What radio show do you participate in? Has your parent company tried to shut you down yet, or is it public? I would like to listen.
Thanks for your interest in my show. I am the host of "The Free Software show" on WEFT 90.1 FM Wednesdays 2-6a. I also guest on Mediageek. I talk about and play things of interest to the Free Software community. I also try to explain things so that people who aren't so skilled with computers will understand what the issues are and how these issues impact their lives. If I can arrange the bandwidth and storage, I'll look into archiving my shows for syndication and digital distribution.
I suggest the FSF should pushing for the use of spanish words gratis and libere in place of free.
Perhaps you should listen to the speeches FSF members have made. When introducing the concept of software freedom they address the alternate terms and mention that when speaking other languages they do use the term appropriate in that language. "Free" is the most appropriate term in the English language, it just happens to come with a double meaning which needs to be clarified. But this is hardly a major stumbling block to people understanding the concept.
If copyright is the Free Software Foundation's enemy, this is where to strike. It's time to think outside the jail of our language. LSF has a nice ring to it.
I think the confusion a name change would provoke outweighs any advantage a name change would gain. It doesn't take much time or effort to learn the concept of freedom (and English speakers are familiar with it in other contexts like "Free Tibet", so the idea is useful in other places too).
Copyright is not the FSF's enemy. Proprietary software is the enemy of Free Software. Copyright is leveraged to great success by the FSF and the GNU GPL. The problem the FSF has with copyright is a problem many other people share. If there were a grassroots copyright reform movement (which is growing, and I'm proud to say I'm working on by talking about copyright issues on my radio show), I'm sure the FSF would cheer us on.
Nothing you just said answers the points I have raised and repeated. I understand what "interim" means, but you don't seem to understand that software freedom does not recognize interim or pre-release licenses as an allowable exception. If you think this is in error, please point me to the part of the definition of Free Software that says otherwise.
If you're convinced the delay until the fonts are released under a Free Software license is trivial, then is no harm in waiting for the fonts to be released under a Free Software license. Plenty of other developers release software (including fonts) pre-releases under Free Software licenses. Bitstream could have too. This logic about using a non-free license because the fonts are being worked on is pure rubbish and should be totally rejected.
To reiterate, the fonts are not currently part of Gnome, or any other free software package, but are available from Bitstream.
Of course they're not part of "any other free software package"; they couldn't be. The fonts are not Free Software. So if they were a part of any software package, that package could not be a Free Software package. Furthermore, these non-free fonts are available from what appears to be a GNOME site (ftp.gnome.org). The Slashdot article points to the GNOME webpage where the link to the fonts can be found. GNOME (a part of GNU, GNU being the project started to provide a Free Software operating system) is allowing their resources to be used for non-free software. This point is so plainly obvious, I can only conclude some don't understand that point because they don't understand what software freedom means, or because they are willing to overlook the struggle of software freedom so long as there is $0 software involved.
Distributing these fonts under their current license from a part of the GNU project remains a serious problem for anyone who cares about what GNU means.
RTFA. The fonts have a TEMPORARY license that is not redistributable.
Then there's no reason why the GNOME project should not do as I indicated (which you would have noticed had you bothered to read the parent post):
The GNOME project should wait [to distribute the fonts] until Bitstream releases the fonts under a Free Software license.
Since you didn't read the parent post, I'm guessing you also didn't read the links I pointed to. I mention this because it might come as news to you that there is no exception given in software freedom for temporary licenses. When the fonts are free, GNOME (or whatever part of GNU would be more technically appropriate) should help users by distributing the fonts. As for the fonts before us here and now, GNOME should not distribute these fonts.
According to their website, the GNOME project is part of GNU. GNU was founded to make the dream of software freedom a reality. The Bitstream Vera fonts offered to us here and now (the "beta" fonts) are not Free Software. Nobody is licensed to redistribute the fonts, so they cannot possibly qualify as Free Software. Therefore, it makes no sense why GNOME would do anything with these fonts at all. The GNOME project should wait until Bitstream releases the fonts under a Free Software license.
I'm disappointed that an official part of GNU would get involved with these non-free fonts. If you are interested in using only Free Software, I urge you to not obtain copies of these fonts under their current license. It's times like these one can measure how interested they are in pursuing freedom versus pursuing convenience. The freedoms of Free Software got us the community we treasure. Don't throw that away.
Thanks for the report. It is interesting to learn what doesn't work so I can avoid it. For those of us who want to run with only Free Software loaded on our systems, any suggestions on which card(s) to buy? I'm chiefly interested in running a dual-head system at 1600x1200@85Hz with a pair of Mitsubishi 2040U monitors (if the monitor make and model matters).
We are not against the Open Source movement, but we don't want to be lumped in with them. We acknowledge that they have contributed to our community, but we created this community, and we want people to know this. We want people to associate our achievements with our values and our philosophy, not with theirs. We want to be heard, not obscured behind a group with different views. To prevent people from thinking we are part of them, we take pains to avoid using the word ``open'' to describe free software, or its contrary, ``closed'', in talking about non-free software.
I attended one of ESR's talks, and while it took me a long time to realize, ESR's top selling point ("you can always take development in-house"), is not a simple pragmatic argument. It is an argument based on
freedom.
Either you or ESR have that exactly backwards. The Open Source movement was founded partially on the idea that talking about freedom was distancing the audience the Open Source crowd mainly wanted to talk to--businesses--so they dropped discussions of freedom with discussions of practical benefit. The Open Source movement talks about practical advantage and dismisses freedom. As a result they accept licenses that the Free Software movement does not accept including the Apple Public Source License (or APSL). The two movements have different philosophies and different goals.
Particularly telling in the link above is the story about the trade show in 1998:
He [the representative from a software organization] said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)
People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?
He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.
The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.
So no, the Open Source movement is not about freedom. They merely champion the practical advantages that come from having the freedom of Free Software. If you want the freedoms of Free Software, the Open Source movement is indeed a mistake.
Open source just means you can see thier
[sic] code...
No, that's not what "open source" means. Read the first sentence of the introduction to the definition of the Open Source Definition. This is ironic considering so many people come away with precisely the same conclusion you did and the Open Source movement was made in part to offer something believed to be clearer than the concept of software freedom (the "Free" in Free Software). You can see the results of other misconceptions about "Open Source" too.
I think it's great to see more Free Software being released. I welcome more Free Software programmers and their Free Software projects. But I think the importance of freedom is being ignored to chase what's popular and convenient here and now. I also see some potential for mistaking the advances of a freedom-minded movement for the advances of a freedom-dismissing movement.
From the press release:
"While Linux is well known as an operating system for personal computers and servers, today it is also finding applications in the area of digital home devices."
Linux is not an operating system, it is and has been a kernal. The Linux kernal is an important portion of a complete GNU/Linux operating system but it is just a portion (no matter how many people say otherwise) and it's not fair to ignore GNU. There are compelling reasons to take the time to mention GNU when you are talking about a complete operating system.
The great stuff we all appreciate in GNU came from a movement that pays a lot of attention to software freedom. The Open Source movement (which curtly dismisses the importance of software freedom) came over a decade later, well after the GNU GPL had been published and in wide use; well after the pragmatic idealism of the Free Software community had published a lot of Free Software. So please don't misattribute the gains of freedom (both practical and ethical) to the wrong movement.
He is involved in the OSS movement. He posts to the LKML, he is at times critical and at times supportive of it.
That does not qualify one for supporting the Open Source movement, a movement which dismisses software freedom. He made his view quite clear in the link I offered. You can see him take on this issue again in his letter to Dr. Dobb's magazine. It's worth a read. You could also listen to the first few minutes of the NYU 2001 talk he gave where he corrects Mike Uretsky for making the same incorrect association you did. Or perhaps you would like to read the transcript of the NYU 2001 talk instead. My point in all this is you have misrepresented his chief work by associating him with the Open Source movement. Please associate RMS with software freedom and with the Free Software movement.
I associate him with GNU. GNU's stated goal is the promotion of Free Software.
The GNU operating system and the Free Software movement were both started by RMS out of his desire to give all computer users freedom. Associating him with the Open Source movement is something he has made (and continues to make) efforts to correct.
I don't want to waste what time we have left with the present PC paradigm waiting for open source applications to catch up to the features and quality that proprietary software has TODAY.
How ironic it is then that you're talking about an Ogg Vorbis player--a patent-free encoding scheme invented to provide a competitive alternative to a patented scheme that can not legally be implemented in Free Software.
Peruvian Congressman Villanueva probably doesn't want to wait either, so he's working on Bill 1609 to put Free Software into public administration in Peru. The German government is funding a Free Software replacement for Outlook. These are just a couple examples of the things non-programmers around the world can do to help the cause of Free Software.
Nobody is saying you can't choose which software you want or that you will die if you pick proprietary software, those are straw arguments. I'm saying it is more reasonable to increase the number of people who are allowed to know what's going on with the software you run. We should hold all proprietary software to the same high standard we currently hold Microsoft's (overwhelmingly non-free) software to. Proprietary software, no matter what its ostensible purpose, can do things you would not like it to do. In order to keep the software from doing these undesirable things, we all need to develop and maintain a network of people who will inspect, share, and modify software to suit our needs. Keeping people from understanding how the software works helps these undesirable features stay hidden.
Couldn't geeks have found something better to support than "Free Software"? What was wrong with good old environmentalism or fighting against sweatshops in 3rd world countries?
There is no need to choose just one cause. There are people working on Free Software, the issues you name, and many other socially progressive issues all at the same time. I happen to be adept with computers, I support the Free Software movement, and I work on multiple other socially progressive projects. I think these movements draw like-minded people because their opposites (anti-environment, pro-sweatshop labor, anti-Free Software) usually come as a result of putting more power into fewer unaccountable hands.
Another way in which the anti-sweatshop movement and the environmental movement are both like the Free Software movement is how they all encourage you to think beyond your immediate desires. Sweatshop labor produces cheap goods which are readily available. But sweatshop labor also means people are working very hard and not getting paid a living wage. The anti-sweatshop labor movement encourages you to think beyond buying goods strictly based on price and consider helping poor workers make a fair living. The environmental movement wants you to think more about the car you drive, your heating and cooling system, and the advantages of recycling (amongst other things). In the Free Software movement you are encouraged to think beyond your immediate desire for a particular piece of software (such as the Ogg Vorbis player in this thread) and consider using a Free Software replacement instead. All of these things take a little bit of foresight and a lot of hard PR work to get people to not blindly comply with the latest advertisement.
These causes are not unique in the amount of work it takes to make them practical: it's hard work to make people aware of things and aware of people beyond themselves. It takes a lot of time and effort to provide socially responsible substitutes (competitive fair-wage clothing, low-emission vehicles, and yes, complete free software operating systems). So each of these movements (and many others) want you to volunteer your time and expertise.
MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT NOR EVER WANT TO BE PROGRAMMERS.
That is true, but most people do not want the private information on their computer leaked via a security hole, and most people are unhappy to discover that the secrecy of proprietary software allowed "spyware" (as it is called today) to execute on their machine. We aren't all scientists who understand the finer details of the things we use every day, but that doesn't mean we can't understand that gas hog cars, high pollutant exhausts, certain refrigerants, garbage landfills, and proprietary software are all bad in the long-term.
The Free Software movement has responses to the challenges they face and they target all computer users with their message. The Free Software movement can certainly use help in making their message clearer to non-programmers and getting their ideas out in front of the public. I hope you'll read what the FSF has to say and help them focus their message to reach a wider audience. After having worked on a congressional campaign, I have experienced first-hand how difficult it is to get the media's attention for an ethically-based message. I imagine helping the FSF get their message in front of the public is no easier.
No one is going to di[sic] if they can't copy a piece of software, a song, a video or a book. LIFE WILL GO ON, and it won't be bad.
Ask Lawrence Lessig how bad it will be. He knows a lot about the connections of copyright law, media access, and dissenting opinion. He champions what he calls "free culture", an idea that is well worth hearing. Preserving the freedoms to communicate and increasing these freedoms to allow more dissent to be heard are movements worth fighting for. Criticizing works can require copying portions of works, so if copying is made unavailable, critique and dissent are far more difficult. This might not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to people who want to convey unpopular messages including: not wanting an infinitely long copyright term, not bombing Iraq, and stopping the war of sanctions against Iraq, and no more "software patents". I hope you'll become more politically aware and see the extant connections that govern your life.
My objection is not based on challenging rights.
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Ogg/Vorbis on Palm OS
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· Score: 2
But since this dude did it for FREE, on his own dime, you have no right to demand anything.
It appears you and at least one moderator have grossly misinterpreted my parent post. Also, to address your concern directly, I am not demanding anything. I am encouraging people to continue to consider the pitfalls of becoming reliant on proprietary software. This is hardly a new line of argument, I admit, but it continues to be relevant.
In your words, I am suggesting people "leave it" because it suffers the same problem as any other proprietary software. I appreciate the widespread use of Ogg Vorbis but I do not want to give up my software freedom to use Ogg Vorbis and I don't want to encourage my friends to give up their software freedom either. I think it's unfortunate that some Slashdot participants are all too eager to throw away their freedom when someone dangles the right thing in front of them (e.g., when Sony, an MPAA member, releases a new notebook computer they'll buy one even though there are plenty of other good notebooks out there; if someone releases proprietary Ogg Vorbis software they'll buy and/or use it even though there is Free Software to do the same job). I encourage people to think beyond their immediate desires and not support those who try to work against what you know is better for you in the long run.
Not everyone is a programmer. Some folks recognize the value of good proprietary software that does what it says it will do and comes at a reasonable price.
But that's just the problem: only the proprietor really knows everything that proprietary program is doing. One cannot truly judge how good the program is without knowing what it does or having someone you trust know what it does. There's no way to assess the trustworthiness of proprietary software. One need not be a programmer to understand the dangers of secrecy.
Remember, software licenses aren't grounds for holy wars for most folks.
I would not be so quick to dismiss the importance of Free Software. Slashdot readers have seen significant failures of proprietors who care more about their bottom line than your privacy and the integrity of your system.
As has been seen with many other projects, the code gets branched at that point and progress towards and stable and bug-free final release is hindered.
Forking the project does not in itself hinder one fork from proceeding. The trouble with non-copylefted Free Software licenses are popular proprietary derivatives because then you are competing with what is partially your own work. If the proprietary improvements are patented as well you'll find it much more difficult to write a compatible substitute. As I understand it, the Ogg Theora team's choice of license is strategic.
Beta software should be released under a restrictive license. [...] This would force bugfixes back into the main branch [...]
I disagree. I don't think the freedoms of Free Software disappear or become unimportant just because the software is a pre-release. You cannot force people to help you with your software. You might not get the help you want unless you show you're willing to let them share what you've done.
Honest question, not a troll: does anybody care what the FSF thinks about this?
Yes, I care because the GNU GPL is the preeminent Free Software license. I care because the FSF is concerned with everyone's freedom to share and modify software, and that includes me. Their mission requires thorough analysis of the ethics and freedoms of Free Software, an analysis I think the FSF has done an excellent job of providing. This concern includes talking about patents that adversely affect those freedoms.
From the looks of things, there are a few hardliners who believe the FSF really knows what's what[...]
It's also possible people believe the FSF knows "what's what" because these people have considered the matter of Free Software seriously and reached a conclusion compatible with the FSF's position. The FSF has been around dutifully working on Free Software issues for so long many people have had the opportunity to learn what the FSF stands for.
A good example of this is the recent "GNU/Linux" thing. There are a few posters here who still insist on referring to it as "GNU/Linux," but nobody else really paid any attention.
Judging by the size of the Slashdot thread when the FSF published their GNU/Linux FAQ I'd say a lot of Slashdot readers paid attention--it was quite a popular discussion for Slashdot. I think it is fair to give credit where credit is due, and it is reasonable to draw fine distinctions in order to speak and understand things more clearly. I find calling the union of the GNU operating system and the Linux kernal "GNU/Linux" to be helpful to both of those ends. I also find the term helpful to instruct other people on why GNU is so important, and helpful to explain what Linus Torvalds contributed.
The FSF's point here is that W3C RF policy will not just make OSS implementations difficult, it will make it, in some cases, impossible.
That misses a big part of their point. The FSF speaks in support of the Free Software movement, not the Open Source movement. The difference between the two movements is key to understanding the root of their problem with the W3C's patent policy.
The Open Source movement discourages you from paying attention to software freedom. This can result in ignoring barriers that prevent everyone from sharing software and modifying software to suit their needs. The GNU GPL, the most popular Free Software license, is only an Open Source license because the OSI defined their terms broadly enough to include the GPL in an approved license list. The Free Software Foundation did the work behind the GNU GPL: they determined which issues the license would address, they wrote the GPL to address those issues, and they have maintained the GPL through today. Much of this work occurred well before the Open Source movement began.
So please give credit where credit is due and do not cite this work in the context of the wrong movement.
Copyright code offered "royalty-free but with constraints" is sort of a poisoned apple.
It is, but it's important to note we're talking about implementations of patented ideas. Implementations of patented ideas are usually under copyright but it is the terms of the patent that are chiefly at issue. Patents and copyrights are distinctly different segments of law but are commonly thrown together in a mish-mash some people call "intellectual property" (a term which is inappropriate in more ways than is apropos to talk about here).
You can use it in the intended application, but the code using it can never be GPL.
The patent policy under discussion can adversely affect the entire Free Software community regardless of which Free Software license is involved, not just GNU GPL licensees.
Re:Open source vs Free software
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MAME To Become GPL?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
MAME was always open source. Saying it was "not-so-open" isn't true. All the source was free to download and look at. That's open source.
No, MAME was never Open Source because MAME's license was never approved by OSI, and no, merely seeing the source code is not all there is to Open Source (as the Open Source definition points out in the first sentence). It's easy to arrive at that misunderstanding however, many people merely take the definitions of the words "open" and "source" and arrive at that conclusion.
For a more thorough understanding of the differences between the Open Source and Free Software movements, I encourage you to read the definitions of both terms and this essay because it does not address one movement or the other by name calling like the OSI's FAQ does.
It sounds like your organization is genuinely trying to do the right thing. The FSF is eager to help organizations like yours become compliant with the GNU GPL. The FSF's general counsel Eben Moglen has said that he spends a good deal of time helping people become GPL-compliant. Perhaps he could help your company too.
I was going to do a research paper on something similar, but I couldn't find enough scholarly writings on the topic. My paper was going to go through how the music industry and technology interface, and how the technology and contract laws give them large ownership of music, and how if they moved to a digital distribution model (which they could) it would violate their previous business model based on artificial scarcity and monopolistic competition.
I don't know what books you have read but I urge you to read the following two books. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading them and I plan to re-read them as soon as my friends return my copies back to me:
Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (ISBN 0375505784 and 0375726446)
Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (ISBN 0814788068)
Around February 2003 you should be able to find Vaidhyanathan's new book The Anarchist in the Library (ISBN 0465089844) in hardcover. Given how approachable and clearly written Copyrights and Copywrongs is, I fully expect Anarchist in the Library to be worth everyone's while.
Lessig's book is the more scholarly of the two, but that takes away nothing from Vaidhyanathan's excellent book. I would not hesitate to cite, quote, and paraphrase from both of them in any research paper.
In case you're not familiar with Vaidhyanathan and Lessig check out Siva Vaidhyanathan's brief interview on Slashdot a while back. Lawrence Lessig's name might be more familiar as the lawyer who argued Eldred v. Ashcroft before the US Supreme Court on the side of Eric Eldred. Lessig has also done a Slashdot interview.
In this context it is true. The GPL prevents an open source developer charging Microsoft's royalty to their users as that would be a restriction on the distribution.
The only restriction the GNU GPL places on how much you can charge to distribute GPL-covered software has to do with distributing binaries without the corresponding complete source code. I'm not sure what you mean by "charging Microsoft's royalty to their users", but everyone operates under the same terms with GPL-covered software. Whether anyone would pay that fee is a completely separate market issue. The article I pointed to before has laid this out very clearly.
I believe you are reading something into the Washington Post quote that wasn't there. The Washington Post article made no distinction between kinds of payments. They clearly said "[the GNU GPL] bars any payment". For the Washington Post, all payments are the same and all are disallowed under the GNU GPL. It is unfortunate the Washington Post writers and editors did not even read the GNU GPL FAQ which would have shown them their interpretation is incorrect.
In other words, the GPL bars payments to third parties in these sort of cases.
The GPL's terms on distributing GPL-covered works for a fee do not change for "payments to third parties".
Since Microsoft is charging a royalty fee to use the communications protocols, any open-source developer - those who contend that sharing software blueprints is the best way to build products - would not be able to use them. Those companies, which include Linux firms, use a special "free software" license called the General Public License that bars any payment.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the mainstream press gets salient details wrong. The last sentence of the above paragraph is simply untrue. Even Microsoft understands they can sell GPL-covered software (as they have been doing for quite some time now). The GNU GPL (erroneously referred to as "the General Public License" above) does not "[bar] any payment"; it can be okay to sell Free Software including GNU GPL-covered software. In fact, in the essay I just linked to it is encouraged that one get as much money as one can for distributing Free Software.
One element that makes payment impossible for Free Software developers are licenses that require per-seat payments. When you have the freedom to share the software freely you can't keep track of who gets a copy. When you have the freedom to modify the software tracking systems built into the software can (and probably will) be removed. Free Software licenses grant you the freedoms to share and modify the software under that license.
The latest article, written by yours truly, is rather lengthy, explaining such things as adding 3D drivers, missing MP3 functionality, DVD decoding, using APT with RHL, and customizing Red Hat's modified KDE.
It's unfortunate you are choosing to use your voice to introduce "Joe and Jane User" to dependency via non-free and patent encumbered software (MP3 playing instead of Ogg Vorbis and the non-free NVidia video card driver). I think it would be better if you pointed them to reasons why they should consider their software freedom (the practical idealism that gave rise to the GNU system and the GNU GPL on which Red Hat bases so much of their GNU/Linux system). Since you know so much about this system and compliant hardware, perhaps you could also help develop a list of hardware for which there are Free Software drivers so users could easily buy this hardware and retain their freedom to share and modify software.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for your interest in my show. I am the host of "The Free Software show" on WEFT 90.1 FM Wednesdays 2-6a. I also guest on Mediageek. I talk about and play things of interest to the Free Software community. I also try to explain things so that people who aren't so skilled with computers will understand what the issues are and how these issues impact their lives. If I can arrange the bandwidth and storage, I'll look into archiving my shows for syndication and digital distribution.
Perhaps you should listen to the speeches FSF members have made. When introducing the concept of software freedom they address the alternate terms and mention that when speaking other languages they do use the term appropriate in that language. "Free" is the most appropriate term in the English language, it just happens to come with a double meaning which needs to be clarified. But this is hardly a major stumbling block to people understanding the concept.
I think the confusion a name change would provoke outweighs any advantage a name change would gain. It doesn't take much time or effort to learn the concept of freedom (and English speakers are familiar with it in other contexts like "Free Tibet", so the idea is useful in other places too).
Copyright is not the FSF's enemy. Proprietary software is the enemy of Free Software. Copyright is leveraged to great success by the FSF and the GNU GPL. The problem the FSF has with copyright is a problem many other people share. If there were a grassroots copyright reform movement (which is growing, and I'm proud to say I'm working on by talking about copyright issues on my radio show), I'm sure the FSF would cheer us on.
Nothing you just said answers the points I have raised and repeated. I understand what "interim" means, but you don't seem to understand that software freedom does not recognize interim or pre-release licenses as an allowable exception. If you think this is in error, please point me to the part of the definition of Free Software that says otherwise.
If you're convinced the delay until the fonts are released under a Free Software license is trivial, then is no harm in waiting for the fonts to be released under a Free Software license. Plenty of other developers release software (including fonts) pre-releases under Free Software licenses. Bitstream could have too. This logic about using a non-free license because the fonts are being worked on is pure rubbish and should be totally rejected.
Of course they're not part of "any other free software package"; they couldn't be. The fonts are not Free Software. So if they were a part of any software package, that package could not be a Free Software package. Furthermore, these non-free fonts are available from what appears to be a GNOME site (ftp.gnome.org). The Slashdot article points to the GNOME webpage where the link to the fonts can be found. GNOME (a part of GNU, GNU being the project started to provide a Free Software operating system) is allowing their resources to be used for non-free software. This point is so plainly obvious, I can only conclude some don't understand that point because they don't understand what software freedom means, or because they are willing to overlook the struggle of software freedom so long as there is $0 software involved.
Distributing these fonts under their current license from a part of the GNU project remains a serious problem for anyone who cares about what GNU means.
Then there's no reason why the GNOME project should not do as I indicated (which you would have noticed had you bothered to read the parent post):
Since you didn't read the parent post, I'm guessing you also didn't read the links I pointed to. I mention this because it might come as news to you that there is no exception given in software freedom for temporary licenses. When the fonts are free, GNOME (or whatever part of GNU would be more technically appropriate) should help users by distributing the fonts. As for the fonts before us here and now, GNOME should not distribute these fonts.
According to their website, the GNOME project is part of GNU. GNU was founded to make the dream of software freedom a reality. The Bitstream Vera fonts offered to us here and now (the "beta" fonts) are not Free Software. Nobody is licensed to redistribute the fonts, so they cannot possibly qualify as Free Software. Therefore, it makes no sense why GNOME would do anything with these fonts at all. The GNOME project should wait until Bitstream releases the fonts under a Free Software license.
I'm disappointed that an official part of GNU would get involved with these non-free fonts. If you are interested in using only Free Software, I urge you to not obtain copies of these fonts under their current license. It's times like these one can measure how interested they are in pursuing freedom versus pursuing convenience. The freedoms of Free Software got us the community we treasure. Don't throw that away.
Thanks for the report. It is interesting to learn what doesn't work so I can avoid it. For those of us who want to run with only Free Software loaded on our systems, any suggestions on which card(s) to buy? I'm chiefly interested in running a dual-head system at 1600x1200@85Hz with a pair of Mitsubishi 2040U monitors (if the monitor make and model matters).
http://www.soulride.com/products/screenshots/soulr ide_screenshots.zip might be convenient too. The parent directory http://www.soulride.com/products/screenshots/ is interesting as well.
I doubt the FSF would use the term "open" to describe Free Software. According to "Why Free Software is better than Open Source":
Either you or ESR have that exactly backwards. The Open Source movement was founded partially on the idea that talking about freedom was distancing the audience the Open Source crowd mainly wanted to talk to--businesses--so they dropped discussions of freedom with discussions of practical benefit. The Open Source movement talks about practical advantage and dismisses freedom. As a result they accept licenses that the Free Software movement does not accept including the Apple Public Source License (or APSL). The two movements have different philosophies and different goals.
Particularly telling in the link above is the story about the trade show in 1998:
So no, the Open Source movement is not about freedom. They merely champion the practical advantages that come from having the freedom of Free Software. If you want the freedoms of Free Software, the Open Source movement is indeed a mistake.
No, that's not what "open source" means. Read the first sentence of the introduction to the definition of the Open Source Definition. This is ironic considering so many people come away with precisely the same conclusion you did and the Open Source movement was made in part to offer something believed to be clearer than the concept of software freedom (the "Free" in Free Software). You can see the results of other misconceptions about "Open Source" too.
I think it's great to see more Free Software being released. I welcome more Free Software programmers and their Free Software projects. But I think the importance of freedom is being ignored to chase what's popular and convenient here and now. I also see some potential for mistaking the advances of a freedom-minded movement for the advances of a freedom-dismissing movement.
Linux is not an operating system, it is and has been a kernal. The Linux kernal is an important portion of a complete GNU/Linux operating system but it is just a portion (no matter how many people say otherwise) and it's not fair to ignore GNU. There are compelling reasons to take the time to mention GNU when you are talking about a complete operating system.
The great stuff we all appreciate in GNU came from a movement that pays a lot of attention to software freedom. The Open Source movement (which curtly dismisses the importance of software freedom) came over a decade later, well after the GNU GPL had been published and in wide use; well after the pragmatic idealism of the Free Software community had published a lot of Free Software. So please don't misattribute the gains of freedom (both practical and ethical) to the wrong movement.
That does not qualify one for supporting the Open Source movement, a movement which dismisses software freedom. He made his view quite clear in the link I offered. You can see him take on this issue again in his letter to Dr. Dobb's magazine. It's worth a read. You could also listen to the first few minutes of the NYU 2001 talk he gave where he corrects Mike Uretsky for making the same incorrect association you did. Or perhaps you would like to read the transcript of the NYU 2001 talk instead. My point in all this is you have misrepresented his chief work by associating him with the Open Source movement. Please associate RMS with software freedom and with the Free Software movement.
The GNU operating system and the Free Software movement were both started by RMS out of his desire to give all computer users freedom. Associating him with the Open Source movement is something he has made (and continues to make) efforts to correct.
Please take the time to learn the difference between the Open Source and Free Software movements. It is not at all appropriate or helpful to associate Richard Stallman with the Open Source movement or disassociate him with the movement he started--the Free Software movement.
How ironic it is then that you're talking about an Ogg Vorbis player--a patent-free encoding scheme invented to provide a competitive alternative to a patented scheme that can not legally be implemented in Free Software.
Peruvian Congressman Villanueva probably doesn't want to wait either, so he's working on Bill 1609 to put Free Software into public administration in Peru. The German government is funding a Free Software replacement for Outlook. These are just a couple examples of the things non-programmers around the world can do to help the cause of Free Software.
Nobody is saying you can't choose which software you want or that you will die if you pick proprietary software, those are straw arguments. I'm saying it is more reasonable to increase the number of people who are allowed to know what's going on with the software you run. We should hold all proprietary software to the same high standard we currently hold Microsoft's (overwhelmingly non-free) software to. Proprietary software, no matter what its ostensible purpose, can do things you would not like it to do. In order to keep the software from doing these undesirable things, we all need to develop and maintain a network of people who will inspect, share, and modify software to suit our needs. Keeping people from understanding how the software works helps these undesirable features stay hidden.
There is no need to choose just one cause. There are people working on Free Software, the issues you name, and many other socially progressive issues all at the same time. I happen to be adept with computers, I support the Free Software movement, and I work on multiple other socially progressive projects. I think these movements draw like-minded people because their opposites (anti-environment, pro-sweatshop labor, anti-Free Software) usually come as a result of putting more power into fewer unaccountable hands.
Another way in which the anti-sweatshop movement and the environmental movement are both like the Free Software movement is how they all encourage you to think beyond your immediate desires. Sweatshop labor produces cheap goods which are readily available. But sweatshop labor also means people are working very hard and not getting paid a living wage. The anti-sweatshop labor movement encourages you to think beyond buying goods strictly based on price and consider helping poor workers make a fair living. The environmental movement wants you to think more about the car you drive, your heating and cooling system, and the advantages of recycling (amongst other things). In the Free Software movement you are encouraged to think beyond your immediate desire for a particular piece of software (such as the Ogg Vorbis player in this thread) and consider using a Free Software replacement instead. All of these things take a little bit of foresight and a lot of hard PR work to get people to not blindly comply with the latest advertisement.
These causes are not unique in the amount of work it takes to make them practical: it's hard work to make people aware of things and aware of people beyond themselves. It takes a lot of time and effort to provide socially responsible substitutes (competitive fair-wage clothing, low-emission vehicles, and yes, complete free software operating systems). So each of these movements (and many others) want you to volunteer your time and expertise.
That is true, but most people do not want the private information on their computer leaked via a security hole, and most people are unhappy to discover that the secrecy of proprietary software allowed "spyware" (as it is called today) to execute on their machine. We aren't all scientists who understand the finer details of the things we use every day, but that doesn't mean we can't understand that gas hog cars, high pollutant exhausts, certain refrigerants, garbage landfills, and proprietary software are all bad in the long-term.
The Free Software movement has responses to the challenges they face and they target all computer users with their message. The Free Software movement can certainly use help in making their message clearer to non-programmers and getting their ideas out in front of the public. I hope you'll read what the FSF has to say and help them focus their message to reach a wider audience. After having worked on a congressional campaign, I have experienced first-hand how difficult it is to get the media's attention for an ethically-based message. I imagine helping the FSF get their message in front of the public is no easier.
Ask Lawrence Lessig how bad it will be. He knows a lot about the connections of copyright law, media access, and dissenting opinion. He champions what he calls "free culture", an idea that is well worth hearing. Preserving the freedoms to communicate and increasing these freedoms to allow more dissent to be heard are movements worth fighting for. Criticizing works can require copying portions of works, so if copying is made unavailable, critique and dissent are far more difficult. This might not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to people who want to convey unpopular messages including: not wanting an infinitely long copyright term, not bombing Iraq, and stopping the war of sanctions against Iraq, and no more "software patents". I hope you'll become more politically aware and see the extant connections that govern your life.
It appears you and at least one moderator have grossly misinterpreted my parent post. Also, to address your concern directly, I am not demanding anything. I am encouraging people to continue to consider the pitfalls of becoming reliant on proprietary software. This is hardly a new line of argument, I admit, but it continues to be relevant.
In your words, I am suggesting people "leave it" because it suffers the same problem as any other proprietary software. I appreciate the widespread use of Ogg Vorbis but I do not want to give up my software freedom to use Ogg Vorbis and I don't want to encourage my friends to give up their software freedom either. I think it's unfortunate that some Slashdot participants are all too eager to throw away their freedom when someone dangles the right thing in front of them (e.g., when Sony, an MPAA member, releases a new notebook computer they'll buy one even though there are plenty of other good notebooks out there; if someone releases proprietary Ogg Vorbis software they'll buy and/or use it even though there is Free Software to do the same job). I encourage people to think beyond their immediate desires and not support those who try to work against what you know is better for you in the long run.
But that's just the problem: only the proprietor really knows everything that proprietary program is doing. One cannot truly judge how good the program is without knowing what it does or having someone you trust know what it does. There's no way to assess the trustworthiness of proprietary software. One need not be a programmer to understand the dangers of secrecy.
I would not be so quick to dismiss the importance of Free Software. Slashdot readers have seen significant failures of proprietors who care more about their bottom line than your privacy and the integrity of your system.
Forking the project does not in itself hinder one fork from proceeding. The trouble with non-copylefted Free Software licenses are popular proprietary derivatives because then you are competing with what is partially your own work. If the proprietary improvements are patented as well you'll find it much more difficult to write a compatible substitute. As I understand it, the Ogg Theora team's choice of license is strategic.
I disagree. I don't think the freedoms of Free Software disappear or become unimportant just because the software is a pre-release. You cannot force people to help you with your software. You might not get the help you want unless you show you're willing to let them share what you've done.
Yes, I care because the GNU GPL is the preeminent Free Software license. I care because the FSF is concerned with everyone's freedom to share and modify software, and that includes me. Their mission requires thorough analysis of the ethics and freedoms of Free Software, an analysis I think the FSF has done an excellent job of providing. This concern includes talking about patents that adversely affect those freedoms.
It's also possible people believe the FSF knows "what's what" because these people have considered the matter of Free Software seriously and reached a conclusion compatible with the FSF's position. The FSF has been around dutifully working on Free Software issues for so long many people have had the opportunity to learn what the FSF stands for.
Judging by the size of the Slashdot thread when the FSF published their GNU/Linux FAQ I'd say a lot of Slashdot readers paid attention--it was quite a popular discussion for Slashdot. I think it is fair to give credit where credit is due, and it is reasonable to draw fine distinctions in order to speak and understand things more clearly. I find calling the union of the GNU operating system and the Linux kernal "GNU/Linux" to be helpful to both of those ends. I also find the term helpful to instruct other people on why GNU is so important, and helpful to explain what Linus Torvalds contributed.
That misses a big part of their point. The FSF speaks in support of the Free Software movement, not the Open Source movement. The difference between the two movements is key to understanding the root of their problem with the W3C's patent policy.
The Open Source movement discourages you from paying attention to software freedom. This can result in ignoring barriers that prevent everyone from sharing software and modifying software to suit their needs. The GNU GPL, the most popular Free Software license, is only an Open Source license because the OSI defined their terms broadly enough to include the GPL in an approved license list. The Free Software Foundation did the work behind the GNU GPL: they determined which issues the license would address, they wrote the GPL to address those issues, and they have maintained the GPL through today. Much of this work occurred well before the Open Source movement began.
So please give credit where credit is due and do not cite this work in the context of the wrong movement.
It is, but it's important to note we're talking about implementations of patented ideas. Implementations of patented ideas are usually under copyright but it is the terms of the patent that are chiefly at issue. Patents and copyrights are distinctly different segments of law but are commonly thrown together in a mish-mash some people call "intellectual property" (a term which is inappropriate in more ways than is apropos to talk about here).
The patent policy under discussion can adversely affect the entire Free Software community regardless of which Free Software license is involved, not just GNU GPL licensees.
No, MAME was never Open Source because MAME's license was never approved by OSI, and no, merely seeing the source code is not all there is to Open Source (as the Open Source definition points out in the first sentence). It's easy to arrive at that misunderstanding however, many people merely take the definitions of the words "open" and "source" and arrive at that conclusion.
For a more thorough understanding of the differences between the Open Source and Free Software movements, I encourage you to read the definitions of both terms and this essay because it does not address one movement or the other by name calling like the OSI's FAQ does.
It sounds like your organization is genuinely trying to do the right thing. The FSF is eager to help organizations like yours become compliant with the GNU GPL. The FSF's general counsel Eben Moglen has said that he spends a good deal of time helping people become GPL-compliant. Perhaps he could help your company too.
I don't know what books you have read but I urge you to read the following two books. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading them and I plan to re-read them as soon as my friends return my copies back to me:
Around February 2003 you should be able to find Vaidhyanathan's new book The Anarchist in the Library (ISBN 0465089844) in hardcover. Given how approachable and clearly written Copyrights and Copywrongs is, I fully expect Anarchist in the Library to be worth everyone's while.
Lessig's book is the more scholarly of the two, but that takes away nothing from Vaidhyanathan's excellent book. I would not hesitate to cite, quote, and paraphrase from both of them in any research paper.
In case you're not familiar with Vaidhyanathan and Lessig check out Siva Vaidhyanathan's brief interview on Slashdot a while back. Lawrence Lessig's name might be more familiar as the lawyer who argued Eldred v. Ashcroft before the US Supreme Court on the side of Eric Eldred. Lessig has also done a Slashdot interview.
The only restriction the GNU GPL places on how much you can charge to distribute GPL-covered software has to do with distributing binaries without the corresponding complete source code. I'm not sure what you mean by "charging Microsoft's royalty to their users", but everyone operates under the same terms with GPL-covered software. Whether anyone would pay that fee is a completely separate market issue. The article I pointed to before has laid this out very clearly.
I believe you are reading something into the Washington Post quote that wasn't there. The Washington Post article made no distinction between kinds of payments. They clearly said "[the GNU GPL] bars any payment". For the Washington Post, all payments are the same and all are disallowed under the GNU GPL. It is unfortunate the Washington Post writers and editors did not even read the GNU GPL FAQ which would have shown them their interpretation is incorrect.
The GPL's terms on distributing GPL-covered works for a fee do not change for "payments to third parties".
Perhaps not surprisingly, the mainstream press gets salient details wrong. The last sentence of the above paragraph is simply untrue. Even Microsoft understands they can sell GPL-covered software (as they have been doing for quite some time now). The GNU GPL (erroneously referred to as "the General Public License" above) does not "[bar] any payment"; it can be okay to sell Free Software including GNU GPL-covered software. In fact, in the essay I just linked to it is encouraged that one get as much money as one can for distributing Free Software.
One element that makes payment impossible for Free Software developers are licenses that require per-seat payments. When you have the freedom to share the software freely you can't keep track of who gets a copy. When you have the freedom to modify the software tracking systems built into the software can (and probably will) be removed. Free Software licenses grant you the freedoms to share and modify the software under that license.
pantropik writes
It's unfortunate you are choosing to use your voice to introduce "Joe and Jane User" to dependency via non-free and patent encumbered software (MP3 playing instead of Ogg Vorbis and the non-free NVidia video card driver). I think it would be better if you pointed them to reasons why they should consider their software freedom (the practical idealism that gave rise to the GNU system and the GNU GPL on which Red Hat bases so much of their GNU/Linux system). Since you know so much about this system and compliant hardware, perhaps you could also help develop a list of hardware for which there are Free Software drivers so users could easily buy this hardware and retain their freedom to share and modify software.