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Richard Stallman: "The Future of Free Software " |
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Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:05 AM EST
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Richard Stallman gave the keynote speech at the Turin, Italy, meeting on March 18 about the drafting of GPLv3, "The Future of Free Software," and I thought you'd like to read it. You can also view a video of it, if you prefer at http://streaming.polito.it/TFOFS [Ogg]. The current draft of GPLv3 is here. He explains very clearly the more complex proposed changes, such as the clause on DRM ("Tivo-ization") and patents. I have to frankly tell you that the opening part about not using the phrase "intellectual property" seems to be at least in part about a conversation we had on using the phrase, because I maintained that if you are referring to the law, there is no confusion, that it's a term of art that has a specific meaning in the law. Lawyers know the difference between patent and copyright law, even if no one else does, and so when they use that term as an umbrella phrase, they know what they mean. Obviously he disagrees, for all the reasons he explains in this speech. I'm just fessin' up that he's responding, I think, to my position and basically saying I'm all wet. I realize he's likely had that conversation with many other people.
But that doesn't inhibit me one bit from producing the whole speech, because for all I know he's right, and anyway, I don't have to agree with everything he ever says in every area to know it's worthwhile to listen. And when it comes to the GPL, there is no one better to tell us the purpose of the license and what is intended than the man who has the final say. He addresses that too, at the very end. His explanation of the purpose behind the proposed changes in the GPL is very useful, and I am sure it will clarify the draft license for you. He also tells what they decided *not* to try to do. So here is his speech, in full. The transcript is by Ciaran O'Riordan. If you click on the first link to the speech, you will find more links to further information.
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Transcript of Richard Stallman speaking on GPLv3 in Torino; 2006-03-18
Sections
- First, a note on "intellectual property"
- On to the GPLv3
- About "or any later version" and
transitioning between versions
- Software patents: explicit patent grants
- The four freedoms of Free Software
- Digital Restrictions Management: how it was tackled
without restricting usage or modification
- DRM and laws about effective restriction measures
- Licence compatibility
- Compatibility with Affero - addressing web services, if you want
- Compatibility
with two kinds of patent retaliation
- The draft GPLv3 does contain
a very limited patent retaliation clause
- Requirements for notifying users
of the licence terms
- Question 1: What about Linux?
- Question 2: About dynamic linking and languages
- Question 3a: What if someone
thinks the spirit has been changed?
- Question 3b: Can
writing Free Software beat DRM or is lobbying needed? (Stallman's
answer discusses democracy)
- Question 4: Who is involved in the process?
- Question 5: Why is there not a team running
it instead of you, and who will run it next time?
- Question 6: What ideas for GPLv3
were rejected?
The transcript
Richard Stallman:
Before I get into the main subject, which is the plans for version
three of the GPL, I want to mention a very important fundamental
issue.
[1h 27m 06s]
There is a term that some people use, which causes terrible confusion
and should never be used, and that is the term "intellectual
property". Now, I heard someone mention that term. I don't think he
was explaining why that term should not be used.
It is devastatingly harmful to use the term "intellectual property"
because that term implies the existence of something which does not
exist.
Copyright law exists. Patent law exists. They have almost nothing in
common in terms of the requirements that they put on the public. Trademark
law also exists. It has nothing in common with copyright law or
patent law about what it requires of the public. So, the idea that there
is some general thing which these are instances of already gets people
so confused that they cannot understand these issues. There is no
such thing. These are three separate unrelated issues, and any
attempt to generalise about them guarantees confusion. Everyone who
uses the term "intellectual property" is either confused himself or
trying to confuse you.
[applause]
[1h 29m 12s]
I came to this conclusion a few years ago and since then I have decided
that I will never use that term. No exceptions. I will talk about
why the term is confusing, because that's a useful thing to do, but I
will never use that term. I never use it. I hope you will join me
in making this firm policy of never using it. And if someone else
says something about "intellectual property", I will not respond
directly to what he said without first explaining the confusion buried
in it, because you see, the confusion buried in a statement is usually
more harmful than whatever may be false that he actually tried to
say.
The false premises, the false presuppositions are the most important
problem. So, if someone makes a statement about intellectual property
and some part of it is the specific point, which I might disagree
with, the first thing I will say is why it's a mistake to talk about
intellectual property at all, and then I will try to translate what he
said into clearer terms, and then I might say if I agree with it or
not. But that's secondary, and explaining to people the confusion in
the term intellectual property itself is the most important thing to do.
There is a tendency to, we all have it, to follow other people in
their choice of terminology. If someone says an outrageous thing and
he uses the term intellectual property, you will feel drawn into
responding in the same terms. So, learn to resist that temptation.
[1h 31m 20s]
The most important mistake, the most important falsehood in that
statement is it's use of the term "intellectual property" in the first
place. And the most important thing about it to respond to, if you
could only choose one thing, is that one. And you can say: "and since your whole
picture of the situation is totally confused, clearly the specifics of
what you said need to be rethought".
That's all you need to do to deal with the specific thing he said.
And, by the way, when the term "intellectual property" is used in the
name of a law or a committee, that is an example of the confusion.
It's almost a certainty that any law named "intellectual property" is
a harmful, an unjust law. Of course, you have to check the details to
be sure of that, but you can be almost certain just from hearing the
name. And the reason is that you can tell from the name that unjust
premises and confusions went into the design of the law so what could
you expect except harmfulness.
[1h 33m 00s]
So, at this point, I should go to the intended topic, which is
version three of the GPL.
I designed GPL version one in 1989, and GPL version two in 1991. I
thought of making a version three something like five or six years
ago. We didn't intend to wait fifteen years. It was due to the fact
that I was busy, and there were some things that were hard to figure
out.
The idea that there would be changes in the GPL was planned from the
beginning. That is, version one already included a plan for transition
to future versions. We suggested that people release their programs
under "version one or any later version of the GPL", and the idea was
that when version two came out, it would automatically be usable for
all those programs and in the time since version two, we've been
suggesting that people release their software under "version two or
any later version" and I believe most GPL covered programs do say
that, with the result that when GPL version three comes out, a lot of
software will be usable under GPL version three.
The older versions of the GPL also promise that future versions
would be "similar in spirit". In other words, the changes will not be
radical. Any radical change would be false to the spirit and would
be wrong.
[1h 35m 17s]
The changes that we've proposed in version three are all in small
sub-issues. Some of them are very important, but in the overall
framework, they're small chnges. And the overall effect of GPL
version three will be basically the same as version two, protecting
the same four freedoms, but doing it somewhat better, dealing with
some problems which we've encountered and adapting better to various
different laws around the world.
One thing that we've done is that we've restructured some of the
concepts, for instance, we make it clear that many other activities
that have the effect of providing copies to other people are treated
the same as distribution. Anything that's covered by copyright law
which has the effect that it enables other people to get copies is
effectively equivalent to distribution, and this insulates GPL version
three from certain differences between laws in various countries about
just what constitutes distribution. So it has the effect of making
the GPL work more the same in all countries, despite precisely how they have
formulated their copyright laws.
There are many changes in GPL version three which do something like
that, they actually just make it more uniform and more reliably doing
the same thing we expected it already did.
[1h 37m 20s]
But there are some places where we actually have changed the policies
in small ways. One of these concerns software patents. GPL version
two is based on an implicit grant of a patent licence. The idea is
that if somebody says "here is a thing and you can use it", implicitly
he's promising he's not going to sue you for patent infringement if
you go ahead and do what he said, however, since in the past eight
years or so some other free software licences have included
explicit statements of patent licenses, patent licence grants by
people distributing the software, and so we decided to do the same
thing, and we've included an explicit statement that the distributors
of the software all promise not to sue anybody who is using any
version of that software for patent infringement based on the versions
that they distributed. Basically, whatever their versions do, they're
promising not to sue you for.
However, there's a subtlety that came up in this. What if somebody
doesn't have a patent but he has got a licence for that patent, and he
distributes the code to you. Well, does that licence he got include
your exercise of the four freedoms? Including your freedom to
redistribute copies yourself, with changes? Maybe not, but if it
doesn't, it creates a dangerous and unfair situation. Unfair to you
because he is distributing the software, or distributing his version of the
software, and he is not going to get sued for patent infringement
because he got a licence. He distributes it to you under the GPL and
the GPL says you are free to redistribute it too, but if you do that
you might get sued because his patent license might not cover you.
[1h 40m 04s]
Well, this is unfair, this is something that's not supposed to
happen. He received this program under the GPL and the GPL says when
he distributes a version of it, he must really give you the freedom to
do the same. If he can count on safely doing it, and he knows you
will get sued if you do it, by a third party, he's cheating. So, GPL
version three, along with the explicit patent licence grant, says that
if he is knowingly relying on a patent licence for distributing his
version, he must take some effective step to protect you as well if you
distribute.
Now, the reason it talks about "knowingly relying" is that there are
companies that have signed blanket cross licences with other
companies, so the company distributing the program,
might have some blanket cross licence with some company, and that
blanket cross licence might cover a thousand patents, and they don't
even know what those thousand patents say. So, if they don't even
know that they have a patent licence, they're not required to pay
attention, but if they know about a specific patent that would
cover this program, that means they are knowingly relying
on a patent licence and that means they have to keep you safe as
well. This is a very controversial decision. It may seem like a
subtle point, it covers a peculiar scenario, but it's not an impossible
scenario. It could be a very important scenario. In this
scenario, this point is essential to ensure that the GPL really does
what it intends to do, which is, make sure that you do get the freedom
to redistribute the software that you got. And this is typical of the
ways that we are changing GPL version three. They apply to
complicated scenarios but those scenarios may happen frequently, and
in those scenarios we are trying to make sure that you really get the
four fundamental freedoms which that free software.
Did someone earlier already describe the four freedoms?
Then I better do so.
[1h 42m 43s]
Freedom zero is the freedom to run the program as you wish for any
purpose.
Freedom one is the freedom to study the source code and change it to
do what you wish.
Freedom two is the freedom to help your neighbour, that's the freedom
to make copies and distribute them to others when you wish.
Freedom three is the freedom to help your community, that's the
freedom to publish or distribute modified versions when you wish.
So here we're talking about what is necessary to ensure that freedom two
really exist for you in a certain special scenario, freedom two being
the freedom to redistribute copies and also freedom three, it applies
to that too.
[1h 43m 35s]
Another area where we have made changes concerns Digital Restrictions
Management. Now, freedom zero says you are free to run the program as
you wish for any purpose. We are not limiting freedom zero. If
someone wants to run a program to encrypt something, that's fine. If
someone wants to run a program to decrypt something, that's fine. If
somebody wants to run a program to produce an encrypted medium that's
difficult to access, that's fine. If somebody has some other GPL
covered program to access that media and he wants to run it to access
the encrypted data, that's fine too. And distributing software that
could be used for those purposes is also entirely permitted, and
will be permitted by GPL version 3.
[1h 44m 58s]
However, freedom zero does not include imposing you purposes on
someone else who is going to run the program, because his freedom zero
is the freedom to run the program for any purpose of his. So, there
is no such thing as the freedom to use any software to impose your
purpose on someone else, in fact, that should be illegal. I'm
serious. And that's what DRM is.
When somebody distributes a player, that has DRM in it, what he's
doing is trying to restrict your running of your computer for his
purposes, which is directly in conflict with the four freedoms that
you should have.
And that's what GPLv3 is in certain ways trying to stop and it does
this simply by assuring you all four of the freedoms when you use the
software. You see, because DRM - Digital Restrictions Management - is
a plan to restrict the public, anyone distributing a version of a
GPL-covered program as a player for DRM media always does something to
stop the public from modifying the player, because his purpose in
distributing a DRM player is to restrict you, he has to make sure
you can't escape from his restrictions, from his power. That means he
is always going to try to deny you freedom one. Freedom one is the
freedom to study the source code of the program and change it to do
what you want. What you want, might be, to escape from his
restrictions, and if you have freedom one, you can escape from his
restrictions. So his goal is somehow or other, for practical
purposes, to deny you freedom number one.
[1h 47m 26s]
Now, what he might do is, use non-free software, and then completely
deny you freedom number one. In fact, that's what they usually do.
We can't change that with the GPL because they're not including any
GPL-covered code. They don't have to pay attention to the
GPL. There should just be a law against it. It should be illegal.
DRM should be illegal, but we can't change laws by modifying the GPL.
However, there are those that want to use GPL-covered software for
this purpose, and they want to do so by turning freedom number one
into a sham, a facade. So they plan to do something like, make a
modified version of the GPL-covered program, which contains code to
restrict you, and distribute that to you and somehow arrange that you
can't really modify it, or if you modify it it won't run, or if
you modify it and operate it, it won't operate on the same data.
[1h 48m 42s]
They do this in various ways. This is known as Tivo-isation because
this is what the Tivo does. The Tivo includes some GPL-covered
software. It includes a GNU+Linux system, a small one, but it does,
and you can get the source code for that, as required by the GPL
because many parts of GNU+Linux are under the GPL, and once you get
the source code, you can modify it, and there are ways to install the
modified software in your Tivo and if you do that, it won't run, period.
Because, it does a check sum of the software and it verifies that it's
a version from them and if it's your version, it won't run at all. So
this is what we are forbidding, with the text we have written for GPL
version three. It says that the source code they must give you
includes whatever signature keys, or codes that are necessary to make
your modified version run.
In other words, it ensures that freedom number one is real. That you
really can modify the source code, install it, and then it will run
and not only that, we say, they must give you enough to make the
modified version operate on the same range of data. Because, you see,
Microsoft's plan, which they call Palladium, and then they change
the name - they change these names frequently so as to evade
criticism, to make criticism difficult, to make any kind of comment on
their plans difficult. You talk about their plan and they say "Oh,
we've dropped that, we have a different plan now". And probably it is
different in some details, but the point is that they generate
encryption and decryption keys using a check sum of the program which
means that a different program can't possibly access the same data.
Although, that's just the base level, and then on top of that they
implement other facilities where the program simply has to be signed
by the authorised signer in order to be able to access the data.
[1h 51m 29s]
Well, GPL version three says that if they distribute a GPL-covered
program in this way, they must provide you with the key necessary so
that you can sign your version and make it access the same data.
Otherwise, they would say "Yes, you can run your modified version, but
it will have a different check sum, so your version will only
operate on data files made for your version, just as our version only
operates on data made for our version". And what that means is that
all the available files will only work with their version and your
changed version will not be able to access them. That's exactly, in
fact, how Treacherous Computing is designed to work. The plan is that
they will publish files that are encrypted and it will be impossible
to access those files with any other program, so GPL version three is
designed to ensure that you really, effectively, get the freedom to
take the program you were given, modify it, and run the modified
version to do a different thing on the same data on the same machine.
But, there's one other way that we're trying to thwart DRM. You see,
one thing they do is, some countries, including, I'm sad to say, this
one, have adopted unjust laws that support DRM. The exact opposite of
what they ought to do, which is prohibit DRM, and what they say is:
when media have been encoded for DRM, then writing another program to
access that media is illegal, and the way they do this is they say
that DRM constitutes an effective, they call it "protection" I call it
"restriction", measure. So, what we say is, by releasing a program
under GPL version three, you agree that it is not an effective
restriction measure. In other words, you authorise others to develop
on their own software to read the output of your program.
This also is a matter of recognising and respecting their freedom to
develop software and use their computers. And this, what I've
described so far, is all that GPL version three says about DRM.
[1h 54m 36s]
Another area in which we've made large changes has to do with
compatibility with a wide range of other free software licences.
We've always understood GPL version two, and version one, as being
compatible with some other free software licences. Namely, those that
don't require anything except what the GPL requires. So, for
instance, there is the X11 licence, all it requires is that you keep
the licence there. This doesn't actually demand anything that
conflicts with the GPL, so we've always interpreted it as being
compatible with the GPL, and what it means to say that two free
software licences are compatible is that you can take code from a
program under licence A and code from a program under licence B and
put them together in one program and you have not violated either
licence.
If both licences permit the combining of the code, then you can
combine the code, and that's what it means to say the licences are
compatible. Now, it's very useful to be able to combine the code, so
compatibility of the licences is a convenient thing. Now, it's
impossible for all free software licences to be compatible. You see,
the GPL makes certain requirements and we are not willing to have them
taken off, and so another licence, such as GPL version one, that
doesn't have those requirements, cannot be compatible with GPL version
two or three. That's impossible.
A licence like the Mozilla Public License has it's own specific
requirements, but it requires things the GPL doesn't require. It
can't be compatible, I believe. So we can't be compatible with all of
them, but we went through other free software licences and we
identified certain kinds of requirements that are pretty harmless and
we wouldn't mind if people could attach those kinds of requirements to
GPL-covered programs, and we made an explicit list of those kinds of
requirements. Section seven of the draft of GPL version three says
you can put your own terms and conditions on code that you add to the
GPL covered program, and your terms and conditions can include these
kinds of requirements. You can also give additional permission. Any
kind of additional permission you like. So your terms on your code
can be more permissive than the GPL itself. And section seven makes
it completely explicit that this is compatible with the GPL.
[1h 58m 22s]
Now, these, the added kinds of requirements that you can make, include
different requirements as regards credit and notices and how to
identify changes on your code. That's harmless, that only really is
relevant when people change your code, and when they do that they will
see your terms at the beginning of your code and they will know what
to do. And it can include a requirement that they not use certain of
your trademarks in ways that trademark law forbids. And this would
just be a way of reinforcing trademark law using the copyright on your
code. And that's harmless because you could actually do that with
trademark law in the first place. So this doesn't actually restrict
people in any way that they wouldn't be restricted otherwise.
[1h 59m 28s]
You can put on requirements that -- and this is a non-trivial kind of
requirement that we've decided to let people put on -- requirements
that if people run your code, on a publicly accessible server, then it
must have a command that the user can use to download the source code
of the version that is running. Which means that if someone makes
changes and puts the changes in his version, on his server, he has to
make his source code changes available to the users who talk to his
server.
This requirement is known as the Affero clause because it's used in
the Affero GPL. The Affero GPL is like GNU GPL version two except it
has this requirement as well.
We were thinking of including some kind of requirement like that in
GNU GPL version three. We didn't want to make it apply to everything
automatically. That would be a drastic change, so we would have to
make it something that people could activate explicitly for their
programs, and then I realised people could activate it explicitly for
their programs by putting the Affero GPL on their programs and as long
as the GNU GPL says it's compatible with that, that's a way you could
activate that requirement for your code and it means we don't have to
put any specific thing about that in the GNU GPL, we only have to make
the GNU GPL compatible with it and we did.
[2h 01m 33s]
There's another kind of requirement that we've decided to permit, and
this is patent retaliation clauses. Now, the reason is that there are
several other free software licences that have patent retaliation
clauses.
Patent retaliation means, if you sue somebody for patent infringement,
then you lose the right to use this code.
Of course there are many ways to do that because every patent
retaliation clause puts on some specifics, if you sue him or him for
patent infringement in certain circumstances, then you lose the right
to use this code, and the question is, what are those circumstances,
what are the conditions under which the retaliation operates.
Now, we saw that there are some very broad and nasty patent retaliation
clauses. Some of them say, "if you sue me for patent retaliation, for
any reason about anything, you lose the right to use this code". Now
that's bad because it means, suppose I sue you for patent
infringement and you have a patent so you counter sue me, and then my
free software licence retaliates against you and you lose the right to
use that code, now that's not fair because in that case you are
defending yourself, you're not the aggressor, so we decided to accept
only patent retaliation clauses that are limited enough that they do
not retaliate against defense, that they only retaliate against aggression,
so there are two kinds of clauses that we identified that do this.
One is, if the clause itself, makes a distinction between defense and
aggression, so it says, if you sue somebody for patent infringement and
it's aggression, then you lose the right to use this code, but if you
are suing in retaliation for aggression, then what you are doing is
defensive and then we do not retaliate against you.
This is one kind of patent retaliation clause that we accept.
[2h 04m 21s]
The other kind is, if you sue, alleging that some free software,
relating to this code is patent infringement, then you lose the right
to use this code. In the broad space space of possible kinds of
patent retaliation clauses, we picked two kinds, each of which is
limited enough that it will not retaliate against people for
practicing defense with patents. It will only retaliate against
aggressors. And we've said these two kinds of clauses are OK to add to
your code in a GNU GPL covered program. This is a conceptually
complicated thing. There's no way to make it any simpler, I hope, at
least, that I've explained it clearly.
The GPL itself does contain one very limited kind of patent retaliation,
but it's a different kind. It says if make changes in a GPL-covered
program and then somebody else makes similar changes and you sue him
for patent infringement then you lose the right to continue making
changes and copying the program to your own machines.
This is a very limited situation and it's meant to protect against one
particular kind of abuse on the part of server operators where they make
an improvement, which they're free to do, and run it on their servers
and they don't release their source code and if the code does not have
the Affero clause on it then they don't have to release the source
code, and then you decide that you are going to implement a similar
improvement and then they sue you for patent infringement.
So, once again, we're making a change that keeps people honest and
makes sure that the four standard freedoms that the four standard
freedoms that the GPL has always tried to ensure, really apply in all
cases.
This is pretty much it, but there is also one interesting change in
the section that deals with modified versions. There has always been
a requirement that if you get a program that prints some kind of
notice about the licence when it starts up, you can't take that out.
We've generalised that so that it applies to various kinds of user
interfaces in various ways.
So, for instance, if the program is graphical and it has an "about"
box, the about box has to say "this is free software under the GPL". And if
it starts up interactively and asks for commands, then it has to print
the notice at the beginning, and the requirements are a little bit
different depending on how obtrusive this would be. For example, the
about box is simply a menu item sitting in a menu, well that doesn't
bother anybody, so we just say that always has to be there.
On the other hand, printing a notice at start up can be annoying,
there are certain programs which shouldn't print notices at start up.
So what we say is that if the program that you got doesn't print a
notice and you change it, then your program doesn't have to print a
notice either. You know, if you change Bash, well Bash isn't supposed
to print a notice when it starts up and we don't require you make it
print a notice, but if you gave it a GUI, with menus, you would have
to put in an about box because the about box doesn't do any harm.
[2h 10m 02s]
I've covered all the issues I can think of that are worth discussing, and I am
willing to ask for questions however you can discuss a question with
me but if you think you see a problem, you should go to the site
gplv3.fsf.org and report this problem and get it considered through our
discussion committees and they'll either publish an answer eventually,
or they will pass the issue on to me and I'll think about whether a
change is needed.
So, I'm ready for questions.
[2h 10m 55s]
[applause]
Q1: I would like to ask, what is the position of Stallman, and to
clarify a bit about the different position of the Linux community
about Digital Rights Management.
Stallman: I can't speak for them, and I don't want to try. All I can
point out is that Linux is one of thousands of programs in the
GNU+Linux operating system. These programs already have various
different licences. If some of those programs continue to be
distributed under GPL version two while others move to GPL version
three or to "GPL version three or later", that won't be any disaster.
The developers of Linux are the ones who will decide which licence to
use on their program, but I'm confident that most of the GNU+Linux
system will be under the GPL version three, regardless of what the
Linux developers decide about their program.
I hope that they will move to GPL version three because I want to see
Linux resisting Tivo-isation. Linux, after all, is one of the programs
that has already been Tivo-ised.
[applause]
Q2: (Question asked in Italian, something about linking and dynamic
languages)
Stallman: Actually, there are changes making it clearer that it
doesn't matter which kind of linking is being used. If there are two
modules which are designed to be run linked together and it's clear
from the design from one or the other that they are meant to be linked
together then we say they are treated as one program and so I hope
that will make it a little bit clearer although that's not really a
change, it's a clarification. That's what we believe GPL version two
means already.
Q3a: I have two different questions. The first is what happens if
anyone released code under GPL version two maybe ten years ago and now
isn't happy with version three and says you're changing the spirit,
when I said I would release it under version two and subsequent
version, I didn't think of these. Do you imagine he would be bound to
version three.
Stallman: Yes. Because we're not changing the spirit. These are
small changes.
Q3a2: OK, so basically, you're the one who judges...
Stallman: Well, maybe a court might, but I can't believe that anyone
not strongly prejudiced would conclude that this is a change in the
spirit. A change in the spirit certainly permits change in the
details of the requirements and anyone who released it under version
two or later should have seen the changes that were made from version
one, which were not as big but they were the same kinds of things. So
yeh, if he released it under GPL two or later you'll be able to use it
now under version three.
Q3b1: OK, the second question is that, as you know, I'm involved in
these United Nation processes on the Internet governance, so I'm
interested to know, do you think the fight against Digital Rights
Managements and Trusted Comp[interrupted]
Stallman: Digital Restrictions Management, and Treacherous Computing.
Don't use the enemy's propaganda terms, every time you use those terms
you are supporting the enemy.
[applause]
Q3b2: OK, so the correct term is Treacherous Computing right? So on
the fight against these new mechanisms, do you think it can only be
won by writing free software, releasing free software?
Stallman: I don't know.
Q3b3: Do you imagine that there should be need for
intervention or lobbying at the legal level?
Stallman: I think Treacherous Computing should be illegal. But I
don't know how we're going to convince governments to actually do that
because governments are mostly not very democratic anymore. They
mostly are the pro-consuls of the mega corporations, their job is to
keep us in line under the rule of the empire. That's why they run for
office, they get into office, they do what the emperor -- the emperor
being the mega corporations -- tell them to do, and their job is
explaining to us why they can't do what we want them to do. It's very
very sad and once in a while somebody has enough courage to refuse to
obey, somebody like [sounds like Hugo Chavez].
Q3b4: So do you think it's not even worth trying?
Stallman: Oh, it's worth trying. It's just going to be hard, the
point is you have to keep putting the pressure on these politicians.
In France, there is a battle going on and we still might win it about
the legalisation of peer-to-peer copying on the Internet. This shows
that when enough people get energised, the empire can lose a battle.
It's very important.
[applause]
[2h 19m 53s]
Stallman: Another thing that people should do is refuse to buy
anything that's based on DRM. Don't buy corrupt disks, that is the
fake CDs that have music set up so that you're blocked from copying
it. Don't buy DVDs unless you have DeCSS and you can copy it.
If you can't copy it - don't buy it!
[applause]
[2h 20m 23s]
Q4: (Question in Italian, mentions Eben Moglen)
Stallman: Well, first, I'm the one who decides what goes into GPL
version three, and, of course, whenever I think of language I'm
usually working with Eben Moglen since he's a lawyer and he's the only
one that can tell me if the language will really do what I hope it
will do. Meanwhile, a lot of other people are involved. For
instance, you can go to the gplv3.fsf.org site and study it and if you
think you see something that's not good or whatever kind of problem
you think there is, you can report it and your comment will go to a
discussion committee and, there are five discussion committees, it
will go to one of those committees which will then group your comment
with other comments that raise that same issue and then they will
study each issue and post the issue and their response to it and your
comment will be connected to the issue which they grouped it into so
it will be connected to the response as well.
And thus, there are probably hundreds of people participating in
checking the draft and trying to make sure it does the right thing.
Q5: In the end of the process of deciding what will happen, what
modifications of the licence will be done there's one single person,
that is you. Can you explain why this decision and you have not
chosen to make some group?
Stallman: I don't know other people who can do this.
I hope that the process that's going on now will help develop some
people who can be part of some group activity but at the moment, I
don't know anyone that I could delegate this to. Obviously I can't
always forever be the person doing this, barring unforeseen advances in
medical technology or AI and nanotechnology, which I certainly hope
will come soon but they're not likely, but at this point, I think this
is the right thing to do.
Q5.2: Maybe it will change in the future.
Stallman: I hope. We're going to have to replace me somehow, sooner
or later.
[applause]
[2h 24m 30s]
Q6: You told us about what GPLv3 will be, but what about the issues
that are included, the suggestions that you refused. Can you give us
some samples?
Stallman: Well, when I decided that we had to do something to resist
Digital Restrictions Management, the obvious way to do this would be
restrictions on what kinds of jobs the program can be made to do, but
I decided that that would be the wrong way to do it and so I thought
hard and I came up with a way to achieve the job by directly
protecting the freedom of each user without any restrictions on what
technical job a version of the program can do.
Another example of what we decided not to do was putting the Affero
clause into the GNU GPL in some way.
Another example of something we decided not to do, we decided not to
put in very much in the way of patent retaliation clause and the
reason is we have doubts about how effective those clauses can be. We
have doubts about whether our community actually has enough power that
the threat of our retaliation would scare anyone.
So, these are some examples of changes we decided not to do. Some for
reasons of principle and some for practical reasons.
So, thank you for your attention, and happy hacking.
[applause]
Copyright (C) FSF Europe.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
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Authored by: Elfich on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:15 AM EST |
Find em, announce em, share em. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- the document's origin and a broken link - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:22 AM EST
- Corrections? /term/type/ - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:42 AM EST
- Corrections? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:53 AM EST
- Corrections? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:02 AM EST
- Corrections? Grocer's apostrophe - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:26 AM EST
- Corrections? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 12:31 PM EST
- Corrections? - Authored by: PJ on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:18 PM EST
- you -> your - Authored by: ankylosaurus on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 07:33 PM EST
- Use of semi-colons? - Authored by: ankylosaurus on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 07:40 PM EST
- Thanks for the corrections, original also being updated - Authored by: ciaran on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 04:08 AM EST
- broken link - Authored by: ciaran on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 08:16 AM EST
- Oops - Authored by: Morosoph on Saturday, April 01 2006 @ 07:45 AM EST
- Broken Link - Authored by: Morosoph on Saturday, April 01 2006 @ 07:42 AM EST
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Authored by: Elfich on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:17 AM EST |
I'm going out for chinese tonight!
So keep the rest of those fun off topic comments here with the chinese food.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- BBC get it all wrong on EU/M$ - Authored by: Alan(UK) on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:22 AM EST
- UK Government sites fail web tests - Authored by: Alan(UK) on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:41 AM EST
- Latest get the FUD quote I noticed. - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:52 AM EST
- "Open-Xchange Inc. Extends Free Support for 300+ Mobile Devices" - Press Release - Authored by: Brian S. on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:14 PM EST
- UMD--Walking Around Dead And Don't Know Enough To Lie Down - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 02:06 PM EST
- Chinese Food? What are you going to have? -NT - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 03:22 PM EST
- eBay's patent appeal - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 04:50 PM EST
- PT: Collaborative Journalism - Authored by: _Arthur on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 05:18 PM EST
- Associated Press, Microsoft, Hurricane Katrina, Open Standards and Matters of Taste - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 07:50 PM EST
- Oh Dear - About Intel Viiv and Instant Switchon. - Authored by: Brian S. on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:47 PM EST
- Another interesting case for Judge Kimball - Authored by: gdeinsta on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:57 PM EST
- Microsoft Says Not Embarrassing SCO Is Patent-Worthy - Authored by: grahamt on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:57 PM EST
- Re: macs are overpriced - Authored by: Sander Marechal on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 12:36 AM EST
- Thank you - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 04:53 AM EST
- Newspick - Microsoft defends itself at EU hearing - Authored by: Kilz on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 09:32 AM EST
- Leaked Memo - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 10:02 AM EST
- Utah courts can act - Gateway sanctioned - Authored by: Boundless on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 10:37 AM EST
- Mitt Romney campaigns for president - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 10:52 AM EST
- Nose picks: Microsoft flicked away by Bristol City Council - Authored by: DaveJakeman on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 11:11 AM EST
- Microsoft rivals say hear "nothing new" in EU hearing - Authored by: Chris Lingard on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 12:23 PM EST
- The situation in Canberra - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 03 2006 @ 08:47 PM EDT
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Authored by: Alan(UK) on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:31 AM EST |
You could add "trade secrets" to the trio. It of course is different
from the others in that it requires absolutely nothing from the public. This
however does not stop the holders from including it as IP and even accusing
members of the public with divulging it (thinking of DVD Jon et al here).[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: jog on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:23 AM EST |
Deliberately ambiguous jargon and as such is
a tool of Socratic Interrogatory.
Do not answer questions containing it.
You will be led to contradict yourself.
jog[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:41 AM EST |
See, presuming that I'm understanding correctly, PJ is saying that lawyers don't
get confused because they know the difference between copyrights and patents.
She's thinking like a paralegal. I presume she knows what she's talking about.
Stallman (again, presuming that I'm understanding correctly) is saying that
people confuse the issues when the term "intellectual property" is
used. He's not worried about lawyers; he's worried about the general public.
Seen this way, it is quite easy for both of them to be right. They're just
thinking of different audiences.
But in this case, Stallman's audience is a lot bigger than PJ's. So maybe the
takeaway is to be careful not to use the phrase "intellectual
property" unless you're sure that your listener(s) are clear enough on the
distinction that they won't get confused.
MSS2[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 12:18 PM EST |
I think Mr. Stallman comes off sounding a little arrogant and self-righteous in
his comments. He is clearly on a crusade and a mission, and the fact that he
alone will ultimately approve the final GPL v3 concerns me. Of course, others
will have input, but he will have the final say.
I don't like Mr. Stallman telling me what words I can and can't use in a
discussion. For example, it seems clear to me that "Intellectual
Property" does, in fact, exist, and there can be situations where it needs
protection. Probably the mistake the Tivo developers made was in using and GPL
code in the first place; certainly they could have simply hired their own
programmers to write proprietary code. I can see situations where a vendor
would have a legitimate concern in restricting what a customer can do to with a
computer that is really a hardware appliance, especially if the customer expects
the vendor to provide service and support for that appliance. I shouldn't
expect to be able to run something other than Freon in my refrigerator or pick a
different dial tone for my phone just because I want to. If I don't like how
the Tivo works, I shouldn't buy it.
And Mr. Stallman can call it "Treacherous Computing" if he wants, and
it sounds kind of funny, but it's really along the lines of me saying
"Windoze" instead of "Windows"; I think a lot of very
serious people who need to understand and would otherwise be open to his
arguments will be put off by his arrogance.
I'd certainly be hesitant releasing code under "GPL v2 or later",
knowing that the "later" would ultimately be decided by one person.
What will happen in 10 or 20 or 50 years if the "spirit" of v2 is not
adhered to or if that one person or his successor thinks the spirit hasn't
changed but his judgment has been clouded by his crusade?[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Richard Stallman: "The Future of Free Software " - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 12:40 PM EST
- Richard Stallman: "The Future of Free Software " - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:01 PM EST
- Agreed - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:01 PM EST
- uhm.... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 03:54 PM EST
- uhm.... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 04:07 PM EST
- yep - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 04:51 PM EST
- Agreed - Authored by: Chani on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 07:02 PM EST
- Richard Stallman: "The Future of Free Software " - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:04 PM EST
- Richard Stallman: "The Future of Free Software " - Authored by: PJ on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:24 PM EST
- The GPL is in safe hands - Authored by: DaveJakeman on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 04:05 PM EST
- "papal infallibility" ? - Authored by: zcat on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 04:15 PM EST
- Richard Stallman: "The Future of Free Software " - Authored by: roman on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 12:29 AM EST
- Richard Stallman: "The Future of Free Software " - Authored by: TerryH on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 02:29 AM EST
- Richard Stallman: "The Future of Free Software " - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 05:27 AM EST
- Restriction Measures - Authored by: llanitedave on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 12:09 PM EST
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Authored by: pogson on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 12:55 PM EST |
There is a double space here:
[2h 04m 21s]
The other kind is,
if you sue, alleging that some free software, relating to this code is patent
infringement, then you lose the right to use this code. In the broad space space
of possible kinds of patent retaliation
clauses
...................^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ --- http:
//www.skyweb.ca/~alicia/ , my homepage, an eclectic survey of topics: berries,
mushrooms, teaching in N. Canada, Linux, firearms and hunting... [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:06 PM EST |
I wrote "Is TIVO in a bind?" the other week.
Thinking about it more makes me more sure that DRM probably isn't TIVOs
"clever" way of being thumbing its nose at everyone. They are a
"middleman" between the world and a DRM happy Hollywood/Congress.
As such, I think its more & more likely that the contracts they have to sign
for showing content on their systems has some conditions that would make us
physically ill. I'm sure that they would make interesting reading at least.
And without those contracts, TIVO wouldn't be able to show so much as a test
pattern.
So, what left in this contest? Ultimately, if they want to stay in business and
not butt heads with the community, they'll have to stop make boxes with Linux.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:30 PM EST |
In defense of RS on "Intellectual Property:"
I've signed many consulting contracts in my time, and all of them included
clauses intended to protect IP. Inevitably they did not define it, nor explain
how it would be defined. IP in general seems to be something intangible that
companies want to protect.
My Intellectual Property Lawyer (yes, they exist) taught me to insist always on
a clear definition of IP. My favorite one does not attempt at all to say what it
really is: I "agree that my customer can inform me in writing that some
information is proprietary, and I will then" protect it as specified in the
contract.
Stallman argues clearly that there is no such clear THING as IP. It's in the
eyes of the beholder. He would argue similarly I think, against using terms like
"intellectual beauty" or "inherent beauty" or
"beauty-vallue property", since these are obviously not abstractly
definable.
What gives "Intellectual Property" weight in the current world is the
fact that we keep using it.
- Precision Blogger[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: roman on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:46 PM EST |
RMS lives in a dream world, a world filled with rainbows and butterflies, where
everyone cooperates and people who do not fit into that cooperative world are
against the law.
He states that DRM should be declared against the law and he seems surprised
that it isn't. In a different interview he also stated that developers who work
for software companies, that create proprietary software should quit and find
themselves other jobs. All of this fits the profile of a person with a holier
than thou attitude.
RMS, I respect you for GNU and GPL, but I cannot stand your views on proprietary
software. I write free software and I write proprietary stuff and if I can I
will employ every possible method of restricting the usage of that software to
the terms, that the user must agree to, before (s)he gets a copy of that
software. I see DRM as a great tool, not as an evil idea that you see it as. I
want to be able to distribute softaware/other content in a way, that would
prohibit the users of this software/content from distributing it further without
my consent. I am not forcing anyone to use that software/content, I am giving a
choice: don't use this software/content, or use it within the rules of the
license.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- RMS lives in a dream world - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 02:14 PM EST
- RMS lives in a dream world - Authored by: luvr on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 02:46 PM EST
- RMS lives in a dream world - Authored by: argel on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 05:52 PM EST
- He just likes interfering ... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 06:55 PM EST
- Imagine - Authored by: red floyd on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 08:08 PM EST
- Imagine - Authored by: roman on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:08 PM EST
- RMS lives in a dream world - Authored by: gnugie on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 11:32 PM EST
- Copyright violation? - Authored by: Steve Martin on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 12:28 AM EST
- RMS lives in a dream world - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 02:22 AM EST
- RMS lives in a dream world - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 02:56 AM EST
- No, *you* live in a dream world - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 04:13 AM EST
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Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 01:55 PM EST |
For a long time now Stallman has assigned his own proprietary definitions to
certain terms because the generally accepted meaning does not suit his view.
Sometimes his reasons make a lot of sense, sometimes they are good propaganda
for his views, sometimes they are peevish.
In my opinion Intellectual Property is in the peevish category. The term, nearly
everyone agrees, covers a loose group of several separate rights (usually at
least, patent, copyright, trade mark, trade secrets and possibly others) which
exist in law. There is no settled specific group of rights or doctrines but
there is a body of knowledge, law and opinion which cuts across all of them. It
is useful shorthand for a group of interrelated concepts, however differently
they are implemented in law, based on the general idea that a creator has the
inherent right to profit from and control his or her intellectual creations.
---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: sbicknel on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 02:28 PM EST |
The links to his presentation are broken. :( [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 04:30 PM EST |
IMHO he is trying to cover too many special case. That whole bit about requiring
an "about box" item in a menu is a good example. Suppose I take a GPLed program
with that requirement and I rip out some functionality - non-GUI stuff - and I
put that in my GPLed program. Now why should I add an about box to my program
when all I did is borrow a module from a large application? What if my program
is command line only? Richard needs to stick to broad principles, stop
accomodating other terms and licenses, and stop trying to micromanage what
people are doing.
I like how he argues that DRM denies people one of the 4
freedoms. The license needs to make that arguement simple without going after
special cases like tivo-isation. Has anyone tried to sue Tivo for copyright
infringement because they violate the GPL by denying people one of the
freedoms?
And lastly, he needs to understand that people, and even
mathematicians enumerate things starting with 1 not zero. The only place
indexing from 0 makes sense is in the implementation details of certain computer
languages. The GPL is supposed to be easy for the public to understand. There is
no reason whatever to number freedoms 0-3 instead of 1-4. This is like using
geeky jargon or dare I compare it's confusion to using the term "intellecutal
property". Please get this changed in V3.
Let me rant on about this last
point (even though it's the least important one). If I give you Jelly Beans... I
give you one, you have one, it's the first one I gave you. Once we get to 8,
I've given you 8, count them - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Point to the 8th one I gave you.
How many do you have? 8. See how all the 8s are refering to the same Jelly Bean?
Richard would keep that all the same and tell you the last one I gave you is the
7th, and the first one I gave you is the 0th - even though you had 1 at that
point, and have 8 when we're all done.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: aigarius on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 04:45 PM EST |
There is really nothing new in this speech, but still an nice rehash of RMS's
position on the matters. The only new thing was that joke about eventual need to
replace RMS at some point. Is RMS starting to feel old?
I was also
writing about this on my blog[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 05:48 PM EST |
RMS has been making this point about IP being an intentionally
misleading
term for years already. It's not about you, PJ.
See also
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Richard-Stallman
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Ed Freesmeyer on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 08:14 PM EST |
...now wouldn't that be a kick in the shorts ? [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: mobrien_12 on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 08:21 PM EST |
"If Stallman spent half as much time actually doing things as he spent
trying to persuade the entire world that it's got everything the wrong way
around, we'd all be running GNU/Hurd systems by now."
You know very little about RMS don't you?
The man is a brilliant programmer. He destroyed his hands with carpal tunnel
syndrome working on GNU/Hurd.
Still he does everything he can for Free Software, and you criticise him.
Shame on you.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 08:34 PM EST |
Besides "Intellectual Property", the next language trap
is "Open Source."
Many in this group, indeed most programmers and hackers,
would regard "Open Source" as akin to the GPL or BSD
licensed programs. It is nothing of the sort. Ask most
lawyers what they think "Open Source" means, and they
will tell you that it means that 'people' can get
'access' to the source code under some 'conditions.'
From a corporate point of view, 'people' could be a
qualified set of persons; example, those that have paid
for a $50,000 'developers license', or those that 'sign
an NDA' or ...
The conditions can be generous like BSD or GPL, or they
could be under one of those licenses that contaminates
your brain so that if you see the code, then anything
related to that code belongs to them, etc.
FSF tries to define "Open Source", but those two words,
or the term, is not trademarked and thus anyone can and
does use the term for their own purposes. I just cringe
whenever I see Groksters here push for "open source"
because they are falling into the same semanthic trap
that RMS is warning us about with regards to "Intellectual
Property."[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 08:37 PM EST |
He has a point. The terminology used shapes the nature of discussion. This is
especially dangerous in the political arena where ideas are simplified and
summed up with a few catch phrases so that politicians can understand them. If
ideas, culture and symbols are described as `property' politicians are quite
likely to happily pass laws that make it a crime to be caught in possession of
an unauthorised idea. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: PJ on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:12 PM EST |
You must be new. Please read Groklaw's comments
policy. Your comment is not acceptable here.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: leuy on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:13 PM EST |
I am wondering whether there is anything about the GPL that makes it more
significant, in the sense of the history of law, than the other open source
licenses?
A number of posters on this thread have credited the GPL with the
success of the open source movement. My own experiences of promoting and
authoring open source projects have caused me to think that the GPL is
significant mostly for teaching us developers how not to license
our code, if we wanted it to be widely used. Too many people downstream just
couldn't live within the narrow Stallman definition of freedom. That's why the
OSI got started in the first place.
Widespread adoption of open source
seemed to be driven mostly by Apache (and Apache with perl for GCI) and
Netscape, both of which opted for a less restrictive idea of "freedom" than
Stallman preaches and encoded in GPL. The explosive growth of Apache occurred
mostly while it was hosted primarily on proprietary UNIX boxes. The widespread
adoption of Netscape was largely on Windows boxes.
Linux's growth in
popularity came later, and is one of the few widely used pieces of software that
I know of that uses GPL. Most widely used open source software is not limited to
running on Linux, and most seem to use some variant of Mozilla, BSD, Apache or
MIT. Examples include Firefox, openSSH, OpenOffice.
Others can (and surely
will) argue with my claims, but these are largely questions of technical history
for which only limited statistics are available, so we will probably not settle
it with facts. These points have been argued elsewhere in this thread as well.
My purpose in raising them is to ask, supposing for argument's sake that my
claims are correct, is the importance of the GPL being overrated, or does it
have some special legal significance?
So, specifically what I am wondering
is, is there any reason to believe that the other open source licenses involved
in this story (Apache and Mozilla) have in some way benefited from the GPL, in a
legal sense? Are they more trusted by lawyers than they would have been if the
GPL had never existed?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: polymath on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:30 PM EST |
Both PJ and RMS (at least in this talk) have missed the real danger in using the
term 'Intellectual Property'. As PJ recently pointed out, lay people
frequently err when they hear legal language (e.g. intellectual property),
wherein a term has a specific meaning (e.g. copyright, patent or trade secret),
and assume an ordinary meaning (e.g. property). The confusion is not among
patent, copyright and trade secret law as RMS stated but between that body of
law and property law. IP is a term created by rights holders in an effort
to manipulate (spin) the debate surrounding those rights. Along with the
redeployment of 'piracy', it is an attempt to equate rights violations with
(violent) property theft. The danger in calling these rights 'property' is
that the public will be duped into allowing legislators (a.k.a. rights holders'
paid lackies) to extend the duration of those rights to the same duration as
property rights (i.e. until the government decides to take it). What the
public needs to understand is that copyright, patent and trade secret law was
enacted to strike a balance between the gain in creative products that the law
fosters and the loss of the pre-existing freedom of to use those products
without restriction. Like TC and DRM, IP frames the debate in terms that
suit those who would destroy that balance in favor of shortsighted corporate
interests at the expense of the public interest (and ultimately the interests of
those same corporations). As such it behooves us to eschew the term or even
better perhaps we should start calling it Intellectual Privation™.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Thursday, March 30 2006 @ 10:42 PM EST |
In his talk Stallman says;
"... what it means to say that two free software licenses are compatible is
that you can take code from a program under license A and code from a program
under license B and put them together in one program and you have not violated
either license."
I notice that he mentions no requirement for the license to be reciprocal. That
reminds me it's OK to use BSD licensed code in GPL software but not GPL code in
BSD software.
Has Stallman ever spoken on the BSD license?
---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: ciaran on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 03:21 AM EST |
Hi. I'm the guy that made the
above transcript.
The consultation process for drafting GPLv3 is
going to be about a year long. In a way, that's a long time, but we have to
make sure that everyone who should be interested hears about the process during
that time.
I made the transcript because text flows better in some ways,
and the information has to spread wide, quickly.
I also made a
transcript of Eben
Moglen's presentation of the changes at the GPLv3 launch event, and a
transcript of a
shorter presentation which Richard gave at FOSDEM about GPLv3, and further
informaton can be found on FSFE's GPLv3
page, and on the GPLv3 wiki page for
collecting useful texts. Hopefully they will be useful to people who want
to help spread awareness of the GPLv3 consultation process.
My work on
this, and on fighting software patents in Europe, and other such projects is
supported by FSFE' Fellowship program, for
more information on that, see my page on How and Why to help FSFE's
Fellowship. That's a way to indirectly help GPLv3 awareness.
If
anyone wants to directly help GPLv3 awareness and has questions that I might be
able to answer - post em ere! [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 03:57 AM EST |
There have been a few threads discussing whether the use of the term
"Intellectual Property" by lawyers is an understood thing, whereas joe
public gets confused.
Borrowing from a new link provided by Groklaw, I quote the following from
"Property, Intellectual Property and free-riding" by Mark A. Lemley
from Stanford Law school.
"More important, courts too are increasingly making this assumption. The
trend is identified and endorsed by Judge Easterbrook, who writes:
Patents give a right to exclude, just as the law of trespass does with real
property.
Intellectual property is intangible, but the right to exclude is no different in
principle from General Motors’ right to exclude Ford from using its assembly
line . . . Old rhetoric about intellectual property equating to monopoly seemed
to have vanished [at the Supreme Court], replaced by a recognition that a right
to exclude in intellectual property is no different in principle from the right
to exclude in physical property. . . . Except in the rarest case, we should
treat intellectual and physical property identically in the law – which is where
the broader currents are taking us."
It seems indeed that some members of the legal profession are very well being
confused by the terminology "Intellectual Property".
This, I believe, reinforces RMS's view that the term "intellectual
Property" is fundamentally flawed and should be avoided as it is in essence
a FUD phrase.
Shane.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Erwan on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 04:03 AM EST |
And, by the way, when the term "intellectual property" is used in
the name of a law or a committee, that is an example of the confusion. It's
almost a certainty that any law named "intellectual property" is a harmful, an
unjust law.
The speech was given in Italy/Europe.
Could
this be a shot at IPRED2 (Intellectual
Property Rights Enforcement Directive) which is currently in the pipe in
Brussels ? --- Erwan [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: diddleydoo on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 04:47 AM EST |
OK, I re-post with my user account (Fresh off the press)
-------------------------------------------------------
There have been a few threads discussing whether the use of the term
"Intellectual Property" by lawyers is an understood thing, whereas joe
public gets confused.
Borrowing from a new link provided by Groklaw, I quote the following from
"Property, Intellectual Property and free-riding" by Mark A. Lemley
from Stanford Law school. I found the document interesting, but sometimes hard
to follow. I recommend reading it.
"More important, courts too are increasingly making this assumption. The
trend is identified and endorsed by Judge Easterbrook, who writes:
Patents give a right to exclude, just as the law of trespass does with real
property.
Intellectual property is intangible, but the right to exclude is no different in
principle from General Motors’ right to exclude Ford from using its assembly
line . . . Old rhetoric about intellectual property equating to monopoly seemed
to have vanished [at the Supreme Court], replaced by a recognition that a right
to exclude in intellectual property is no different in principle from the right
to exclude in physical property. . . . Except in the rarest case, we should
treat intellectual and physical property identically in the law – which is where
the broader currents are taking us."
It seems indeed that some members of the legal profession are very well being
confused by the terminology "Intellectual Property".
This, I believe, reinforces RMS's view that the term "intellectual
Property" is fundamentally flawed and should be avoided as it is in essence
a FUD phrase.
Shane.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 07:07 AM EST |
Patents are property because to quote from the UK Patents Act 1977,
Section 30(1)
Any patent or application for a patent is personal property (without being a
thing in action), and any patent or any such application and rights in or under
it may be transferred, created or granted in accordance with subsections (2) to
(7) below.
Section 30(2)
Subject to section 36(3) below, any patent or any such application, or any
right in it, may be assigned or mortgaged
Section 30(3)
Any patent or any such application or right shall vest by operation of law in
the same way as any other personal property and may be vested by an assent of
personal representatives
and so on and so forth.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 08:22 AM EST |
It seems that there is quite a hostile reaction in these comments to Stallman,
but we must talk about the double standards being expressed by these same people
in their comments. First, let's keep in mind that no one in the world is going
to force you to choose a GPL license for your software which you have written in
its entirety under your own initiative, and no one is going to force you to
accept GPL binaries or source code for use on your computer.
Stallman is essentially the Copyright owner of the actual GPL license. He
created the license (with legal help) to protect the things he wanted protected
in his daily computer use.
How would this be any different from a copyright a person has on a novel they
have written? How would that be any different from the copyrights people have on
anything they create?
Would I also be labeled a dictator if people around the country used my book to
teach some new idea to others, and people agreed with that idea and shared it
with even more?
So, in these comments, there are so many complaints of "I will choose how
my code will be used, not Stallman!"
Are you then not also a dictator, since you actually care how your work will be
used?
So I have to look at many of these comments and wonder just exactly what is
wrong with these people that they can't see the glaring contradiction in their
own comments.
Did someone tell you that you must use the GPL on your own code, or was it more
that you wanted to benefit from use of some GPL code and are annoyed that you
can't simply take it and claim it as your own and solely your own for whatever
selfish end you have?
People have chosen the GPL with the "any future version clause"
because they agree with Stallman, not because they've accepted him as their
ruler. Linus kept that clause out because he does not agree with Stallman, but
does agree with the GPL version 2. He dicied that he agreed with the license,
some decide that they agree with Stallman, and both are clearly in their rights
to do so.
So let's make it simple, if you don't agree with Stallman but do agree with the
GPL, leave that clause out of your work, if you do, then let it ride. If you
don't care for either, then do whatever you want, but you are no less a
"dictator" than anyone else who makes a decision about anything.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 31 2006 @ 05:30 PM EST |
A chair is not a desk, but they're both office property. A patent is not a
trademark, but they're both intellectual property. Clear now?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: butlerm on Sunday, April 02 2006 @ 03:59 PM EDT |
Unfortunately, recent comments by several Supreme Court justices in the
MercExchange patent case suggest strongly that not only do they not think of
"intellectual property" as merely a term of art, but furthermore that they
cannot see any basis for distinguishing between patent rights and rights
in tangible property.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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