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Eben Moglen — GPLv3 Not About MS and Novell
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon May 28, 2007 12:02 PM
from the having-to-restate-the-obvious dept.
from the having-to-restate-the-obvious dept.
Linux.com's Joe Barr was recently able to sit down with Professor Eben Moglen at the San Diego Red Hat Summit and discuss the GPLv3 and what it means beyond the Microsoft/Novell deal on video. "Professor Moglen explains briefly about GPLv3's work on globalization of the software license, preventing harm to others by members of the community, and the most contentious in earlier drafts, DRM."
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Technology: FSF Releases Third Draft of GPLv3 390 comments
johnsu01 writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced publication
of the third discussion draft of the
GNU General Public License Version 3. Because quite a few changes have been
made since the previous draft and important new issues have surfaced, the
drafting process has been extended and revised to
encourage more feedback. The most
significant changes in this draft
include refinements in the "tivoization" provisions to eliminate unwanted side
effects, revision of the patent provisions to prevent end-runs around the
license, and further steps toward compatibility with other free software
licenses. The FSF has also explicitly asked the community whether the new
patent provisions should apply retroactively to the Microsoft-Novell deal."
[+]
Eben Moglen Leaving the FSF 75 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Eben Moglen, general counsel and board member of the FSF and chairman of the SFLC, has announced on his blog that he will be resigning from his leadership position with the FSF now that GPLv3 draft 3 is out the door. "
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GPLv3 Not About MS and Novell (Score:3, Insightful)
It was also being drafted long before the MS/Novell agreement IIRC
Re:GPLv3 Not About MS and Novell (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:GPLv3 Not About MS and Novell (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or, just maybe, most people don't see it that way.
People generally don't consider it a blow against their freedom that their car doesn't come with the required information to make an exact replica of the engine, or when their microwave doesn't come with a circuit diagram, or their music CDs don't come with sheet music.
Why would they see it any differently w
Re:GPLv3 Not About MS and Novell (Score:5, Insightful)
No, "open source" is not about software freedom and it never was [gnu.org]. The open source development methodology has to do with writing more reliable software, more quickly, and at lower cost. To understand why this misses the point the free software movement raises, consider this excerpt from "Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software":
I'm glad open source proponents use the GNU GPL and help secure software freedom for the users of those programs, I'm also glad open source proponents work together with free software activists on a variety of issues. I'm even glad that people go into depth on how to make money and license software under free software licenses (most notably: the GPL and LGPL). But these business-oriented discussions are not the most critical issues—human rights for software users and building community are more substantial issues. The open source movement was defined in part to get away from the "freedom talk" free software activists engage in, thus it's no surprise that when some people talk about "open source" they're not calling attention to freedom very much. Some open source proponents, such as Eric Raymond, want to talk about what the two groups have in common which means often talking about only the open source movement's values. The organization founded to champion open source's values, the Open Source Initiative, has considerable work to do to reframe the debate such that software freedom is an important part of that movement, assuming they want to make that a goal in the first place [digitalcitizen.info].
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Except they do, at least some of them some of the time. Here's for example a blurb from an interview with Theo [newsforge.com]:
"NF: Lots of hardware vendors use OpenSSH. Have you got anything back from them?
TdR: If I add up everything we have ever gotten in exchange for our efforts with OpenSSH, it might amount to $1,000. This all came from individuals. For our work on OpenSSH, companies using OpenSSH have never given us a cent. What about companies that in
Re:GPLv3 Not About MS and Novell (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone keeps thinking the GPL is about developers. However it is not. The GPL is about users and their freedom with the software. Say it over and over in your heads people... The GPL is about users.
BSD-style licenses basically say I don't care about what you do and I don't care if you restrict users of derivatives works of this code.
GPL-style licenses basically say you can create derivative works, you can distribute those works. However, you cannot restrict the rights of the users of this work from doing the same. BSD does NOT provide for that when it comes to derivative works.
So, in a nut shell, if you don't care who does what with the code, BSD or (even better IMO) LGPL can help you there. However, if you care about the users of your work the GPL is a good bet.
Me personally, I write code for users not developers. I enjoy writing code and having someone say that it came in handy and helped them. Those are the people I want to see have rights that copyright just doesn't provide.
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End-users don't own my GPL'd code. I do.
If the end-user owned it, they wouldn't be required to distribute their source with their modifications. They could do whatever they liked with it.
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No, you don't. If you release any code under the GPL, any user is granted rights to that code. Regardless of what crap you think. If you release "your" code under the GPL, I have full rights to modify, distribute or sell the code I got from you.
The difference is that the copyright holder has the right to distribute his code under any license, not just the GPL. If he owns the copyright for the entire package, he can relicense the package at will. This is the basis for multi-licensing, and this is the reason why e.g. MySQL requires you to grant them an unlimited license to be able to contribute, so that they can sell their code to such companies that cannot use the GPL version.
As a recipient of GPL-covered code, you cannot do that.
Opensource software sucks. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
He/she seems to be the only user here to ever go on a freedom-bashing/flaming/hate-filled rant.
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Re:Opensource software sucks. (Score:4, Informative)
This is such a hilarious troll, normally I wouldn't feed but the parent post is so ridiculous that it's gone beyond trolling into some random fantasy land.
The GPL is not Communist in nature, in fact when I distribute software under the GPL it's all about me and my choice to share work with others. In a Communist scenario all the sofware would belong to the state, the choice of sharing would not be mine. Secondly, nowhere in the GPL does it say you cannot charge for your work, Studio to Go [ferventsoftware.com] is a good example of this.
Right, because Free software is all a conspiracy to ruin the US. Of course most of the people who answered the survey in this MIT study [mit.edu], when asked what their motivation is, said: 'I'm a Hillary fanboy and want to ruin the US!' Or could it be that FLOSS developers enjoy coding and want to share stuff they like? Which do you think is more likely?
I like FLOSS but am not a Hillary fanboy. In fact am not really interested in your elections, suprise: there are people who live outside the US!
This is the funniest thing I've read for a long time. It would be interesting to see this happen, my hypothesis is that this would ruin software development in the US. Am pretty certain your country would suffer rather badly if it outlawed FLOSS but the rest of the world continued developing it. Think of all those savings your corporations would be missing out on! What about the US corporations who're distributing FLOSS, e.g. IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, RedHat et al?
Oh dear, that's funny. Free software does not destroy the free market, but encourages it. With FLOSS there's much less possibility for vendor lock-in (since everything is out in the open and I can't imagine the many volunteers working on FLOSS projects being happy with creating proprietary file formats etc.). Theoretically Microsoft would not get away with giving away software for free, yet that's exactly how they gained their monopoly: by turning a blind eye [arstechnica.com] to piracy. Your point is invalid in another respect: Microsoft is a company whereas Free software is an ecosystem/licensing model. If all proprietary software disappeared tomorrow there would still be plenty of competition, this is one of the things people complain about with GNU/Linux: there's too much choice!
I'd almost like to see your post modded up as 'Funny', just because it's so stupid and full of hilarious vitriol. Also I feel it's important to debunk rubbish like this sometimes, just in case someone else read your post and thinks that you've got a point (a scary prospect).
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Re:Opensource software sucks. (Score:4, Informative)
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You're absolutely right of course, I was 'dumbing down' the issues somewhat. The average westerner's definition of 'Communism' is that totalitarian state I was referring to: Soviet Russia under Stalin typifies Communism for most people.
My apologies for continuing to perpetuate mis-information.
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Where did Stallman or Kuhn ever say that the GPL is the only license with a righ
Re:Opensource software sucks. (Score:4, Interesting)
To quote Kuhn:
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Right now it's still voluntary, yes...but if you know anything about Stallman and/or Bradley Kuhn, then you also know that they are very adamant in their belief that the GPL is the only license with the right to exist. You can be very sure that if Stallman had any ability whatsoever to dictate that the GPL were the only scenario under which software could be distributed or used at all, he would exercise it with great enthusiasm.
What's so great about a world where Bill Gates and Co. are basically entitle
Freedom vs. Power (Score:2)
If we take freedom to be the ability to make decisions that mainly affect you, and power to be the ability to make decisions that mainly affect others, then we could say that the choice of license is an exercise of power. For more on this opinion, see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.htm l [gnu.org]
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Of course, by "have a right" you mean "should have a right". In Freedom or Power? [gnu.org] they write:
It seems they merely reject ad
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A license monoculture is not the same as a software monoculture under the control of one company. As for the rest of your post: weird and reality-twisting. Richard Stallman would like everyone to use the GPL? That's hardly a suprise. Yet you make it appear that promoting the GPL is the same as threatening to shoot anyone who doesn't. Only Microsoft
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Until GPL, re-write was the only option, and if every program in teh world was GPL, that still remains an option.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I love how whenever you start talking about "freedom" with certain types of people you get called a "communist."
I know the AC is just trolling (or he's a total ass-hat), but I've actually encountered this in real life with otherwise intelligent people. You start talking about openness and choice and they feel threatened by that for some reason. I guess the only freedom they care about is their freedom to amass wealth.
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A fascist dictatorship?
Nice but (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nice but (Score:5, Interesting)
God I hope not, the "news" with 5 pages of 2 paragraphs each is bad enough as it is. Now if the news sources think that spacing the article out over time will help, we can pretty much kiss the usefulness of the web goodbye.
This pretty much guarantees I will not be reading anything from linux.com now.
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Who's up to the task?
Re:Nice but (Score:4, Funny)
Call it "Y'know, Web 1.0 was, overall, working pretty well for me, thanks."
Or YW1.0WOWPWFMT, for short
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https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/20
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This makes them more useful, long-run, for people who are just learning about free software -- or about Eben Moglen, for that matter.
- Robin
Maybe not profit (Score:2)
Maybe they want search engines to return more hits for solid GPL3 related info, so they will pepper the sight with multi-part articles for a while... if a casual browser hits one they will see links to the others w/out having to use more searching.
Maybe they are more concerned about casual users educating themselves on this issue as the hardcore ones are already i
Novell may have big problems (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/758004/0000 95013407012375/0000950134-07-012375.txt [sec.gov]
The FSF has as much as said that they will target the Microsoft-Novell deal. http://gplv3.fsf.org/rationale [fsf.org], and since it's not a matter of "if" GPLv3 becomes more than a draft, as much as it is "when"...
The current draft of GPLv3 can affect Novell's biggest source of cash - Microsoft. (and may also affect SUSE gaining more market share in the enterprise) If the final GPLv3 impacts the patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell, Novell has big problems. And (IMHO) increasing SUSE acceptance among enterprise customers suffers a setback.
Re:Novell may have big problems (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire aim of the GPLv3 is to baisically fix "bugs" and loopholes present in the GPLv2 in order to make sure that the four software freedoms are always present in GPL-licenced software.
Any company that claims their business may suffer harm should either point out why certain points in the licence are unfair, or accept that the reason they will "suffer harm" is because they were exploiting the errors within the GPL for their own means and therefor going against the spirit of Free Software.
The FSF may be specifically targeting the M$-Novell deal in some areas, but it is not the only rational, because the creation was already underway before it was apparent the deal had even been agreed apon. Also if they target this deal then it is because of areas of the agreement which are not in the spirit of Free Software, and should only affect these areas.
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Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
The GPL is not anti-bussiness nor anti-capitalist. It is just against one kind of business, that is selling the same software again and again for huge profits at each copy. A business plan that can not be sucessfull on a free society.
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i can try to give a rebuttal, but to do so requires primarily me giving an anti-intellectual-property speech. well, here it is. the argument here is that having a world of all free software is _more_ according to capitalist ideals than having a world that is all or mostly proprietary software. the capitalist ideal inv
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Tell that to the thousands of companies saving billions of dollars by using GPL software.
For once, I wish someone could actually give me a reasoned rebuttal on why they believe that I'm wrong in believing that (at least the intention behind) the GPL is largely anticapitalist
The GPL is neithe
Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)
Please explain to me how a developer choosing to license software with the GPL is "anti-capitalist?" All the GPL does is grant additional rights to the user, provided they abide by the terms of the license. If they don't abide by those terms, they are not entitled to those additional rights.
How is this different from commercial software? It comes with a license as well, outlining the terms under which you may use it. If you do not wish to abide by the terms of the license, you are free to try another product with a different license (BSD, for example). Nobody is forcing you to use this particular software. And nobody is preventing another business from releasing software under the license of their choice.
What is "anti-capitalist" about users and developers having choice?
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I'm sure that you're pleased to hear that they do [groklaw.net].
GPLv3 vs. the DRM lockdown (Score:3, Insightful)
We will need the likes of the GPL3 to give an option to reduce the inevitable temptation of vested interests to use DRM to subjugate people.
Re: (Score:2)
Money from MS in itself has nothing to do with it. Indeed, of the three parts of the deal--business, technical, and patent, it is just the patent agreement that is the problem. Fixing the loophole that it exploited is far more important than the fates of corporations, particularly ones that have shown willingness to exploit find and exploit such loopholes.
If you are unco
To explain (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:they're right (Score:4, Interesting)
Most that I know who write their code under the GPL just want to have a good life and share with like minded.
Sharing != giving away.
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