zox Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 I encourage everyone to read this transcript of Prof. Eben Moglen's speech on Harvard Feb.23rd.It is lenghty piece so be prepared to put some time into reading, but it is well worth it.Eben Moglen is Professor of Law and Legal History on Columbia Law School.He is also General Counsel, Free Software Foundation and R. Stallman's lawyer.Here you can find Prof. Eben Moglens site http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/Groklaw's transcriptYou can find original Video of the speech here:http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/p.cgi/speakers.html So one of the things that we do, for those who speak English, is we actually have to reinforce from time to time -- that is all the time -- the distinction between free beer and free speech. On the other hand those of us who live in the United States and speak English shouldn't have quite that much trouble because free speech is a way more important part of the American cultural landscape than free beer is. At least it was in the world that I grew up in, whatever Rupert Murdoch may want to say about it now.We are the party of free speech, and we need to point out to people that if you allow anybody, including a well-dressed lobbyist of ancient, ancient vintage, to declare that a love of free speech is like taking a CD out of a record store under your arm, game's over. Not game about free software, but game about liberty and life in a free society.We stand for free speech. We're the free speech movement of the moment. And that we have to insist upon, all the time, uncompromisingly. My dear friend, Mr. Stallman, has caused a certain amount of resistance in life by going around saying, "It's free software, it's not open source". He has a reason. This is the reason. We need to keep reminding people that what's at stake here is free speech. We need to keep reminding people that what we're doing is trying to keep the freedom of ideas in the 21st century, in a world where there are guys with little paste-it labels with price tags on it who would stick it on every idea on earth if it would make value for the shareholders. And what we have to do is to continue to reinforce the recognition that free speech in a technological society means technological free speech. I think we can do that. I think that's a deliverable message. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 I haven't had a chance to read this yet but I'm familiar with the viewpoint. They have a very wide interpretation of "Free Speech". To the FSF every published work ought to be open for anyone to use in anyway. They would eliminate all IP rights and declare EVERYTHING public domain if they could. Yet they recognize the right of the creator of the work to be credited, else why would RMS get so defensive about calling Linux,GNU/Linux. Sorry RMS if you want to have the right to demand credit you have to OWN IT. And if you OWN something be it a poem, a computer program, or a ham sandwich you have the right to sell it, give it away, consume it(if possible), or NOT.They love to play little word games about how open source anit free speech but the truth is part of the freedom in speech is the power NOT to speak or the power not to listen. THE GPL takes that power away as you are forced to give away your work. That anit freedom, that is forced communism. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zox Posted February 28, 2004 Author Share Posted February 28, 2004 I don't think you interpreted it right Nathan.It has nothing to do with communism and if you read it you would see the difference.You have right NOT to publish anything and nobody can take that away from you.GPL is not about taking any rights from you, it is merely there to protect those rights.It is becasue of misunderstandings like this that it is important to read his speech. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 Really?If I change a GPL program like EMACS and I want to sell my changes and make a profit I AM REQUIRED to publish my changes. READ THE GPL. Now I can keep my changes private but how can I make a buck off of that? And how can I make a buck if I required to publish changes. You'll note that many of the Linux distros do something to add a new program that you aren't allowed to copy. SuSE adds YAST. Lindows has CNR. Mandrake has pro versions for club members that offer Star Office and nVidia drivers both are Copy protected and can be had only if you pay for it.Note that the FreeBSD license allows you to make changes and keep them private. Example: Mac OS X. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zox Posted February 28, 2004 Author Share Posted February 28, 2004 Well, what are you complaining about.Is it the fact that you CAN make money off of other people's code or is it simple requirement that if you do make a buck, publish changes you made to software in the name of progress.Well if you change EMACS and want to make buck off of it, nobody is preventing you to do so.The only obligation you have under GPL as you pointed out is to publish back that modified code and to mention original author of the EMACS.That way authour of EMACS gets part of the glory for his original code as well as modifications done by you, which is more then fair IMHO.It would be just stupid to take his work, make buck off of it and keep it secret so nobody else can gain any knowledge.That means faster advancement, as I as newbie programmer would not have to start from scratch coding EMACS.I have access to source code of EMACS, I can see how it has been done and implemented, I can just modify that code, add my own stuff on top off it and build EMACS2, newer, better version without all the hussle of starting from scratch.That is mater of progress.You come in and build EMACS3 on top of my code, etc..It would be stupid to not give back code, it wouldn't work that way.For proprietary things such as Nvidia binary drivers or Star Office distros can not give you source code as it is not free software.For YAST and CNR you can get source code, I am pretty sure.They are merely setup tools to destinguish one vendor from another.FreeBSD has such license because they want it that way.BSD's in general would like that everybody uses their code in order to standardise software.One example of that is TCP/IP stack that Microsoft took from BSD and put in Windows.Second would be Apple and Open Darwin.Another would be Linux as it contains a lot of BSD code in.Make no mistake, BSD's a non profit, University type of organisations.They are not making money off of it.We are in it to make money, right?I thought this is all about making money and progress. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linuxdude32 Posted February 28, 2004 Share Posted February 28, 2004 Actually, Nathan, with the GNU GPL, the copyright still rests with the original creator so RMS can distribute it *and* own it. RMS believes that software shouldn't be patented or owned so that everybody has access to it, the same way scientists and academicians share information and research. It's certainly an idealistic theory, but it's hardly communist. I'm constantly amazed how everytime someone raises anything that challenges some way of making profit that it's automatically communist. There are other ways of making money on software other than selling it through restrictive licensing, not as easily certainly, but there are.I don't agree that all sofware should be required by law to be GPL'ed since that is also a basic freedom and I don't think RMS says that. He hopes to convince people that using "Free Software" makes more sense. The creator of a software program can put his/her software under any license they want. If you take GPL'ed software, you can use it all you want, you can make all the changes you want, you can even sell it for a profit, but you cannot take away the same freedoms from somebody else that let you use it in the first place. I don't think this is a bad thing and it's not communist.I use Free and non-Free software and personally I don't really care one way or the other. It's totally unfair to use a word like communist which has such huge negative connotations with it (especially in the US). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 Thank you zox ... am enjoying the reading and saved it and am in the process of reading the whole thing.Well said Jason. :'( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 Zox and Jason,Of course you can charge for your GPL modified software. It is also true that you can buy my copy and then sell it at lower then my price or just give it away. Why would anyone buy my software from me if you give it away? This is BY DESIGN and in my opinion the deliberate intention of the FSF. If the concern was simply for free software then why not simply release it for free? Let the users do whatever they want with it, including taking the modified source code private if they wish. How does my modifications affect the original public released code? Other then your lack of access to the changes there are none.Note I have nothing against GPL'd software nor other open source software. I have more then once professed on this board the value of open source over closed source. My objection is with term "free software". In my opinion that is a clever word game designed to hide the real motive behind "free" software. RMS has said that "Free software" means Free as in liberty not as in free beer. But it actually means free as in free beer because the moment you apply that GPL license to the product you loose the ability to charge money for the product beyond your first customer. Because your first customer can legally undercut you and give it away free. This is why I call it communist. The GPL is designed to eliminate the profit motive and force you to contribute to the community. And this isn't a bad thing. It benefits us all. But it would be more honest if he called it community software. Cuz "free" it aint. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linuxdude32 Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 f the concern was simply for free software then why not simply release it for free? Let the users do whatever they want with it, including taking the modified source code private if they wish. How does my modifications affect the original public released code? Other then your lack of access to the changes there are none.The users can take it private if they wish, but if they do so they can't re-distribute the modifications without the GPL. If a user were allowed to do whatever they wanted with the software than there is less incentive to give something back and they'd be profiting from somebody else's work without contributing back to the community. That doesn't stop someone from creating software, even proprietary, that works with the GPL'ed software like Covalent does with Apache.Your modifications could change the program into an entirely different product. I admit the use of the word 'Free' makes people think free as in cost and maybe they think it means free in that they can do with it whatever they want, but that's not true. And he's pretty clear on the GNU website as to what he means by Free.My objection is with term "free software". In my opinion that is a clever word game designed to hide the real motive behind "free" software. RMS has said that "Free software" means Free as in liberty not as in free beer. But it actually means free as in free beer because the moment you apply that GPL license to the product you loose the ability to charge money for the product beyond your first customer. Because your first customer can legally undercut you and give it away free.I don't think RMS is trying to hide any motive. I think he's simply capitalizing (how's that for ironic?) on the merits of his philosophy. He's made it clear on several occasions that the different between Free Software and Open Source Software is that Free Software is a philosophical idea and OSS is a commercial concept. He thinks society would be better if people that bought software could share it with others without restriction other than the responsibility to share your improvements upon it.And you're totally right that the end result would be free (as in beer) software. But I don't understand how something being free makes it communist. We have free healthcare in Canada, is that communist? And yes, I fully realize it's paid for by taxes. Personally, I don't think the profit motive belongs in every sphere of society.Think about this for a second. When you buy a proprietary program, you don't own it. You have to agree to a license before using the software that says you can't share it with anybody else, you can't fix it if it's broken and you can't resell it. You buy the right to use it only within the restrictions that the developers allows you to. On top of that the developer makes no promises that you'll get updates to fix it for free, that it won't trash your data and often you get no technical support. Essentially, you're renting your software like you were renting an apartment. If you're a developer, that's a wonderful position to be in. If you're a user of that software, you basically have no rights, no freedoms. That sounds more like communism than Free Software does, at least to the user.This is why I call it communist. The GPL is designed to eliminate the profit motive and force you to contribute to the community. And this isn't a bad thing. It benefits us all. But it would be more honest if he called it community software. Cuz "free" it aint.You're talking about how RMS should be more honest and not call it Free but I think calling it Free is a heck of a lot closer to the truth than calling it Communist. I'm glad you see how this can be a good thing so I think you see "Communist" in a good light in the way Marx first envisioned it, but most people have a lot of baggage with that word. In any case, I agree that "Free" is an unfortunate word, because like "liberal", it means different things to different people. Even copyleft software would be better. When it comes right down to it, I believe RMS is viewing the freedoms as a user or a community developer would, not as a commercial company. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhbell Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 Excellent Read. Started reading it and could not stop.Mel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b2cm Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 Can't fault Nathan for thinking the free software movement smells like a 'communist' scheme. Groklaw's language do suggest that the movement is anti-capitalist and anti-property (at least on things relating to knowledge and the means to its diffusion). For most people these postures are hallmarks of Marxist Socialism (or Communism).But it really is not Socialism. Groklaw thinks of this movement as a continuation of the Enlightenment, aimed at social progress and in the liberating possibilities of rational and scientific knowledge (now-- software). The idea is to let knowledge freely flourish and be widely diffused so that human beings and human society can be improved. In the 18th century, the philosophical movement was hostile to religion that kept the human mind chained down by superstition. Now, it is proprietary software. It also has anarchistic tendecies with its over-emphasis on individual freedom and voluntary cooperation, and the conscious desire to upturn the established order.The summation says it all. But in the end, it is our ability to unify all of the elements of the information society -- software, hardware, and bandwidth -- in shared hands, that is in our own hands, that determines whether we can succeed in carrying out the great 18th century dream ... that human beings and human society are infinitely improvable if only we take the necessary steps to set the mind free...We are running a civil rights movement. We’re not trying to compete everybody out of business, or anybody out of business. We don’t care who succeeds or fails in the marketplace. We have our eyes on the prize. We know where we are going: Freedom. Now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 Excellent point b2cm.And it really is more a continuation of the Enlightenment, aimed at social progress and in the liberating possibilities of rational and scientific knowledge (now-- software).I have always thought of it specifically like Jason mentioned ... in the same light as the scientific community, of which it is more closely related anyway than anything else, IMHO. There is room for making money there as well but the sharing is basically free, so the scientific community can build on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 This position of Tim O'Reilly :http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/526This sums up my feelings exactly about the GPL and free software in general.And this link:http://static.userland.com/userLandDiscuss.../msg020034.htmlSums up my opinion of the motives behind the FSF General Public License. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 I just knew Tim would say it just the right way ... "Freedom Zero for me is to offer the fruit of your work on the terms that work for you. I think that is what is absolutely critical here. Let there be competition in the marketplace; that is the answer. Let people use whatever license they choose and if their customers don't like it they will have other choices. Because of the technological changes, we are entering an era of greater choice. The fact is, Microsoft's past history is past. We are entering a new era, not of just open source but of profound technological changes. The future is open and we can make that future be what we want it to be."I agree wholeheartedly. There is room for it all. They should not be expected to do anything they don't wish to do. Any developer should be able to choose the license they feel most comfortable with.But that also means they can choose the GPL and it would not be a wrong or bad choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b2cm Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 Any developer should be able to choose the license they feel most comfortable with.I second that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linuxdude32 Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 Agreed. Tim states it well: My biggest beef with Microsoft is not that it offers proprietary software, but that it uses anticompetitive tactics and its monopoly position to take away my right to use non-Microsoft software through the introduction of deliberate incompatibilities and other roadblocks. If Freedom Zero for developers is the freedom to offer software on whatever terms the developer sets and a user will accept; Freedom Zero for users is the right to choose whatever software they like, without interference from platform vendors who try to deny that choice.That is exactly my problem with Microsoft, too. In fact, if Microsoft simply made proprietary software I wouldn't care. It's that they make it very hard for anybody else to share the information created or outputted by their software. We wouldn't accept companies deliberately making incompatible products in any other industry but we (the collective marketplace) accept it in software. Every product should win based on its own merits, not on how difficult the company producing it has made for other people to do something else.Regards licensing, I totally agree that people should have this choice. And they're free to not use the GNU GPL if they don't like it. Sometimes Stallman gets this morally superior attitude that anything less than Free Software is morally wrong and I expects the world to conform to his ideals. He unknowingly, at least I think unknowingly, invites more attacks on himself for taking such an absolute position. When the FSF was attacking KDE as being un-Free because programs made with the QT toolkit couldn't be sold, Linus was asked his opinion on it. I can't find the quote anymore (points for anybody that can!), but, and I paraphrase, his reply was that the programmer decides the license and nobody else should whine and bitch about their choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b2cm Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 There is always the danger of misunderstanding the free software movement and its GPL. I have read the 2 links Nathan posted and agree with the opinions entirely. However, I noticed that opinions take the GPL out of its native context ("free speech") and forces it in another ("free beer"). To do justice to the GPL, it should be seen not as just another licensing model, but as the antithesis of the whole idea of copyrights and software licensing. It is even more than that. It is a weapon being used to transform not only the use and development of technological knowledge, but also of culture and society. The people behind GPL are first philosophers/subversives before anything else.Here's a contrast and comparison of what we traditionally think of as revolution and of free software movements subversion. It's a caricature at best but enough to illustrate what I mean.Revolutionaries have their respective -isms. The free software movement have "free software". Revolutionaries have AK-47s and RPGs. The free software movement have the GNU GPL. Both want to change the world.In order to change the world to their liking, they need power. Revolutionaries assumes that power comes out of the barrel of the gun. The free software movement believes that ---as knowledge is power, and software is knowledge---power spins out of design tools and of assemblers or compilers.For revolutionaries the power is with the people. It is just that the feudal or capitalist elite have used the state apparatus and legal system to own, monopolize and benefit from that power. For the free software movement the power is with software programmers. It is just that feudal or capitalist elite (i.e. Microsoft, SCO) have cornered that power by way of patents, copyrights or licensing agreements (that make reverse engineering illegal, for instance). For revolutionaries and the free software movement, that concentration of power is illegitimate and must be redistributed for social progress.To achieve this democratization of political/economic resources, revolutionaries use coercive force to destroy the ruling class and the state/economic apparatus that support it. The free software movement use the GPL to empower the programmers and challenge the idea that software (and knowledge) is a commercial commodity.Revolutionaries hope to set in place a political and economic structure that guarantees distributive justice and distributed opportunities to the people. The free software movement hope to free knowledge (software) by putting it beyond the bounds of commerce, so the whole society benefits from the free development and distribution of knowledge. This is the context. And in the case of the GPL, this context is also the center. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 There is always the danger of misunderstanding the free software movement and its GPL. I have read the 2 links Nathan posted andagree with the opinions entirely. However, I noticed that opinionstake the GPL out of its native context ("free speech") and forces it inanother ("free beer").See I don't they do. In my opinion this is where RMS and the FSF are being deceitful. If the only goal was to simply spread knowledge then they could simply do so with public domain offerings. The recipient of that knowledge could do whatever they wished with it. But as you point out.To achieve this democratization of political/economic resources,revolutionaries use coercive force to destroy the ruling class and thestate/economic apparatus that support it. The free softwaremovement use the GPL to empower the programmers and challengethe idea that software (and knowledge) is a commercial commodity.It is hard to do that in a capitalist society that treats ideas as IP. So you've got to "ruin" the value of the idea in a IP framework. We assign value by assigning a fixed price on an item. Thus the only way to ruin the value of something is to GIVE IT AWAY FREE. So yes when you talk about the GPL your are directly talking about the product as FREE as in FREE BEER! And when RMS says it isn't about that. I call him a bald faced liar and I wonder what his real motives are.It is about the money. The goal is to try and divorce money from the work. The goal of every communist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b2cm Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 Yes, you're right. It's "free beer" to devalue proprietary software. But it's more than just "free beer". They want to change Western civilization. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 I didn't realize it when I posted it but the first page of the article I posted on copyright infringement in Security and Networking addresses this very thing .. both on the positive side (page 1) and the negative side - those fighting it (page 2):http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.ph...f=10&t=5896&hl=It does not have to be an all or nothing thing. There is room for all the licencing structures.There is no wrong or right way on the whole. But the copyright law does need changing .. you can not keep stifling innovation and suing customers as has been the banner of commercialism this past year.I do not believe it has to be this way. Nor do I believe that there is an easy answer in the face of the 1998 DMCA, but something has to be done! Not just to protect customers, but developers as well (on both sides of the developer equasion). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b2cm Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 What I want to say is that the GPL isn't the issue, but the movement itself. The GPL derives its logic from the logic of the movement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 NOTE: I am a supporter of 'true' capitalism, not the predatory behavior we are seeing today.True capitalism is competition but it does not need to be predatory. If folks would just use the golden rule in all they do, at home or at play, there would be none of these discussions.Unrealistic greed just always seems to creep in, and must be constantly checked. If not, you get what we are dealing with today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b2cm Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 The movement rejects the status quo. It uses the GPL as a "trojan" to bring down the status quo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 (edited) I am not seeing what you are seeing b2cm. I do not see it that way at all. (Doesn't mean either of us is right or wrong, just a difference of opinion)I see this as a way to get us back on the right path. What's going on is NOT working.There has to be a middle ground like in the scientific community where the flow of scientific information is there, but also those who wish to make money can do so.As far as I understood it, that's where this was going. Edited March 2, 2004 by LilBambi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b2cm Posted March 1, 2004 Share Posted March 1, 2004 I/m not a free software movement advocate nor its opponent. I believe in proprietary and free software as long as they are useful and as people want to use/pay for them. I was just trying to say that assessments of the GPL (very good) are using status quo criteria and therefore do not find the logic of GPL. To be fair to GPL, its own (or larger) rationale should also be considered and to be judged on that basis. Otherwise, there's no real dialogue between advocates of proprietary, public domain and freses software advocates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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