom. Perhaps James is unaware of the differences between the two movements and that the GNU General Public License (which he talks about later) was written by and exemplifies the thinking of the Free Software Foundation, not the Open Source Initiative. The Open Source Initiative merely added the GNU GPL to a list of approved licenses years after the GPL was already in widespread use in the community. You can't understand what makes the GPL so special in terms of the Open Source movement. While it is true that the Open Source movement brings users to the GPL, and that's great, this movement champions a development methodology, not software freedom (the issue at the heart of the GPL).
James says, "It [the GNU GPL] insists that any improvements to GPL-licensed source code have to be made available under the same terms..." but that is not quite right--the GPL only compels publishing the source code to distributed copies and derivatives. Private derivatives are a requirement for software freedom, as the definition for Free Software points out:
Perhaps this would have been a good place to point out the GNU GPL FAQ, another GNU project publication. If one is going to take the time to clear up Microsoft's distortions (as James does below), noting that the GPL allows private derivatives should be okay.
James also says, "This co
First, you should consider posting with an account (even one tied to a throwaway e-mail address, if you wish to preserve your anonymity in that way). Slashdot makes it very easy to skip over most anonymously posted articles, such as yours.
Second, I can find no source to substantiate your claim and you have not posted any. On the contrary, I can find information where RMS (which is who I'm guessing "he" refers to) supports the switch of some of the Ogg Vorbis code to a new BSD-like license (this also appears pertinant).
CPAN Shell makes installation easy, yes. Now show us what the command for uninstallation is.
Also, it would be helpful if the CPAN Shell command you'll show us could warn of lingering dependencies (where package A strictly depends on B and if you uninstall B you'll be warned that if you proceed package A will not work anymore).
The article gets some concepts profoundly wrong when it comes to discussing licensing (which is at the heart of the article). These items may confuse readers not already familiar with copyright law and the Free Software community.
Toward the bottom of the article "Public domain soft-ware [sic]" is mentioned and the "X Window System and BSD operating system" are cited as "notable" examples. Then the article mentions a "license limitation" that is only true for the old BSD license. This clearly illustrates the author is confused about what the public domain is and that works cannot be both licensed (as these examples are, under different but largely similar licenses) and in the public domain. Placing a work in the public domain is not a license, no matter how liberal the license's terms may be. Putting a work into the public domain is the irrevocable abdication of all copyright power over the work.
The terms "Linux" and "GNU/Linux" are used interchangeably, as if they both refer to the same thing (early in the article "Linux" is meant to refer to an operating system, later on "GNU/Linux" refers to an operating system). The GNU Project asks (and simple fairness requires) that we give GNU a fair share of the credit for their work in the GNU/Linux operating system. Technical precision requires us to distinguish between the Linux kernel and a GNU/Linux operating system. To these ends, the GNU Project publishes a FAQ on the issue of naming GNU/Linux, and an older essay.
Finally, just to be clear, the Open Source and Free Software movements are not the same. They have different philosophies, they began at different times, they were started by different people, and they speak to different audiences. The GNU Project's essay on the two movements and their social implications is helpful.
I'm not RMS, nor do I speak for him, the FSF, or any of the Linux kernel copyright holders. However, you appear to misunderstand a significant point about the development of the GNU Project and GNU/Linux in particular. There's nothing foolish about requiring compliance with the generous GNU General Public License, particularly nothing foolish about insisting that people cooperate in the commons the GNU GPL builds for us all. Nobody is more important than anyone else in this partnership (including Tivo). It is Tivo's job, not ours, to find a way to make money with GPL-covered programs if that is their desire.
Perhaps you aren't aware that the GNU Project (and the continued development of the GNU/Linux operating system in particular) is not about achieving mere popularity at the expense of user's freedom to share and modify. From this essay:
And this essay:
It wasn't the Open Source movement that carefully wrote the GNU General Public License and made it so likely to withstand legal attack by only leveraging the powers under copyright law (in fact part of the problem with other so-called "open source licenses" is that they aren't like the GPL because they try to place terms on powers not granted to licensors in copyright law). It's not the Open Source movement that champions the freedom to share and modify software. The Open Source movement added the license to a list of approved licenses and in so doing helped draw more people to using the GPL. But that movement did not exist when the GPL was written and the GPL was already in wide use in the Free Software community before the Open Source movement began. Let's give credit where credit is due and credit the GPL as a Free Software license so we properly understand what is at stake--the software freedom we've collectively enjoyed as a community.
What does this mean? How would you distinguish "hellbent on enforcing his ethics and morals on others" from presenting and implementing a compelling argument for free software?
Is it required that RMS' deal with those that work against the goal to supply software freedom for all computer users?
Choosing a license is often cited as the freedom to choose but can easily become the power to dominate users; choosing a free software license definately helps society. Choosing a copylefted free software license helps secure these freedoms for derivative works.
RMS and the FSF help help people choose licenses and software more wisely via the concept of copyleft. The FSF's licence list is quite informative and discriminating so people won't pick a license that doesn't serve their interests in the short and long term. From the look of some of the other posts in this /. thread, I'd say some still don't get the concept of why it is important to pay attention to the freedoms of derivative works.
Your subject header ("RMS promotes his views too strongly.") and this sentence suggest you are in favor of stopping RMS' freedom of speech. Is this what you are trying to convey?
RMS would agree here--in fact, he reiterated this in the interview when he answered a question about using WINE, a popular way to run Microsoft Windows programs without running Microsoft Windows:
Saying this twice doesn't make this more clear to me. RMS clearly explains how non-free software divides users and keeps them helpless. The social movement he started has worked to create an entire operating system people use every day. This movement has inspired others to do good things (including the Creative Commons and the Free Library of Science. Even the Open Source movement, which stands for different things than the Free Software movement, works to bring people to use and develop free software). Do you have more specific counterarguments to raise?
Open Source was never about freedom, it was and is about pitching the Open Source development methodology primarily to businesses: when businesses share source code they ostensibly get better programs developed with less expense because they can tap a large community of programmers who are willing to work on their project for no fee. Open Source talks about the practical outcome of sharing source code, not the freedoms that make those practical ends possible.
Freedom to share and modify programs was and is the message from the Free Software movement which started over a decade before the Open Source movement began. I recommend this essay for an instructive look at the differences between the two movements. It was the Free Software Foundation that brought us the GNU General Public License which secures the freedoms to share and modify and the community the Open Source movement has leveraged to spread their message. The FSF did these things well before the Open Source movement got started. I'm grateful the Open Source Movement is bringing users to Free Software and encouraging use of the GNU GPL (one of many Free Software licenses), but let's not overstate what the Open Source Initiative did--adding a license to a list of approved licenses cannot compare with writing and defending the license (links to parts one and two of Eben Moglen's essay).
SCO FUD aside, is Oracle interested in what's in the Linux kernel, or were you referring to the GNU/Linux operating system? I don't understand what you mean by "hijacking" here either--Red Hat has contributed a great deal to Linux and (as far as I know) all in accordance with the GPL. Everyone is free to study, share, and modify their contributions as well as the rest of the kernel.
One clarification: Linux is a program--a kernel commonly used with the GNU operating system. Did you mean Linus Torvalds here? Either way, that is quite incorrect. Linus Torvalds does not champion the freedom to share programs, he is a pragmatist who chooses whatever program he feels suits his immediate needs (for example, Torvalds' continued use of the non-free Bitkeeper program to manage his fork of the Linux kernel). Long-term considerations of software freedom seem relatively unimportant.
Richard Stallman (RMS), by contrast, founded the GNU project in 1984, years before Torvalds began working on Linux. RMS is the founder of the Free Software movement, and one of the authors of the GNU GPL, the most widely used license in free software. RMS wrote an informative essay about Linux, GNU, and freedom which explains his take on the matter.
This only describes part of the process (and thus only part of the problem with software patents). The other part is raising this prior art in court as a defense to patent infringement or to get a patent overturned. Either is very expensive, in fact it is so expensive I wouldn't be surprised if there were organizations who would rather simply not engage in the patented process than pay for a lengthy and possibly fruitless patent defense or overturning lawsuit.
At its heart, this is a part of the problem with software patents--people say software patents are okay because the court can resolve any problems in the system without acknowledging the adverse impact on those who can't afford lawyers. Court action generally discriminates against the poor (which can include the people who are ostensibly supposed to be so well-served by the patent system by allowing them to monopolize their "inventions"). The rich can afford to buy patents by acquiring organizations that have them. Large corporations probably have a lot of patents and can afford to cross-license (a practice which exposes an interesting fatal flaw with software patents).
RMS' talk on the dangers of software patents is most enlightening, I highly recommend listening to it or reading the transcript.
I think that's highly unlikely. I think it's highly unlikely the GNU GPL will be found to be somehow invalid because I think the GPL is amazingly carefully prepared and worded so it only leverages what copyright law allows. My experience is that courts generally favor the copyright holder and interpret licenses such that the copyright holder's concerns are sustained.
But if the GPL were hypothetically invalid, I think a court would be bound to say that the would-be GPL licensee defaults to whatever copyright allows for. I can't find an example that supports the notion of a work forcibly entering the public domain because of an invalid license. I think they would be non-distributable, non-modifyable, and no derivative works would be allowed to be prepared. Copyright holders would have to relicense the works in a way that is consistent with the court's problems.
Eben Moglen would disagree with you in that the GNU GPL is a contract--it's a license. The licensee is given permission to copy, modify, and make derivative works and otherwise you have whatever copyright law allows for by default.
There is not necessarily payment being made by the licensee, there need not be agreement with the terms of the license (you might find the terms attached to distributing derivative works to be too onerous, for instance). The licensee either behaves according to the terms of the GPL or they only get what copyright law allows for.
It's this careful crafting of the GPL, leveraging only the powers that are granted to copyright holders, that makes the GPL very likely to survive any court scrutiny. It's also what makes other licenses seem relatively poorly worded (like those licenses that try to place terms on running a program, a power not granted to copyright holders).