Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. Now I see what you're trying to do. The TGPPL is an interesting idea. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. In principle, this should be a free software license as far as I can see. It would call for study by a lawyer, however. I recommend that anyone using this use it in parallel with GPL 3-or-later, as you have done. That way, the program can't fail to be free software. And there is nothing to lose by doing this, since it permits anyone to release a version with trivial modifications under GPL 3-or-later at any time. What do you think of making that recommendation? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. Yes, that's the alternative I originally recommended and that we have been discussing Larry Rosen's objection to. The agreement between D and O might be one designed to create a fiduciary relationship, of special trust and accountability, to which the legal system applies uniquely high standards of responsibility. It's this fiduciary relationship with a third party which entitles you to the intervention of mandatory orders to perform promises. I don't understand why this is even relevant to the issue. You seem to presume that an ordinary contract between D and O is not sufficient, but you didn't explicitly say that. Is an ordinary contract between D and O not sufficient? If not, why not? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. It is ironic that you wrote: "Specific performance, a mandatory remedial order to perform a promise, is not generally available at common law, as first-year students all learn." You must realize, of course, that the great (unreasonable) fear of the GPL is that a licensee will be required to disclose his other software that merely links to the GPL program. How would this be required if not by an order for specific performance? In the usual circumstances, we could make him stop distributing the product unless he complies. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. Suppose developer Ds give the code to organization O, and signs a contract with O giving O the right to distribute that code under the GNU GPL starting at a future date F. Is that something O can rely on? Is there any way for D to retract that? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. Tahoe-LAFS is also available under the GPL, at your option. That makes Tahoe-LAFS free software, regardless of what the TGPPL says. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. Tahoe-LAFS is licensed to the public under the "Transitive Grace Period Public Licence 1.0" [*]. Tahoe-LAFS is Free and Open software. The "Transitive Grace Period Public Licence" is an Open Source licence. Is that true? Or is it just a hypothetical example? I don't recall studying this license. I am not sure what it says. It is not in our license-list.html page. So I don't know whether it is a free software license, and if it isn't, then Tahoe-LAFS is not free sotfware. If you send me the text of this license, I can study it. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. Unfortunately the open source world has not been very amenable to things that stray beyond the scope of fairly narrow definitions of open source. There is a misunderstanding here. I don't support open source and I don't follow a definition of open source. I launched the free software movement. The basic idea of the free software movement is that software must respect the users' freedom. If a program is not free software, it is an injustice and should not exist. Trying to persuade me to relax our standards of freedom in the name of "open source" is like asking Edward Snowden to stop publishing leaks in the name of "national security". It's a fundamental conceptual confusion and a non-starter. Thus we have nothing equivalent to Creative Commons for software that would cover not just CC-BY and CC-BY-SA but also NC, ND and in your case some kind of time delay license. Any license which had restrictions comparable to NC or ND would fail to respect users' freedoms, so it would not be a free software license. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. I actually like the Ghostscript/Aladdin license, which was essentially GPL-after-one-year. I was their attorney at the time and I fully supported their business and licensing model. (For what it is worth, so did my client's friend, Richard Stallman, who apparently considered this a reasonable way then to end up with GPL software.) That is not quite accurate. I considered it a problematical compromise. At least it gave us free software after a year. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. All the FSF will say about it is that if and when the program becomes free software, at that point we could recommend its use, and until then we urge people not to use it. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: The regrettable use of "all" in Section 7 of the GPL
Now this "all" seems extremely unfortunate to me. Suppose I file for a patent P, the practice of which is required to run program R released under the GPL. Normally, distribution of R would be impossible. But suppose I issue the following public license: "Everyone is allowed to practice patent P royalty-free (etc. etc.) except for the notorious Richard Stallman." Is distribution of R still impossible because Stallman can't use it? Yes, it is. The same would be true if "John Cowan" were substituted for "Richard Stallman". "Free for everyone except you" is not free software and is not allowed by the GPL. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL
The point of the law school exam being for anyone to be able to show a difference in people's behavior in re GPLed code versus AFL+GPLed code. How can the licenses be said to be incompatible if the supposed incompatibility causes no change in anyone's behavior? The presence of the AFL mutual defense clause would make a real difference to people's behavior in the following case. Suppose W is under the GPL and X is under the AFL. P combines them and distributes X+W to Q saying it is licensed under the GPL. Now suppose that Q sues some unrelated party R for patent infringement about some unrelated program Z and triggers the mutual defense clause. If the license for X+W is the GPL, this patent suit has no effect on Q's right to use X+W. Q can still use it--or any part of it--under the GPL. However, if the mutual defense clause applies to X+W, then Q loses the right to distribute X+W and could be sued for copyright infringement for using (parts of) that work in a way that he has no copyright license for. That means that the conditions on use of X+W are different from the GPL. The GPL does not permit using W in such a combination. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL
BigCo brings Debian Linux into its research labs. The name of that distribution is Debian GNU/Linux. (It is a version of GNU/Linux.) -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL
Bottom line: I can assure you, as the license author, that the AFL is intended to be used for software that can be incorporated into GPL-licensed software, and I will almost certainly so advise my clients: I hope you will decide that you owe it to your clients to inform them that the FSF rejects your analysis, and that if they do this with FSF-copyrighted GPL-covered software they may get into a legal dispute with us. There is no possible reason to assume that the GPL states all the important rules of behavior in the open source community or expresses each licensor's view of what is truly free software. We designed the GPL to further the goals of the free software movement, but we never said it states all the important rules of behavior in the free software community. That would be a very hard job which, fortunately, we need not try to do. What we did aim for is to produce a copyleft license: that is, a license that doesn't allow additional terms to be added, not even when the program is extended. This characteristic, of being a copyleft, is the reason so many people in our community (including supporters of the open source movement) use the GPL. Adding the AFL's license terms would not make the program non-free. But if people could in general add terms of their choosing, people could add other terms that would make the software non-free. We believe that we have designed the GPL to prohibit this. By arguing that we have failed, you are trying to destroy the underpinning of the majority of free software packages. Thousands of developers will hope and pray that judges listen to us and not to you. We are trying to design, for GPL 3, a way that people can add a certain selected range of license terms for their own code. We have not solved all the problems yet. We cannot promise that the AFL's specific requirements will be in this range. In any case, this is something for the future. For now, the GPL is incompatible with licenses that add requirements that are not in the GPL, independent of whether they are good requirements or bad requirements. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL
> The key question: If Person C who has W' sues Person A for > patent infringement, does that void his license to do things with W'? If C sues A for patent infringement, C can no longer copy, modify or distribute W, or W+X, or W', because his license to do those things with W is terminated. This means that the license for W+X is not the GPL. More precisely, that the GPL is not the whole of the license that applies to C for W+X. The GPL does not permit using X in this way. It does not permit adding any other restriction whatsoever to any work that contains or derives from X. Section 7 applies to any other license that limits the GPL rights in any way, and that includes terminating them under any conditions where the GPL itself would not terminate them. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL
Under U.S. trademark law, anyone can say "I've built a derivative work of Apache" without using Apache's good name, or yours, to endorse or promote their software. It looks like use of Apache's good name to me. If it isn't what it looks like, I guess these words are not clear. I think the words "endorse" and "promote" are clear enough. Perhaps this shows those words are highly confusing. Do you want me to add the phrase "pretty please" to the end of the provision so that people will recognize it is a reminder rather than an order to do or not to do something? Being serious rather than facetious, if this provision said "This license does not grant any license to use the trademarks ..." then it would clearly be a reminder and it would not be incompatible with the GPL. > I put on it has to carry forward the same terms, at least on > that original code, unless I indemnify those I give software > to by meeting the terms on their behalf? -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL
The trademark clause in the AFL merely states that "Neither the names of Licensor, nor the names of any contributors to the Original Work, nor any of their trademarks or service marks, may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Original Work without express prior written permission of the Licensor." This goes beyond the requirements of trademark law, which permits some kinds of use of the trademark as fair use. Why can't a licensor prohibit the use of his trademarks or his good name even while he provides a TOTALLY FREE copyright license to his software? You are arguing against a statement I did not make. I never said that a free software license cannot include such a requirement. On the contrary, we recognize the AFL as a free software license, trademark requirement and all. The question here is compatibility with the GPL. The trademark requirement of the AFL is nontrivial because it goes beyond what trademark law requires. Therefore it is a restriction that is not in the GPL, and that makes the licenses incompatible. As it happens, I disapprove somewhat of this trademark requirement--I think it goes too far. But that disapproval is not condemnation. We recognize the AFL as a valid free software license. I'll leave for another thread any discussion about whether this is a good idea or a bad idea. But how is it incompatible with the GPL? It is a requirement that isn't in the GPL. The GPL, being a strong copyleft, does not permit adding requirements of any sort. So any license that has requirements not in the GPL is incompatible with the GPL. ***Anyone*** is free to take software licensed under the AFL and re-license it under any license, including licenses not containing the Mutual Defense provision ["to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, perform, distribute and/or sell copies of the Original Work and derivative works thereof,..."]. If I relicense in this way under a license such as the X11 license, which includes neither the mutual defense nor the trademark provision, does that make those provisions completely cease to apply to the code as I redistribute it? Or does it only mean that they come from the author and not from me? I assumed it was the latter, and my conclusions are based on that. If it is the former, then the AFL is indeed compatible with the GPL, but the mutual defense and trademark provisions are completely ineffective because they are so easy to weasel out of. Surely that is not what you intend; you must surely intend these provisions to bind all users of the code. That is why I expect it is the latter--that I could put on a license from me which doesn't impose such requirements from me, but that would not negate the requirements imposed by the first author. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Copyright
It's called the GPL because it assigns certain rights to everyone, not because it makes everyone (or some abstract entity called "the general public") the owner. Legally, a GPL-covered work is copyrighted and has certain copyright holders. For certain purposes, it makes a difference who they are. For instance, they alone have legal standing to enforce the GPL (in US law, at least). Since copyright holders are also called "owers", these persons are legally the owners of the work. However, in the GNU Project we see ourselves ethically not as owners of something we can use at our pleasure, but as custodians of the work on behalf of the public. In spirit, the public should be the owner, but since copyright law doesn't work that way, the public is not legally the owner. Credit is a different matter--we're all in favor of giving credit to people who advance knowledge. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: The Feudal Lord Analogy
Since the beginning, software works were placed under the protection of Copyright Laws. If we replace the propaganda term "protection" with a neutral term such as "coverage", this is a true and useful statement--because you said "copyright". If you replace "copyright" with "intellectual property", that would make it uselessly vague. It is a mistake to try to think about "intellectual property", because at that level of generalization one loses all the important details that give copyrights, patents, and trademarks their effects. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: The Feudal Lord Analogy (Response to Mr Stallman)
My Lord, you should re-read any Internet FAQ about list usage, in particular, about people sending void, non-useful messages. The propaganda term "intellectual property" does a lot of harm, and explaining this problem is useful, in my opinion. Your opinion may be different. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: The Feudal Lord Analogy
> I appeal to everyone in this discussion to resist and reject the use > of the propaganda term "intellectual property" to label the topic now ??? - Nobody used it this way. I was responding to this text, written by someone in this discussion (I don't know who, but it isn't crucial). > While there are differences between copyrights and patents, > the purpose of > both is protection of your IP. Describing software as "intellectual property" is confusion of the sort I described, in the worst possible degree. It appears clearly you did not follow the thread. That is correct, I am not following the thread, just skimming the messages for basic points I ought to respond to. I don't have time to study those long messages. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: The Feudal Lord Analogy (RE: Response to Mr. Maturana)
I appeal to everyone in this discussion to resist and reject the use of the propaganda term "intellectual property" to label the topic now under discussion. It is more clear, and less biased, to describe the topic as "copyright and patents". The term "intellectual property" encourages simplistic overgeneralization: lumping together copyrights, patents, and various other things too. It also encourages a specific idea of what is important about them--that they are something that could be bought or sold--with all the details, the ways they restrict other people's activities, treated as secondary. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation. A discussion that uses the term "intellectual property" is likely to embody that bias as a premise. I don't have time to study the long messages in this thread, but simply to ask whether copyright is "effective" enough suggests that that bias is present. The useful response in such a situation is to bring the bias out in the open and then criticize it. To respond to the details of the arguments erected on that foundation is a side track. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: OSD modification regarding what license can require of user
The reason we've decided that this ASP requirement is legitimate is that it is a matter of requiring making the modified source code available in a case of public use. It extends existing GPL requirements coherently to a new scenario of usage. It would be wrong to require publication of modified versions that are used privately, but inviting the public to use a server is not private use. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: OSD modification regarding what license can require of user
A simple example: it is totally trivial on Windows to build a 'service' from a DLL, exposing its entire interface. This would be running as a separate executable, but would look like a regular library to any windows program. The FSF's position is that the GPL applies to any programs which are designed to link with that DLL, that this is legally equivalent to statically linking them. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: OSD modification regarding what license can require of user
I think these issues should be judged by the substance of the requirement rather than by the legal hook which is used to impose it. For instance, a requirement to make source available to users is substantively a requirement of distribution rather than a restriction on use. At present we are planning to try to handle the ASP problem in the GPL through a limitation on a certain kind of modification--that you can't delete or disable a command that lets the user download source (if the program has one to start with). Lawyers we have consulted think that will work. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Advertising Clauses in Licenses
So where in the OSD, or in the GPL, do we make it clear that potentially burdensome license requirements (however those are defined) are not allowed? I recommend you allow them but deprecate them. That is what we do. We always did recognize the old BSD license as a free software license, but we said people should avoid it because of its annoying practical consequences. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Plan 9 license
Making "non authorized copies" is slavery! If you don't have power over other people, you are a slave. Boy, that is extreme.
Re: Plan 9 license
But the idea that information can be stolen already has a strong foothold in the public mind, even among the Free Software and Open Source movements. For example, I have often heard that one should use a copyleft rather than an unrestricted license so that "the source code can't be stolen." They are using the term "stolen" in a sense which does not refer to illegality. Quite the reverse--the action they are calling "stealing" would be lawful, and that is precisely the point they are making. So I think that use of "stealing" for this is a misleading analogy, and will lead to unclear thinking. We should discourage it. Legally, making a non-free version of a copylefted program is a violation of the copyright holder's rights. But morally, the wrong is not done to the program's author. It is done to the public.
Re: Plan 9 license
Which is way I also dislike the terms "slavery", "subjugation" and "domination" in reference to closed source software. These terms also have polemical associations with evil and violence. If one metaphor is wrong, then so is the other. I have little to say about closed-source software because I do not participate in the Open Source Movement. I have opinions about free software and non-free software. The category of open source overlaps both of them. I use the terms "subjugation" and "domination" to describe non-free software. These are not metaphors; they are descriptions which fit non-free software. I also use metaphors such as "chains". But I do not describe non-free software as "slavery", since that term seems like an exaggeration. The subjugation which non-free software inflicts does not cover all of life, as slavery does, just one aspect of life. All these phrases express an ethical judgement of non-free software. Calling unauthorized copying "piracy" also expresses an ethical judgement: one that supports domination by the owners of software. It is right and proper for people to take positions on ethical issues. It is because of the position ESR stands for that I say "Shame!"
Re: Plan 9 license
The image of pillaging bucanneers may be an unfortunate association, but it is metaphorically correct. That copyright infringement is illegal is a fact, but "piracy" doesn't just refer to that fact. It makes a moral statement, and it is the moral statement that I say "shame" to. You are mixing a moral question with a legal one--in effect presuming that law makes things right and wrong. If law awards someone a monopoly, you seem to say, then violating the monopoly is as bad as being a thief or a pirate, and the law makes it "correct" to equate them morally. The law does not deserve that kind of moral authority. If the law prohibits sharing software, then shame on the law.
Re: Plan 9 license
There are other equally usable terms that do not carry the same polemical associations with evil and violence. "Bootlegging" comes readily to mind. I recommend "unauthorized copying". It is a neutral, factual description which expresses no opinion.
Re: Plan 9 license
Yes, I agree with RMS here. We should not call it piracy but slavery. Unauthorized copying of intellectual capital/property means denying the freedom of the IP holder. No, it means denying the power of the copyright owner. Control over your own actions is freedom. Control over the actions of others is power. If you don't make this distinction, you will have no compass for thinking about such issues. For instance, I would say that people who copied samizdat in the Soviet Union were denying the power of the Soviet rulers. But you would say they were denything the rulers' freedom. So you would see no basis to take sides between them and the rulers. Using the term "intellectual property" in your thinking is also disregarding important distinctions, between patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. These are almost entirely different, so trying to talk about all of them at once generally leads to mistaken generalizations. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation.
Re: Plan 9 license
I am ashamed of Eric Raymond for using the term "piracy" to describe unauthorized copying. That word is a propaganda term, designed to imply that unauthorized copying is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship.
Re: Plan 9 license
My understanding was that a legal entity can make private modifications to GPL software and is allowed to keep those modifications private, That is our interpretation. In other words, using a copy within the company is not distribution to others. So, since a corporation is allowed to make private changes, I don't see why they could not instruct their employees to keep those changes private to the company. I believe that they can.
Re: Plan 9 license
Perhaps the reason why the commercial software world is more enamored of Open Source than it is of Free Software might not be in the differing emphasis, but in that Open Source does not demand adherance to a particular philosophy. Yes, that's it exactly. The Free Software Movement has a particular philosophy about freedom; this philosophy is the reason we developed the GNU system. The Open Source Movement has a policy of not raising this issue at all. This is the underlying difference between the two movements.
Re: Plan 9 license
For the record, that would be the Free Software _Foundation_, wouldn't it? For the record, I meant the Free Software Movement, which is what I wrote. The Free Software Movement is much bigger than the Free Software Foundation, and somewhat older as well.
Re: Plan 9 license
The Free Software Movement has its goals, its philosophy, and its definition of free software. You probably have your own goals and philosophy, and if you want to have a different idea of what free software means, you can do that too. But then it isn't the Free Software Movement.
Re: Plan 9 license
You're right that the definition of free software, like the definition of open source, need to be interpreted by people who are committed to the goals with which those definitions were written. Neither one is designed to be fiendproof when interpreted by people that don't share the goal. 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. The use of "should" rather than "must" causes it to appear that this is optional, but strongly encouraged. This freedom would fall under I meant this to be a requirement. I guess I should clarify the wording.
Re: RMS on OpenMotif
> Ironically, that restriction excludes nearly all the commercial GNU/Linux > distributions. They typically include some non-free software--an > unfortunate policy--and hardly any of them fits the criterion specified > in the Motif license. The OpenMotif licensing FAQ clarifies that the reference is to the *kernel* of the operating system only, without regard to bundled utility programs. In that case, they should change the license and say so explicitly. (Though this is just a side issue.) > Their definition of the term "open source" is very different from the one used by the Open Source Movement, thus causing confusion. Similarly, the FAQ explicitly states an intent to conform to the OSD. The problem is that they are using the term "open source" with their own private (lax) definition. Good intentions don't make the problem go away. Using a different term for their meaning would make THIS problem go away. Given the other problems, though, hair-splitting about this one doesn't seem especially useful.
Re: Compulsory checkin clauses.
So here's an idea. Why not have a clause that requires checkin if: 1. A bug is fixed. (7 day checkin). or 2. A total of more than 300 lines of code is changes/added (90 day checkin). I would still have to say that this is not free software.
Re: Compulsory checkin clauses.
So here's an idea. Why not have a clause that requires checkin if: 1. A bug is fixed. (7 day checkin). or 2. A total of more than 300 lines of code is changes/added (90 day checkin). I would still have to say that this is not free software.
Re: RMS on Plan 9 license, with my comments
> > and may, at Your option, include a reasonable charge for the cost > > of any media. > > This seems to limit the price that may be charged for an initial > distribution, prohibiting selling copies for a profit. I don't think this is really a problem; a "reasonable" charge can be whatever the buyer is willing to pay. If we could be sure of that interpretation, I would agree this issue is not a problem. But I don't think that interpretation is right. The problem is, it would make the word "reasonable" a no-op. My understanding is that judges are reluctant to turn any word into a license into a no-op; they reason that "the word was put in to contribute to the meaning, so the meaning must be different somehow from what it would be without that word." I believe therefore that they will tend to reject your interpretation. It would be interesting to hear a lawyer's advice on this point. If Lucent intends the interpretation that you propose, they ought to be willing to delete the word "reasonable" and thus express their intentions more unambiguously. > > Distribution of Licensed Software to third parties pursuant to this > > grant shall be subject to the same terms and conditions as set > > forth in this Agreement, > > This seems to say when you redistribute you must insist on a contract > with the recipients, just as Lucent demands when you download it. I don't think this is a problem either. The license doesn't say that your distributees must explicitly agree to the terms, just that those terms are imposed on them. Once again, if we can rely on your interpretation, this clause is not a problem. But with another plausible interpretation, we cannot be certain, and we must accept a license based on wishful thinking. What happens if Lucent and a judge adopt the interpretation I saw? If lawyers assure us that your interpretation is the only one judges would accept, then we could cross that problem off the list. But it would be a good idea to ask Lucent to explicitly agree with the interpretation, by clarifying the wording. I think RMS is overdoing it here. The EARs apply only to goods exported from the U.S., not to those exported from other countries, no matter what this license says. If we could rely on your interpretation and conclusions, this would not be an issue. My understanding is that the US export regulations do claim to apply to reexport. Enforcing them in another country might be difficult. However, if the license makes reexport count as copyright infringement also, enforcing the copyright could be much easier.
Re: CORBA and the GPL (was Re: Can Java code EVER be GPLd, at all?)
The the target and caller can end up linked in the same process, or they might not. From the point of view of CORBA, this becomes a detail of the compilation method chosen, The issue of what makes a combined work is not a technical issue, it is an issue about technical situations. If that is just a detail as far as CORBA is concerned, that doesn't make it irrelevant for this issue.
Re: CORBA and the GPL (was Re: Can Java code EVER be GPLd, at all?)
It is possible to use CORBA to do something more or less equivalent to linking, but it is somewhat more painful. So the GPL will still be effective, even though not 100%, even if CORBA is never considered to make a combined program. The situation is practically the same in many Java programs, My understanding is that normal practice with Java is that programs link together dynamically. That is not analogous to CORBA. Of course, Java may have CORBA facilities or CORBA-like facilities. You might think it isn't a problem because, for efficiency purposes, someone wouldn't ordinarily do this--but CORBA optimizes things quite well when the target of a call and its caller are both inside the same process. When they are in the same process, that makes it more like linking. More generally, what you are discovering is that any definitive criterion based solely on the mechanism of communication is likely to give silly and arbitrary results. That's why I don't advocate a criterion of that kind.
Re: Can Java code EVER be GPLd, at all?
The problem is, people on this list are searching for hard lines. I see arguments like 'but if that is true, then by logical extension, every shell script is a derived work of bash'. There are no hard lines. 'Derived work' is an important concept, but not one that can always be perfectly delineated. That is right. There are no hard lines. Programmers tend to look for a criterion based on which technical methods are used. I think that is the wrong approach--that any purely technical criterion has to be a bad one. Judges are not programmers, and I don't think courts will choose a purely technical criterion; I would urge them not to. (Of course, none of us can be sure what courts will decide.) If an application 'A' uses a library 'B' in what might be described as an 'essential' way, then, irrespective of the physical mechanism of linkage (static/dynamic/run-time/compile-time/corba) I would expect 'A' to be considered as a derived work of 'A'. Especially if 'A' is distributed together with 'B', and especially if 'A' won't function without 'B'. That's the FSF's position. So, in the java example, if you GPL your java library, and a commercial company distributes a java program using it, then I would expect the GPL to apply - even though the technicalities of linking differ from the C case. That is what I would argue for. So I think it is meaningful to release a Java program either under the GPL or the LGPL, and the consequences are basically the same as for a C program: if you use the LGPL for your Java program, it can be called by non-free programs, but if you use the GPL, it cannot be.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
This thread seems to be about giving credit to the GNU effort, while the above statement suggest that Linus' contribution was just a snap or some strike of luck. That's exactly what it was. Linus was not aiming or planning to help complete a free operating system. He wrote a kernel for completely different reasons. The fact that it was then useful for producing a free operating system was a happy accident in terms of his motives. I don't consider this a criticism; some of my projects, such as the original Emacs, were happy accidents too. Is it really necessary to play down some one else's contribution to justify the GNU/Linux name? I am sorry you feel that this is "playing down". Pointing out the reasons why Linus wrote Linux does not alter the merits of Linux as a technical contribution. My point is about how a different contribution, the vision of a complete free system, came from the GNU Project.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
This thread seems to be about giving credit to the GNU effort, while the above statement suggest that Linus' contribution was just a snap or some strike of luck. That's exactly what it was. Linus was not aiming or planning to help complete a free operating system. He wrote a kernel for essentially personal reasons. The fact that it was then useful for producing a free operating system was a happy accident in terms of his motives. I don't consider this a criticism of his work; some of the projects I'm known for, such as the original Emacs, were happy accidents too. But if the question at hand is "Why do we have a free operating system", it is relevant that the GNU system was working toward that goal while Linus was not. It was no accident that we wrote so many of the essential components of the system. If GNU is an operating system, why do we have to call it GNU/Linux? Why not just GNU? Based on your arguments that would be more appropriate. If you want the shortest possible legitimate name, that is "GNU". I prefer "GNU/Linux" partly because it gives Linus credit too.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
Finally, why should we trivialize the kernel of any OS as an "only thing"? If kernels were so easy, one would think that GNU would have long ago released one. But in my experience kernels are not so easy, I do not think the kernel is easy; I didn't intend to say so, and I'm sorry if there was a misunderstanding. The kernel is clearly a big job. But the whole system is a much bigger job than a kernel. Perhaps some respect is also due to the people who have actually managed to build a viable kernel. I agree. That's one of the reasons I call the combination "GNU/Linux" rather than just "GNU": I do want to give credit to Linus and the others who wrote the kernel.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Okay, then what is an operating system? The Gospel of Tux defines it as the Kernel, the Libraries, and the Utilities, The term "utilities" implies, to me, small programs that do certain kinds of jobs--for example, cp and grep. I would not think of GCC or Emacs, or the shell, or ftpd, as "utilities". So I think it is misleading to use that word to mean "any executable you could run in a process." but it seems hard to tell which are part of GNU and which are merely free software distributed by the FSF and capable of executing on a GNU system. Whether you call the system "Linux" or "GNU/Linux", it is not clear just what is part of it. Over the years, many useful packages that are not essential (and therefore did not need to be present initially) have been added, and some are included in certain versions of GNU/Linux and excluded from others. So this fuzziness is not a matter of our uncertainty about the system. It is part of the nature of the system. Another kind of uncertainty applis to the GNU system in 1991. Since it was not yet operational (it had no kernel), we could not start to make an actual distribution which you could point at and say "Here's what is in the GNU system." But a number of things were definitely part of the GNU system at the time when Linux was written. They included the compilation tools, GDB, Bash, the C library, Emacs and some free version of vi, X11, TeX and Texinfo, Ghostscript, lots of GNU utilities, the BSD network utilities and demons, Sendmail and potentially Smail, and Ispell. That is what I can remember now; there were many others.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
> That page includes the *list* of GNU software packages. But the > general definition is, a GNU package is a program that is released > under the aegis of the GNU Project. But GTK is not on that list, yet is part of GNU. Right, the list is not entirely accurate. (I will ask the webmasters to list GTK.) Also, it is a list of GNU packages, and the GNU system is not just composed of GNU packages.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
What I'd like to hear is some sane rationale for Richard "I just want everybody to be free" Stallman's petty insistence that he be allowed to name someone else's product. How free is that? We did more to develop this system than anyone else, and so it is natural that we should be listened to regarding its name. Calling the system "Linux" gives people the impression that it is "someone else's product", and that's precisely why it shouldn't be called that.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Yes, the GNU Project set out to develop an operating system. It has, so far, failed to do so. We got almost there, then Linus Torvalds added the missing piece and finished the job. So we did succeed, although many others helped. (Though the HURD is finally coming together, from what I hear. The HURD (plus Mach) is a kernel, like Linux. It runs, but it is not really usable yet. I hope that the HURD will eventually be a useful piece of software, and that its advanced architecture will provide benefits. But the kernel is not so specially important; whether or not the GNU kernel becomes a success, GNU as an operating system is a success under the the name "Linux".
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
When people talk only about which specific programs come from the GNU Project, that's a basic misunderstanding of what we produced. Many people and groups developed programs that are in the GNU/Linux system today. Most of them did their work because they wanted to write a program to do X, Y or Z. So when we judge their contributions, we naturally look at what programs they developed, and what those programs are useful for. The GNU Project alone among these contributors had a higher-order goal: to make a whole free operating system. To do this, we had to write lots of programs. But unlike the other contributors, we were not *just* writing programs. They were steps in developing an operating system--essentially the system that most people call "Linux". Calling the operating system "Linux" gives the impression that the GNU Project was *just* about writing a bunch programs, and that suggests one should judge our work in terms of *just* the individual programs. That's missing the forest for the trees. (It still comes out that we planted more of the trees than anyone else did.)
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Is GTK part of the GNU project? I thought it was part of the GIMP project. GIMP is part of the GNU Project too. This would include any embedded system, anything written exclusively for a GUI, any daemon, anything which can use sfio (e.g. Perl), anything written in a language other than C... These programs may not use printf, but they surely use libc. Which means, in GNU/Linux, that they are using GNU libc. In particular, the ucLinux project isn't interested in distributing any of these tools since they're not important to have on your Palm Pilot. It sounds like they are making a system quite different from the usual "Linux" system. Perhaps the only thing the two have in common is the kernel. If they are that different, calling the usual systems GNU/Linux could be a good way to make it clear how different they are.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
The biggest problem I have with this is that the thought of this name change didn't occur to you until six years after "Linux" was released. That computation yields 1997, but I have been talking about GNU/Linux for longer than that. Probably since 1995, or maybe before. It's far too late... It isn't too late for some people to change. Even since a year ago, a number of people have started using the term "GNU/Linux", and I am confident that more will do so in the future. It is never too late for any person to start doing this--it is just a matter of whether you believe it is the proper thing to do.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
However, if the system had been called GNU/Linux, the media would instead fasten the credit and glamour onto Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman. That might happen to some extent. While this is more equitable since you and the GNU system are a major component of Linux, it still doesn't achieve your goal of equal billing for the GNU system itself. Not directly. But it would certainly give me the opportunity to tell people about the GNU system, and pass along the credit to the rest of the GNU Project.
Re: [openip] Re: GNU License for Hardware
> If people have to pay per copy, then the program is not free software, > and it is also not open source software. I do not get that. That is part of the definition of free software: users must be allowed to run it without having to pay for permission. That includes all users, whatever their purpose. The definition of open source software includes essentially the same criterion, expressed with different words. I suggest you look at the definition of free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) and the definition of open source software (somewhere on http://www.opensource.org/) and try again to understand what they are meant to say. For me it will never be an option to work and to give my work away for nothing. (I did it often enough and allways got ripped off) Then your software won't be free software, and we won't use it. If you don't want to develop free software, we can't force you to do that. However, free software and open source software are what these lists are about. If you're not interested in doing that, I guess we're not the people you're looking for.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
AS far as I know, but that my be wrong: The seperation came first, then came the war, and while the war seemd to get expensive and would last longer than the north expected, Lincoln finaly mobilized the masses because of "slavery". The whole country was in a ferment about slavery for years before the war started. It was the issue that divided Congress, and the subject of crucial Supreme Court decisions. The motive for secession was specifically the intention in the South to preserve slavery, because things did not appear to be favorable for that as part of the US. Nope. I did not read something about that. Specific events in history are normaly tought/examined by the pupils for 3 to 6 month, so also the civil/seperation war in the US. I'm sure it was influence Further I'm shure that the victory writes the history. In this case, apologists for the Confederacy have done a good job of rewriting history afterward. I expect their version influenced what you read. I'm shure that history is mainly determined by economics. That is a simplistic view. Economics is the study of what people do when nothing more important than money is at stake.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Dammit, Richard, that's nonsense and you know it. Linux is not what you envisioned 15 years ago. The "Linux" system is basically the GNU system, which is the system we started working for. To be sure, the GNU system is not entirely as I envisioned it 15 years ago: over time, plans change. All of the guts of the OS are contrary to the thing that the FSF has been working toward. Most of the guts are exactly what we have been working toward; in fact, most of the guts of this system come from the GNU Project. The kernel is an entirely different design from what the FSF is trying to accomplish. Yes, it is a different kernel, but the kernel is just a part of the guts of the system. You've created a bunch of tools -- sure, sure, vital ones, we know and nobody's denying it -- that can be compiled and used under just about any OS under the sun. We did write a number of tools, but that is just a part of the larger job we did: developing a free operating system.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
So, I would claim that the GNU project will never get equal billing with Linus. With all due respect, I think you have changed the subject. You are now making a prediction about what other people *will* do. I don't think it is useful to discuss what "other people will do" for a question of right and wrong where each individual can decide what to do. As a factual matter, some people do give us equal billing, while many others do not. But you (and each person reading this) can make your own choice--you can do whichever you think is right, no matter what any one else is doing. I offer people reasons to persuade people why the name GNU/Linux is the right thing; I hope they will agree, and decide to use it.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Cygnus gets credit for extending win32. Where's the credit for GNU? All things considered, it should be called GNUwin32, You make a good case for that, and I think you are right. I care more about the "Linux" system than about Cygwin32, because "Linux" is basically the system that the GNU Project aimed to develop. Cygwin32 is just a side issue, an add-on for a proprietary system. They get the credit because the media fastens on them as the driving force behind this mysterious, new market phenomenon: that free software can run 50% of the servers on the "information highway", and that maybe Microsoft isn't the only source of software after all. The GNU Project is the chief reason for this. Many people and projects contributed programs that are in the system, but we alone had the goal of making a complete 100% free operating system. If Linus had not existed, we would eventually have provided a kernel. If we had not existed, Linus would not have provided the rest of the system, because but it was not his goal to produce one. So when the media think that Linus is responsible, they are making an error of substance. One of the reasons to call the system "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux" is to help prevent that mistake.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Is what is "part of GNU" and what is simply "GNU-compatible" defined explicitly somewhere? GNU is the name of an operating system. (This is what the GNU Project set out to develop.) Something is part of GNU if it is part of that system. "GNU-compatible" is not a term I use, so I don't have a definition for it. http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html disclaims completeness. That page includes the *list* of GNU software packages. But the general definition is, a GNU package is a program that is released under the aegis of the GNU Project. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html for a list of definitions of categories of software.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Whether we agree that demanding renaming of software in order to emphasize credit is justified is unclear to me. The system's name has been GNU ever since we started it 15 years ago. I think it was uncool for people to rename it to "Linux", so I am suggesting "GNU/Linux" as a compromise.
Re: [openip] Re: "rights" and "freedoms"
Patent reform is a much easier goal to reach than the entire elimination of patents. It might looks that way, but actually reforming the way the US patent office works is nearly impossible. The US patent office has been issuing absurd patents for some 150 years if not longer. (In general it is very hard to change the way a bureaucracy functions.) The Supreme Court tried to reform the patent office standards, by overturning absurd patents, but it did not have any continuing effect. I think we have as good a chance of excluding software entirely from the domain of patent law, as we do of reforming the patent office in a way that affects its competence. Either one would require passing a law.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
I find the two quite similar actually. Cygwin32 is gcc & company, bash, and a standard set of file utilities (ls, tar, ...). From the user's perspective, it transforms their NT system into a system where the shells look and act just like UNIX shells. You're talking about "the user's perspective", what the system looks like. I'm talking about what it is made of. Judging from your description, adding Cygwin32 to Windows makes is a system that looks somewhat like GNU/Linux (or equally, somewhat like Unix). But it still has all of Windows in it. While doing this work, one can't help but notice that Cygwin32 is effectively a method for porting the GNU system onto the Win32 subsystem. Well, you might be able to do that. And if you deleted all the Windows DLLs and graphical applications, you might end up with something which is the GNU system plus the kernel of Windows. That would justify the name GNU/. (I don't know the name of the kernel of Windows; I have never been a Windows user.) I would rather use GNU/Linux, since Linux is free software. > I will ask someone to tell me what CodeFusion is. I have heard a few > people mention it recently, but no one has described it to me. As I understand it, CodeFusion is a GUI that wrappers the GNUPro tool suite (gcc, gdb, etc). Those programs, the compilation tools, are just a part of the GNU operating system. So this is quite different from the situation with GNU/Linux. As for whether they are treating us properly, giving credit properly, that depends on the details of what they say. I haven't seen it, so I can't judge. (It is a tangent which I think we need not go down.) The "you" in this sentence is not RMS or a plural you referring to developers of the GNU system; it is specifically the person I was responding to (John Cowan) Indeed, I misunderstood that part. I apologize for my confusion. I guess the root of my confusion is that I just don't know how much credit is enough. How about giving the GNU Project equal billing with Linus? Since we did much more of the work, and had the overall vision too, surely it is not unreasonable to ask for that much.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: "This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/)." Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear. I see nothing moral objectionable in this clause. I have no moral objection to the BSD advertising clause either; its problems are practical only. But I don't think this clause causes the same practical problems, since it does not apply to advertising. Could you send me the entire new version of the license?
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Now that we're having this argument I'm starting to feel motivated to try FreeBSD (since I don't have any philosophical issues with the BSD license). I think it is unfortunate that you feel this way, but I am not going to be silent just because some people object to what I say. Speaking in terms of principle, you have a right to disagree with me, but that should not stop me from saying what I think. Pragmatically speaking, while some people turn against us for asking people to call the system GNU/Linux, at the same time other "Linux users" become much more interested in the GNU Project when they know what we did. On the balance, it seems to be a good policy, especially nowadays since I've learned which ways work better.
Re: An idea for opening software patents...
Well, that's one point but the input can be used to file an objection to the PTO and try to get the patent invalid. I discussed this with lawyers years ago, as president of the LPF. I was told that often it is a better strategy to save the prior art for a trial (assuming the patent holder goes so far as to sue). If the court knows the PTO has seen a certain piece of prior art and issued the patent anyway, then the court tends to ignore the prior art, in effect presuming that the PTO's decision was right. Thus, you are better off not telling the PTO about the prior art. If you ask the PTO to reexamine the patent and show it the prior art, the patent holder gets a chance to rewrite the patent to bypass your prior art while trying to keep it covering most of what people actually do. (This is analogous to gerrymandering election districts.) If the patent holder succeeds at this, the prior art is negated.
Re: An idea for opening software patents...
The problem is current software/e-com patents are not "inventions" but "land grabs." That is a part of the problem. Software patents that cover "real inventions" are the rest of the problem. People seem to be very reluctant to doubt that patents are a good thing, or even to doubt that they are a good thing in the particular field of software. So once they see there is a problem, they cling very hard to the idea that the problem is solely due to the "mistakes" of the patent office. That way, they can believe that there is nothing wrong with software patents in principle. I have seen this time and time again. Any time you focus your efforts on the absurd and trivial patents and the problems they cause, it has the effect of reinforcing this tendency--in effect, it acts as a safety valve to prevent questioning of the larger and deeper issue: should software be covered by patents? Does this mean we should refuse to try to invalidate absurd patents? I don't think so. I do not think we should be Macchiavellian. Getting rid of even one software patent is a step forward. But when we work on invalidating a trivial software patent, we must remind the public over and over, "This approach will only deal with the trivial patents--and it is so much work that we cannot even deal with all of them. The nontrivial ones are just as harmful, just as unjustified, and they need to be eliminated *also*." It is necessary to repeat, this every time someone seems to be taking this effort as grounds to believe that software patents would be a good idea if only the absurd patents were eliminated. That may happen pretty often, so you must not feel shy about repeating yourself!
Re: [openip] Re: "rights" and "freedoms"
Perhaps one service that patentbusters.org could provide is to publicise this concept (so that companies understand it) and act as a synchronization centre for companies that are under threat to find companies that are likely to be next in line and convince them to contribute a small amount to breaking the patent. In short, the organization of defence consortiums. This is a useful thing to do. But as people consider a variety of ways of fighting against software patents, I'd like to suggest the idea of reanimating the LPF, and using it to do this work. That is the right organization to use. Is anyone interested in that undertaking? It would be very useful.
Re: [openip] Re: "rights" and "freedoms"
Each patent has a 3 month public period were everyone can file an objection to a published patent. It should be trivial to show prior art to the PTO and argue about the triviality of the filed patent. You may not realize how much work this involves. I think that several thousand US patents are issued each month. Just finding the ones you want consider part of the scope of the effort would be a substantial job. Then you would have to read the patents and see what they cover. Reading and understanding a patent is torture. (You could give it a try and judge for yourself.) You have not said what fields you would want to do this in. Perhaps software and circuits? I think that just to organize people to *study* all the patents being issued in these fields would be beyond us. Finding actual proof of prior art for a patent is a lot of work as well. (Assuming there is any proof.) All this work might succeed in eliminating some trivial, absurd patents. But the nontrivial patents that cover real inventions (most of which are not brilliant) cause the same danger. Richard, may be the FSF is the right place for such a watch-dog group. I think it would be better to keep it separate. For one thing, I as FSF president am overcommitted and I cannot supervise this. If it is an independent activity, then it doesn't need my supervision. For another, it is important for the FSF to tell people that an effort like this would NOT solve the problem of software patents. The problem of software patents is NOT just due to the absurd trivial ones. The nontrivial software patents are just as harmful. I encourage people to invalidate individual software patents when there is a way to do so, but I will not call this approach a plausible solution to the problem of software patents.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
Sorry, Richard, thats wrong. The war is called seccesion war. I though you where an american and you knew that, are you not? I am an American, and I have read extensively about the Civil War. It was caused by the dispute over slavery, not by economic factors. Slavery was the reason for secession, and disgust for slavery motivated the Union troops. It wasn't for nothing that they sang about John Brown while marching to war. For a long time, Southerners have made a great effort to deny this. You may have read their propaganda. Or you may have seen something influenced indirectly by the Marxist idea that history is determined mainly by economics. It is useful to look for economic factors in history, but they are not the only ones.
Re: [openip] Re: GNU License for Hardware
> regards use of my code. If you want to use my code, you have to let > me use yours. Fair is fair. That will I do ... But not under the GPL :-) If you want to use my code you will have to accept my open source licence, In your previous message, you said you wanted to use a "community" license which would limit people to noncommercial use. That does NOT fit the definition of "open source". Most of the open source licenses are also free software licenses. But the Sun Community Source License is neither an open source license nor a free software license. You said you dislike the GPL because it will not let you reuse our code under such a non-free non-open-source "community" license. I responded to what I thought you were saying. If I did not understand you properly the first time, I am willing to listen if you try again. I have no wish to criticize you for a view which is not what you believe. I know that. But how can I apply the GPL to release my software to be payed on an per copy base? If people have to pay per copy, then the program is not free software, and it is also not open source software.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
I do think that the authors of the GNU programs deserve credit for what they've done, and that also translates into credit for the whole "GNU System". However, it's puzzling to me why nobody's busy arguing that it should be called GNU/Cygwin32 ... As far as I understand it, this is not a similar situation. Cygwin32 uses just a part of the GNU system, the compilation tools. And it is just an add-on for another large system, not a whole system. Also, I would expect that what Cygwin32 owes to GNU software is pretty clear to its users (which is not the case for most users of GNU/Linux). But perhaps they ought to give more credit to GNU. For that matter, why isn't it GNU/CodeFusion? I guess you feel that the people at Cygnus are morally worthless. You must have a strong wish to criticize the GNU Project if you will criticize us for things you only imagine we do. You ought to verify things before you use them as the basis for accusations. I will ask someone to tell me what CodeFusion is. I have heard a few people mention it recently, but no one has described it to me. It is disturbing that the inequity has only been widely discussed since Linux became very popular, I have been trying to spread the word for many years; it is not my fault if you did not notice. it smacks of opportunism. If you like someone, you call him a "pragmatist". If you hate him, you call him an "opportunist".
Re: GNU License for Hardware
I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of software developers believe that the software that they write is "theirs", no matter who uses it. You are probably right. And the vast majority develop proprietary software. I developed the GPL because I disagree with the majority. This also applies for most developers distributing their software under the GPL. I, like you, cannot read the minds of these authors to be certain what they think. However, as the author of the GPL and its leading (in a sense) user, I believe you are mistaken. Otherwise, the developer who does not believe the software to be theirs wouldn't not restrict it in any way to the user. This is the kind of argument that is falsified by one exception, and I know for certain about one exception--namely me. I do not consider the programs I write "mine" in the sense that you are talking about. I think of myself as their custodian on behalf of humanity, not their owner. However, I know that copyright law considers me the owner, and allows me to choose the distribution terms for the programs. So I choose the distribution terms that I think are best for the community in general. That way I fulfull what I see as my responsibility as custodian of the software.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
This all comes down to the concept of intellectual property. Those who believe IP is wrong, will believe any software license, proprietary or free, is a domination. Those who believe that IP is justified will see any license on software as just that, a license, that gives the user certain permissions. I don't believe that "IP is wrong". I don't believe that "IP is justified". I don't have any opinion about "intellectual property", because the term is too big a generalization to have one opinion about. I have opinions about copyrights for certain types of works, opinions about patents in certain fields, and to some extent opinions about trademarks. These opinions are not all the same. I find that when people use the term "intellectual property", it leads them to think they must either be "for it" or "against it". In other words, it encourages people to ignore all possible positions except two simplistic generalizations. I recommend avoiding the term "intellectual property", and not replacing it with any other term.
Re: Some general principles of naming
You've said this before, and you've yet to convince me. Ok, I can't win 'em all. You're entitled to your opinion. I think the reasons are good ones and ought to convince many other people. I do not believe you can fairly make the 'principal developer' claim unless the project was working to the same goals as the Linux project. Which, to the best of my knowledge, it wasn't. Actually I don't see how this relates to the issue. GNU was working toward *a* free Unix-like system. They have, AFAIK, been unsuccessful in achieving that goal to date. However, much of the work they put into that effort was adopted by *a* system project which *did* complete a similar goal. It is mostly the same system. The final system which people are using was developed much more by us than by anyone else. Assume I wrote 100K lines of code, and didn't achieve the overall goal I had in mind when writing it. Nevertheless, the code worked inasfar as it had progressed. Now someone else takes that, adds 10K lines of their own, and achieves a goal almost identical to my original one. It sounds as though, by your lights, I would be the 'principal developer' of the result. Yes, I think you would be in that case. I continue to regard your position as an attempt at dog-in-the- mangerism, The dog in the manger would not let the cattle eat their food, even though he did not want it. I don't see how that resembles this situation. You are entitled to your opinion, but I stand by what I have said.
Re: "rights" and "freedoms"
Personally I think the US Patent office has gone beserk, and needs to develop a better understanding of prior art in software. Also, it should not be as expensive as it is to defend or fight a patent in court. Those are "implementation" details though. The US Patent Office is incompetent in all fields, and issues trivial patents habitually. If the Patent Office did a good job, perhaps patents would be beneficial overall in many fields. But I am convinced that patents in software are inherently harmful, and would be harmful even if the Patent Office handled them "well". See lpf.ai.mit.edu for more info about this.
Re: "rights" and "freedoms"
I don't understand this argument. Patents are expressly there to protect the inventor's right to make money from a new process that is otherwise easily copied. The purpose of patents, at least in the US, is to promote progress. That is stated in the US Constitution. Whether patents actually do promote progress is a factual question. The answer may depend on the field. I am sure that in software they do more harm than good. I am not sure about other fields.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
> Finally, why should we trivialize the kernel of any OS as an "only > thing"? When I say that Linux is only the kernel, I am not trying to minimize the work of writing of a kernel. I am comparing it with something of a greater order of complexity--a whole operating system. The kernel is a substantial and important software package; at the same time, it is just a part of the operating system. The same is true of the compiler, the C library, the editor, the debugger, to list some parts of the system that were written by the GNU Project.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
The X Windows system is not a GNU program; the GNU Project cannot claim any of the credit for developing X. However, we decided back in the 1980s to include X in the GNU operating system, and we began integrating the rest of the system with it. So the GNU operating system includes X, even though X is not GNU software. When I say that the GNU Project provided more of the GNU/Linux system than any other source, I do not count X, because the GNU Project did not provide X. MIT did that. When I say that the GNU/Linux system is the combination of the GNU system and Linux, I do count X as part of the GNU system. It was part of the GNU system before Linux was started. Remember that the GNU system did not set out to write GNU programs. We set out to develop a whole system. GNU is first of all the name of the system, and only secondarily the name of a project and a "brand" of software and manuals and licenses.
Re: Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Since this concept of getting "credit" for software seems to be so important, it probably should be embodied in the license. I disagree on principle; however, even if I agreed, I see no way that a license could be written to address the issue. could require that collections of software licensed under GPL be clearly labelled with a tag saying that "This CD contains # software packages from the GNU project". You're talking about the use of individual GNU software packages. But the individual packages we developed are just parts of what the GNU Project did. We developed them in order to accomplish our real goal, which was to make a whole system. Giving us credit only for the specific GNU packages included in a version of the GNU system would be missing the forest for the trees. I ask people to use the term "GNU/Linux" because that is a way to say that the system as a whole is based on the GNU system as a whole. So thanks for the suggestion, but you see it simply doesn't do the job I am trying to do. (I also don't think licenses should make requirements about this, and people were right to point out that not every GPL-covered program is a GNU program.)
Re: GNU License for Hardware
The goal of the OSS movement is to convince people and companies that by definition a proprietary system cannot long-term deliver the same real benefits that OSS can. If someone is well and truly convinced of that, then they cannot be sold a proprietary system, no matter what the claim or the current reality, because they will not believe that any present difference is anything other than transitory. You're assuming that they will put long-term considerations ahead of short-term ones. People who are judging based on practical values alone rarely do that. They will tend to let the immediate practical advantages of using proprietary software packages outweigh their long-term interests. Also, you are speaking of a very firm and total kind of convincing, which is rare in the OSS movement. In my experience, people who firmly reject non-free software do so at least partly based on the moral disapproval which is the basis of the Free Software movement. Do you know of anyone who has been convinced so thoroughly by the OSS movement that he now rejects non-free software, purely for the sake of the long-term practical benefits? Bob Young is not one. Red Hat develops non-free software only with considerable reluctance, but it distributes plenty of non-free software. So I believe that there is a real OSS argument with some difficult converts left to make. Earlier you were talking about making the easy converts. And the advantage you claimed for the Open Source approach was precisely that it could convert some people easily. (I agree that this is useful, but there are lots of other people doing it already.) But if you are talking about difficult converts, that advantage is gone. You may as well help the Free Software movement convert people in its more thorough fashion. But by slamming the OSS movement you are closing an avenue towards helping your vision happen. I said that it was constructive, but that other things need to be done as well. Is that "slamming"? And above all, don't make it look like accepting the points that the OSS folks make contradicts your goals. I say that I agree with it, as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. Where did you get your information about what I say about the Open Source movement? For example the US Civil war was not fought over abolishing slavery, it was fought over whether states had the right to leave the Union. That was the superficial issue, but really it was fought about slavery.
Some general principles of naming
You may hear people say that an operating system is normally named after its kernel, and therefore the "Linux" operating system should be named after its kernel. Actually operating systems are just about never named after their kernels. It is normally the other way around. You may hear people argue that the name GNU/Linux should not be used because the name GNU/Linux/X/BSD/TeX/X/Lynx would be impractical. On the surface, that is just a nonsequitur. Looking deeper down, this argument starts from the assumption that there are only two possibilities to consider: either give credit to *everyone*, or ignore the issue of credit entirely. The intermediate alternatives have been arbitrarily excluded. If you don't agree with that arbitrary decision, the argument has no force. If you think it is proper to use a name that gives credit to those who developed a system, but you think (as I do) that it is impractical to give credit in that way to all the contributors, I suggest making a list of them in order of decreasing priority. Then you can give credit to the first N of them, for whatever N you think is feasible. The GNU Project is the system's principal developer, so GNU ought to be first in the list. So if you use N=1, you would call the system "GNU". I think it is better to choose N=2 and write "GNU/Linux". This has two advantages: it distinguishes this system version from *the* GNU system proper (which doesn't use Linux), and it gives Linus a share of the credit. (I would not want to ask people to *stop* giving him credit; he deserves it well enough.) Meanwhile, it is not impractically long.
Re: [ppc-mobo] Re: GNU License for Hardware
I think your analogy is precise and accurate. It also demonstrates an irreparable flaw in your position about individual freedom. It isn't a flaw, it just shows that we're evaluating freedom in two different ways and not understanding each other. I was hoping the analogy would help you see it, but it didn't, because you're evaluating it the same way in regard to dictatorships as in regard to proprietary software. It is very consistent of you to use the same evaluation always, but I'm at a loss to explain what the other way is. That is an important freedom: the freedom to choose to take risks. In economics it's known by a rather different name: "entreprenuerism". I think this is quite a stretch; taking a risk of losing some money is very different from living in a dictatorship. There are some similarities--they both involve a risk of some kind--but differences as well. The problems of living in a dictatorship are not solely a matter of risk, they are not only a matter of money, and they do not apply only to you. Perhaps in your political philosophy these differences are of no import, but that is not so in all political philosophies. Comparing Japan to a dictatorship is also a stretch. (I do not share the unqualified adoration of entreprenuerism that is part of the established ideology, but I think that would be an unnecessary tangent.) I'm sorry, if you want to argue that using proprietary software makes me less free, you are going to have to argue in dynamic terms, Using proprietary software makes you less free because it means you are living under domination. Whether you are encouraging or discouraging the development of more free software or more proprietary software is also important, but it's something else. You may not care about this, but I do.
Re: [ppc-mobo] Re: GNU License for Hardware
rms> A program which doesn't exist cannot be described either as rms> free or as non-free. It is outside the scope of that rms> distinction. It is not. I didn't write "doesn't exist"; I wrote "not written". Please pay others the courtesy that you always demand: reading, and responding to, what they write. I read it again, and I still believe that a program that is not written does not exist. I guess I do not understand. rms> In regard to the use of that non-free program, you are under rms> the domination of someone else, in a way that would not rms> happen if you had no non-free software. _What_ domination? You are forbidden to redistribute a copy to me or anyone else. You are unable to change the program. In other words, you don't have the freedoms that define free software. For those of us who care about these freedoms as freedoms, to be denied them is domination. (pace, Robert Anson) I can choose to violate the contract, either following Thoreau and landing in jail, or secretly, just like any promise-breaker hoping to get away with it. You can grant yourself the freedom to redistribute copies underground if you dare, but you cannot get yourself the source code in this way.
Re: "rights" and "freedoms"
Are you suggesting that the concept of "intellectual property" is (or should be) a brief detour from which we're about to move back on track? I cannot speak for jread, but here is my view. When patents and copyrights were adopted, in general they did not interfere with the public's use of the works they were designed to encourage, and they did encourage progress. I think that made them overall beneficial systems. I think that nowadays they are still acceptable systems, perhaps even beneficial, in the fields where the situation is still that way. But that is not the case in software.
Accusations, accusations, always accusations
Earlier on in the thread I wrote this: If I was to replace all of Solaris's utilities with the GNU equivalents, would anybody call it GNU/Solaris? I for one would not call it that. Copying just the utilities from GNU is not enough of a reason to say "the result is basically the GNU system." What GNU/Linux has in common with GNU is much more than a bunch of utilities. If you took the kernel of Solaris and made it work in the GNU system, that would produce GNU/Solaris. The point was that installing the GNU utilities people are likely to install on a Solaris system, or even all of them, is a far cry from replacing all of the system except the kernel with another whole system minus kernel. And the GNU system is more than a set of GNU "utilities". However, someone now insists that I meant something else entirely, and persistently asks people to condemn me as a "hypocrite" for a meaning I did not intend. Well, you see what I actually wrote, and you can judge for yourself. You've seen a bout of the abuse that I receive. I've received a few handfuls of them, and on many other occasions I've seen people pointedly refuse to give the GNU Project credit. Given the situation, I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping my temper. (I make a great effort.) On only a few occasions I have raised my voice in response; one of them was in public, last March. That has been seized on to accuse me with; some people call me a monster for having not quite lost my temper in public. But the anger I expressed then was mild and brief compared with what they regularly say about me in public. Perhaps they should start making an effort to control their tempers. Meanwhile, I will respond, not in kind, but by calmly continuing to inform people that the system often called "Linux" is a derivative of the GNU system, and asking them to give the GNU Project credit for being its principal (though not its only) developer.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
> We're the > principal (though not the sole) developers of the system, This is a question of fact. What is the evidence for it? It is a question of fact and interpretation. Here are several reasons, which I think are more than sufficient. 1. We launched the project to develop a complete free operating system like this one. 2. All the other projects that wrote programs now in the system aimed to write a program to do this or that specific job. We alone proposed the goal of a whole system, and did whatever was necessary to achieve that goal. GNU is and always was the name for an operating system, not just a brand for software packages. 3. We persisted through the early days, when most people said the job was too big ever to be done--years before Linus Torvalds got involved. (Not that this should be held against him, since he was pretty young at the time.) 4. We contributed more of the system than any other project.
Re: "rights" and "freedoms"
You're being a little extreme here. I don't think the FSF ever said that non-free programming was illegitimate. The FSF's goal is a world in which published software is generally free. The FSF doesn't quite go so far as to say that non-free software is morally wrong. I personally think so, but the FSF doesn't simply reflect my personal views. First, I think the FSF probably thinks it is "OK" to receive royalties for programming work. To receive royalties is not exactly the same thing as to force distributors to pay them. I think that there is nothing wrong with receiving royalties if they are offered by a particular distributor for a free program. However, the usual way to obtain royalties is by making the software non-free. The FSF would not quite go so far as to say that this is wrong, but certainly aims to replace it with other methods. It's just that Stallman and friends are programmers, and the 'S' in FSF stands for "Software". I'm sure they would approve of someone founding a FFF (Free Fiction Foundation) or a FMF (Free Music Foundation) with a similar ideology. The FSF is concerned only with software; everything else is beyond its scope. It has a certain amount of sympathy for similar issues of freedom in other areas, enough to put a little material on the web server. Peter Deutsch wrote: I have yet to hear a persuasive explanation of why Free Software advocates think it's OK for authors of fiction to be paid for each copy of their work, but not programmers. If the distinction is between a "purely expressive" and a "functional" work, how about authors of cookbooks? Authors of how-to books of all kinds? Authors of reference works? Anything other than software is outside the scope of the Free Software movement. I personally have thought about some of these kinds of works (not all, yet). I don't start from generalities. Instead I look at the individual specific issues. But I don't have time to go off on that large tangent now.
Re: [openip] Re: GNU License for Hardware
It forces you to release all your stuff which is in someway combined with the GNU stuff as GPL, too. Most people prefer 'free' software where the author states: "you can do what ever you want provided you leave this notice intact". ... In fact I prefer a community source licence, which enforces everyone, who is earning money with my stuff, to fund me and allows every one, who simply want to use it for non commercial purpose, to use it 'for free'. Please tell me if I understand you properly. Here is what you seem to be saying. * You want to make your software non-free, with a license like Sun's non-free license. (That would mean we have to reject it.) * You want US to release OUR software in a different way. You want us to use non-copyleft lax licenses which let you use our code in your non-free software. * But you have no intention of letting us use your code in our free software packages. It seems you want a system where you impose restrictions on everyone else, for your profit, while the rest of us bend over backwards to cater to you. Surely you must be aware that that is quite asymmetrical. I use the GPL to insist that we have a fair relationship, at least as regards use of my code. If you want to use my code, you have to let me use yours. Fair is fair. I have not the finacial background to work years for free an than giving away my software for free. (Free software does not mean you have to "give it away for free". Free software is a matter of freedom, not price.) You're saying you cannot write free software because you are not rich. When I started the GNU Project, I was not rich. Most people who work on free software are not rich. If you don't know this is possible, ask some people and find out. If you really wish to write free software, try to find a way, and maybe you will succeed. Even if you don't succeed completely, you may succeed partly. If you live cheaply, as I did and still do, you ought to be able to make a living by working half-time or less as a programmer. Even if that job involves making proprietary software, you could still write free software the other half of your time. Doing good for society with half of your work is better than doing no good at all.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
But they differ on methodology, and the Open Source movement can appeal to people that the Free Software movement does not. That is true. At the same time, the Free Software movement can instill a stronger, firmer, more persistent kind of support, because we appeal to the kind of values which can generate such support. Thus, each approach can do something that the other cannot do. > If you think that both are important, your place is in the > Free Software movement. No. If you think that both are important AND that the methodology put forward by the Open Source movement is not currently the right strategy, then you belong in the Free Software movement. Your point is that it is a person who agrees with the Free Software movement might under some circumstances decide to use the Open Source movement's method. I can imagine situations where that might make sense. But the present situation is not one of them. At present there are plenty of people and companies using the Open Source approach, and just a few using the Free Software approach. The plan to invite business to give the fair-weather support that we can expect from business is working fine, but we are not doing a comparable amount to spread the love of freedom. Millions of new users are flocking to free operating systems, but we are not telling them about the issues of freedom as fast as they are coming into the community. We are getting them "hooked" with the practical advantages, then failing to follow up. So if you agree that freedom is an important benefit in its own right, right now you should let all those other people win the easy converts, and help me tell them about the benefits of freedom. If we don't have enough people to help with this, the danger is that the Free Software movement will be forgotten, drowned under the flood of Open Source publicity. Then by the time all the easy converts have been won, there will be no effort to suggest to them that there is any more at stake than the convenience and reliability of the free software they happen to be using. And the next time someone offers them a proprietary system which is more convenient and reliable, they might leave our community as easily as they came in.
Re: [ppc-mobo] Re: GNU License for Hardware
This is false. Or have you changed your mind about about accepting code to support ssh in Emacs? You are right that we don't support any and all non-free applications in all ways. We only support some of them, in some ways.
Re: [ppc-mobo] Re: GNU License for Hardware
Then what is the benefit to anyone of me foregoing my OCR? I can tell you the benefit for which I would forego the use of such a program. I do not want to be in the position of having a program and not being allowed to share it with you. I would rather have no program for the job, than have a non-free program. With no program, I have nothing to be ashamed of. A program that is never written is trivially not free. A program which doesn't exist cannot be described either as free or as non-free. It is outside the scope of that distinction. So what's wrong with substituting an existing non-free program for a non-existent non-free one? _Freedom is not decreased._ There is a sense in which your freedom is not decreased. But there is another sense in which it is. In regard to the use of that non-free program, you are under the domination of someone else, in a way that would not happen if you had no non-free software. For me, I object to this domination so strongly that I try to exclude it completely from my life. If I let it have a foothold, then non-freedom is back in my life, and in that sense, I am less free. Perhaps I can explain better with an analogy. (Analogies are never valid as proofs, but they can be useful as explanations.) Suppose you live in country A which is a free country. Suppose you are not allowed to enter country B, which is a dictatorship. Now suppose the situation changes and you are allowed to enter country B, subject to its restrictions on speech, secret police, and such. In one sense, this decision gives you increased freedom, because a strictly larger set of options is open to you. I think that is the sense that you are using for the comparison. But if you start spending much of your time in country B, I would say that your life is less free in another sense, because the oppressive system of country B now dominates a part of your life. I think that sense is more important. I occasionally go to countries ruled by dictatorships, but only for brief visits (and I go there to do something in my way for the cause of freedom). I don't want living in them to be a normal part of my life. I also occasionally try out a non-free program to see what it looks like, or because it is running on someone else's computer. But I will not put them on my computer.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
Balling has attributed to me The only people (or to clarify, the FIRST person) who claimed Linux was "part of the GNU system" was RMS. Actually I do not say that Linux is part of the GNU system. What I say is that the GNU/Linux system is the combination of GNU and Linux. It is the result of integrating Linux into the GNU system, but it isn't precisely the GNU system. It is a system that differs from GNU in having a different kernel.
Re: GNU License for Hardware
The GNU GPL does not make any legal requirements about what name you can call your system if you include a GNU program in it. I think it would be wrong to try to impose such a requirement by legal force. Besides which, individual GNU programs have often been included in other systems, such as GCC in NeXTstep and DGUX. Those systems are mostly different from the GNU system, and it would only be misleading to call them "GNU" just because they contain GCC. So it is clear that the GPL should not impose any requirement about the name of a system, on account of its containing a GPL-covered program. And it does not. Therefore, people have a legal right to take the whole GNU system, replace one component such as the kernel (or even make no change at all), and call it some other name which does not include "GNU". The FSF and other copyright holders of GNU programs cannot sue you for doing this. But while that conduct is legal, that does not make it right and good. Part of the respect that people normally give to the developers of a software package is using the name they gave it. If you make a variant of the GNU system, you don't legally have to call it "GNU", but it is rather unfriendly if you don't. Since the BSD advertising requirement has been mentioned, I should point out that it too makes no legal requirement about what name you can call your system if you include some BSD software. As regards this particular issue, the old BSD license is no different from the GNU GPL. (I've called the BSD advertising requirement "obnoxious", but I don't call it evil. I have asked people to avoid it because of practical problems it causes. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html.)
Re: GNU License for Hardware
Derek Balling has made accusations against me here that call for refutation. I have seen him personally with my own eyes demand it of people. I saw him rip into a member of the press for being "ignorant" when he referred to Linux as Linux. Calling this version of the GNU system "Linux", and not mentioning the name GNU, is treating the GNU Project with disrespect. We're the principal (though not the sole) developers of the system, and ordinary respect suggests you should call it by our name for it. The freedom to treat anyone with disrespect is an essential part of freedom of speech. I strongly support freedom of speech, and therefore I never demand that people call the GNU system "GNU". However, I too have freedom of speech. When I see a person persistently treat the GNU Project with disrespect, I have the right to criticize or even reproach their conduct. I don't do this often, because usually I think it is more effective to stick to the issues and address them in a calm tone. But I have done it sometimes. However, when I say someone is speaking from ignorance, that is not a reproach. We all start out ignorant on any particular topic. It's no shame to say something wrong out of ignorance, as long as you're willing to learn. If he urges one the use of GNU/Linux, but won't urge the use of (the theoretical) GNU/Solaris, even though the products are fundamentally identical, then that IS hypocrisy. The only thing in GNU/Linux which is Linux is the kernel. If you took the kernel of Solaris and made it work in the GNU system, that would be an analogous situation, and the term "GNU/Solaris-kernel" would be appropriate. (Not "GNU/Solaris", because Solaris is the whole system, not the kernel.) But if you just install some GNU packages on Solaris, that is not an analogous situation: much more remains of Solaris than just the kernel. This would not be GNU/Solaris-kernel.
Re: [openip] Re: License -> back on track
Hi, that's right but I use it to describe the mix of different things, hardware & software found on 'openip.org'. It's not related to any legal assumption "Intellectual property" is a legal term, and nothing but. Its meaning is a broad category which includes copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other things as well. If that's not what you mean, that's an additional reason to use some other term instead. Everyone who knows what "intellectual property" means will only get confused by using the term for something else. If you want a term to include both hardware and software, I suggest the term "anyware".
Re: [ppc-mobo] Re: GNU License for Hardware
True, but the only non-free software living at a low enough level to be considered part of the OS (that I can think of) is qt (which a lot of open source folk don't consider a threat to the movement). Nowadays Qt is free software, although its license the QPL just barely qualifies. Before the QPL, when Qt was non-free, it was such a grave threat to our community that we started two projects--GNOME and Harmony--to defend against it. The rest is apps (many of that being programs that do a job that no free software does satisfactorily yet, and even accepted as a necessary evil by FSF. The truth is more complex than that. We don't accept non-free apps as a necessary evil, but we do accept that many GNU users want to run them. We used the LGPL for GNU Libc as part of a strategic decision to allow non-free apps to be distributed for GNU. But that doesn't mean their existence is a good thing, or that it is good to distribute them. We treat them like non-free operating systems: we support using our software with them, but we don't encourage anyone to use them, and we hope you won't either. It is a real shame that most of the commercial GNU/Linux CD distributions contain non-free software. I'm urging them to release versions that are wholly free. I hope this shows that the GNU Project is not as extremist and inflexible as it is sometimes made out to be. We don't see issue as not an all-or-nothing one.
Re: [openip] Re: GNU License for Hardware
I am looking for a GPL-like license, but it is intended for collections of data resources, for the time being linguistic resources: corpora, dictionnaries (as used by machines, not people), grammars I see no reason why the GPL could not be used. If you think you see an obstacle, please describe it to me privately, and I will ask our lawyer if it is really a problem.
