When the European Commission want to consult the industry about something, they usually try to find a diverse cross sample. So they'll talk to BSA, some union, some Linux representative, etc. One possible choice for the "Linux representative" would be FSFE. FSFE would say "software patents are incompatible with the goals of the community we support". Another choice for the "Linux representative" now will be Linux Foundation (which is IBM and friends by a new name), and they'll say "software patents are grand, there are a few glitches that let unenforceable patents through, but we'll harness the community to fix these problems for us and everything will be fine". So the European Commission will publish a dreadful recommendation and will say "we even consulted the Linux free software crowd".
And pass it on to everyone you know. It only has 1,800 signatures right now and the deadline is Feb 20th. And if you want to learn more about software patents, try:
I don't see the connection between what you say and what RMS was saying in the bit I quoted - I wondering if you're talking about different things.
RMS isn't saying that reading source code will teach you to improve that source code any quicker than formal education would teach you to edit that source code. He's saying that the four freedoms benefit everyone, even if most people can't exercise the freedom to modify the source code. And the reason is that those who can't modify will still benefit from the modifications of others.
the reason that the BSD developers started making their code free was at least partly due to the visit that I paid to them in 1984 or 1985, because I wanted to be able to use some of their code in GNU. So I asked them, because at that time, BSD existed, it was a version of Unix, and you had to show them an AT&T source licence in order to get a copy of BSD. So I told them: you are effectively donating your labour, your work, to a company. It's not even a charity, and you're donating to it. Why don't you separate your code from AT&T's code, and that way you could make your code free.
(Note the word "partly" in the first sentence - don't think he's trying to take full credit.)
I've changed my dress style (while working) based on your logic, but I don't think your forumlas still work when my variables are replaced with Stallman's.
Stallman's main focus is not decision makers, it is the public and the action groups, and they influence the decision makers more than one intellectual can. Also, the decision makers usually evaluate things only in terms of money or votes. If they do something ethical, it is completely coincidental (i.e. they did it because it would get money or votes). So Stallman is most effective when he tells the public not to pay for proprietary software or not to vote for someone who supports bad legislation - that leads the decision makers to make a decision based only on money or votes but which is (coicidentally) ethical.
Also, a mirror situation has been proven: Stallman has met with, and gotten endorsements from the president of India (figurehead), the president of Ecuador (head of state), the top candidate for the 2007 French presidential election (where president is head of state), the president of Venuzuela (head of state), and probably some others. So long hair and the lack of a tie does not mean you won't influence decision makers.
"only programmers can directly exercise freedoms one and three but every user can directly exercise freedoms zero and two - the freedoms to run the program and copy the program - and the non-programmer users indirectly get the benefit of freedoms one and three. They can't use these freedoms directly, because that means programming, but when other people exercise these freedoms, the non-programmers also share in the benefits. So these four freedoms are essential for all users, including the non-programmers, who are the majority of society."
Stallman was asked before what he would do if tomorrow, amazingly, all software users had freedom and it was secured. He said he would work for another charity, a human rights one, but said that he now works on free software because that's what he's effective at.
Free software is not the only thing we need, and it's not even the thing we need most, but it's one of a set of things we need for the future to support just societies. So work on the other things too.
He was asked that in an interview before "How do you continue, re-explaining the same thing over and over?", his answer was "I have a mission, and that's what it takes".
It was on a website that's gone now, I think it was called "Linux Power".
I think I'd be happier running free software, and giving free software to developing nations. Let them tinker, let them become experts, let them become self sustaining rather than start them on a path to dependency.
Actually, Linus's comments are not very negative. When he's negative, he capitalises and underscores and asterisk-ises words all over the place, and uses the phrases "NEVER", "fundamental", and "so lets not even talk about it".
This particular way of blocking proprietary drivers has been withdrawn, but the idea seems to still have support, or at least be open for debate.
You're right, it is legally binding as a licence, but it is not an official version of the GNU GPL.
It is asked that you don't use it in the current draft form, and because it does not qualify as a "later version" of GPLv2, it will still be incompatible with GPLv2 and GPLv3, even if you've used the "or later versions" wording in your copyright notices.
"or later version" is best of 2 imperfect options
on
Sun Exec Backs GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
If you don't use the "or later version" language, your project will be incompatible with GPLv3 until you contact all the copyright holders and get permission to relicense.
What if you hate v3 when it is finished? You can change "v2 or later" to "v2 only", and the older versions with the "or later" bit will bitrot away.
What if you love v3 when it is finished? You do nothing, or you change "v2 or later" to "v3 or later". No need to track down all the copyright holders.
So "or later" isn't perfect, but it's a solution and the problem is worse.
After v3 is finalised and a lot of software, including all GNU software, is shifted to "v3 or any later version", Novell will either have to comply with GPLv3 (as well as whatever other licences they distribute software under) or fork gcc, glibc, gdb, binutils, coreutils, emacs, etc. etc. etc.
Launching a big legal project to determine whether v2 is violated is pointless because v3 will be violated, so whether or not there is also a violation in non-v3 code is a non-issue.
(Actually, when I tried to RTFA, I got a "page could not be displayed", but I've a good guess that it confused and the above explanation explains why)
The idea of another company offering a free software alternative to the Tivo and letting the public choose does not illustrate anything.
Tivo have an advantage because they have traded away the user's freedom in return for some contracts with movie or television companies.
So instead of the public choosing between freedom and no freedom, the public would have to choose between freedom and movies. The GPL is designed to prevent the public from having to give up things such as movies in order to get freedom.
As for the market pressure for/against region encoding example - that victory is way too small to show anything.
Hi. I made the transcripts from videos taken with my point-and-shoot digital camera, so the 2 hours of recording is 2Gb of data. I haven't gotten around to converting that into Ogg format, and there's some material in the QandA session of Stallman's talk where I recorded the simultaneous translation without realising that that wasn't permitted - so some editing is required.
At the event, there were two movie camera's, so I'm contacting the organisers to ask if they will be putting their recordings on line. That would save me a lot of work, and there's will be better quality.
That's why there's not audio/video right now, but I hope there will be in a few days.
While companies can work out their own deals, and they might be able to do naughty things while still complying with GPLv2, we should be looking at our big deal. The GPL is the closest thing the free software community has to a social contract. We should be looking into how to prevent such harm for v3 of the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
When the European Commission want to consult the industry about something, they usually try to find a diverse cross sample. So they'll talk to BSA, some union, some Linux representative, etc. One possible choice for the "Linux representative" would be FSFE. FSFE would say "software patents are incompatible with the goals of the community we support". Another choice for the "Linux representative" now will be Linux Foundation (which is IBM and friends by a new name), and they'll say "software patents are grand, there are a few glitches that let unenforceable patents through, but we'll harness the community to fix these problems for us and everything will be fine". So the European Commission will publish a dreadful recommendation and will say "we even consulted the Linux free software crowd".
For more information on what IPRED2 is:
If you are eligible ("a British citizen or resident"), sign the petition against software patents: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/softwarepatents/
And pass it on to everyone you know. It only has 1,800 signatures right now and the deadline is Feb 20th. And if you want to learn more about software patents, try:
I don't see the connection between what you say and what RMS was saying in the bit I quoted - I wondering if you're talking about different things.
RMS isn't saying that reading source code will teach you to improve that source code any quicker than formal education would teach you to edit that source code. He's saying that the four freedoms benefit everyone, even if most people can't exercise the freedom to modify the source code. And the reason is that those who can't modify will still benefit from the modifications of others.
From his answer to question #2 in the transcript:
the reason that the BSD developers started making their code free was at least partly due to the visit that I paid to them in 1984 or 1985, because I wanted to be able to use some of their code in GNU. So I asked them, because at that time, BSD existed, it was a version of Unix, and you had to show them an AT&T source licence in order to get a copy of BSD. So I told them: you are effectively donating your labour, your work, to a company. It's not even a charity, and you're donating to it. Why don't you separate your code from AT&T's code, and that way you could make your code free.
(Note the word "partly" in the first sentence - don't think he's trying to take full credit.)
I've changed my dress style (while working) based on your logic, but I don't think your forumlas still work when my variables are replaced with Stallman's.
Stallman's main focus is not decision makers, it is the public and the action groups, and they influence the decision makers more than one intellectual can. Also, the decision makers usually evaluate things only in terms of money or votes. If they do something ethical, it is completely coincidental (i.e. they did it because it would get money or votes). So Stallman is most effective when he tells the public not to pay for proprietary software or not to vote for someone who supports bad legislation - that leads the decision makers to make a decision based only on money or votes but which is (coicidentally) ethical.
Also, a mirror situation has been proven: Stallman has met with, and gotten endorsements from the president of India (figurehead), the president of Ecuador (head of state), the top candidate for the 2007 French presidential election (where president is head of state), the president of Venuzuela (head of state), and probably some others. So long hair and the lack of a tie does not mean you won't influence decision makers.
Here's my post directive review of that project. But there's more to do.
Something very important this year is GPLv3. Here's a transcript of RMS on GPLv3, and one of something I said.
He explains this in the talk:
"only programmers can directly exercise freedoms one and three but every user can directly exercise freedoms zero and two - the freedoms to run the program and copy the program - and the non-programmer users indirectly get the benefit of freedoms one and three. They can't use these freedoms directly, because that means programming, but when other people exercise these freedoms, the non-programmers also share in the benefits. So these four freedoms are essential for all users, including the non-programmers, who are the majority of society."
TFA is worth a read.
Free software is one part of a just society.
Stallman was asked before what he would do if tomorrow, amazingly, all software users had freedom and it was secured. He said he would work for another charity, a human rights one, but said that he now works on free software because that's what he's effective at.
Free software is not the only thing we need, and it's not even the thing we need most, but it's one of a set of things we need for the future to support just societies. So work on the other things too.
Thanks for that.
I keep a list of transcripts here:
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/
The FSFE Fellowship project has an advocacy section with a list of relevent videos:
http://fsfe.org/en/advocacy/videos
He was asked that in an interview before "How do you continue, re-explaining the same thing over and over?", his answer was "I have a mission, and that's what it takes".
It was on a website that's gone now, I think it was called "Linux Power".
I think I'd be happier running free software, and giving free software to developing nations. Let them tinker, let them become experts, let them become self sustaining rather than start them on a path to dependency.
This is Bruce Perens's thing, isn't it: The World's Most Silly Technology Law
Actually, Linus's comments are not very negative. When he's negative, he capitalises and underscores and asterisk-ises words all over the place, and uses the phrases "NEVER", "fundamental", and "so lets not even talk about it".
This particular way of blocking proprietary drivers has been withdrawn, but the idea seems to still have support, or at least be open for debate.
Heh. That'll teach me to check my URLs. ...nah.
Here is a temporary copy of the transcript: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/moglen-2006-oct-pl one.html
It will have a permanent link soon, and that will be listed at: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/
A friend in the free software community has transcribed this talk:http://plone.org/events/conferences/seattle-2 006/.
You're right, it is legally binding as a licence, but it is not an official version of the GNU GPL.
It is asked that you don't use it in the current draft form, and because it does not qualify as a "later version" of GPLv2, it will still be incompatible with GPLv2 and GPLv3, even if you've used the "or later versions" wording in your copyright notices.
If you don't use the "or later version" language, your project will be incompatible with GPLv3 until you contact all the copyright holders and get permission to relicense.
What if you hate v3 when it is finished? You can change "v2 or later" to "v2 only", and the older versions with the "or later" bit will bitrot away.
What if you love v3 when it is finished? You do nothing, or you change "v2 or later" to "v3 or later". No need to track down all the copyright holders.
So "or later" isn't perfect, but it's a solution and the problem is worse.
v2 might allow what Novell is doing.
v3 will not allow what Novell is doing.
After v3 is finalised and a lot of software, including all GNU software, is shifted to "v3 or any later version", Novell will either have to comply with GPLv3 (as well as whatever other licences they distribute software under) or fork gcc, glibc, gdb, binutils, coreutils, emacs, etc. etc. etc.
Launching a big legal project to determine whether v2 is violated is pointless because v3 will be violated, so whether or not there is also a violation in non-v3 code is a non-issue.
(Actually, when I tried to RTFA, I got a "page could not be displayed", but I've a good guess that it confused and the above explanation explains why)
As Stallman explained at WSIS, if we argue based on cost, they can offer that too, but if we argue based on freedom, they're not even in the running.
The idea of another company offering a free software alternative to the Tivo and letting the public choose does not illustrate anything.
Tivo have an advantage because they have traded away the user's freedom in return for some contracts with movie or television companies.
So instead of the public choosing between freedom and no freedom, the public would have to choose between freedom and movies. The GPL is designed to prevent the public from having to give up things such as movies in order to get freedom.
As for the market pressure for/against region encoding example - that victory is way too small to show anything.
Hi. I made the transcripts from videos taken with my point-and-shoot digital camera, so the 2 hours of recording is 2Gb of data. I haven't gotten around to converting that into Ogg format, and there's some material in the QandA session of Stallman's talk where I recorded the simultaneous translation without realising that that wasn't permitted - so some editing is required. At the event, there were two movie camera's, so I'm contacting the organisers to ask if they will be putting their recordings on line. That would save me a lot of work, and there's will be better quality. That's why there's not audio/video right now, but I hope there will be in a few days.
Richard Stallman discussed this in a Nov 1st interview. I've put a transcript online.
Whether the deal is good or bad, or partly good and partly bad, it is a good example for thinking about what patent protections should be in GPLv3.
A good focus for the discussion, IMO.
While companies can work out their own deals, and they might be able to do naughty things while still complying with GPLv2, we should be looking at our big deal. The GPL is the closest thing the free software community has to a social contract. We should be looking into how to prevent such harm for v3 of the GPL.