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After months of hype, and voluminous tech press coverage, the big day is nigh.
The GPLv3 hits the streets Friday and according to Palamida, a software vendor with an application that can track and identify software licenses, at least 5,500 projects are expected to adopt the new draft quickly.
While that’s a small number of the estimated 370,000 projects currently licensed under the GPLv2, it’s a healthy indication that the 18 months and four drafts worth of work from the FSF has yielded a useful document after all.
Erwan at Groklaw observes:
If it wasn’t possible to please absolutely everyone on planet earth, it’s because not everyone is on the same page as to what matters most. That’s fine. GPLv3 isn’t trying to be the one and only license in the world. And it’s not a religion or a political document. It’s a license. That’s all it is. Use it if it suits your needs. It surely meets some current legal needs in a way no other license does. In fact, what it foresaw regarding patents actually came to pass while it was in the draft process.
For a little more color on the GPLv3, check out this talk by Sapna Kumar delivered at a recent TRILUG meeting.
[NOTE: It’s this Sapna Kumar, not that Sapna Kumar.]
Via the The Marketing Technology Blog, a breakdown of who’s using what in order to become the next President of the United States.
Site Operating System and Server by Candidate
* Joe Biden (D) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
* Hillary Clinton (D) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Paul Holcomb
* Christopher Dodd (D) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
* John Edwards (D) - Linux, Apache by Plus Three
* Mike Gravel (D) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
* Dennis Kucinich (D) - Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
* Barack Obama (D) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
* Bill Richardson (D) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
* Wesley Clark (D) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
* Al Gore (D) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
* Sam Brownback (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by RackForce Hosting, Inc.
* Jim Gilmore (R) - Linux, Apache by 1&1 Internet, Inc.
* Rudy Giuliani (R) - Linux, Apache by RackSpace
* Mike Huckabee (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
* Duncun Hunter (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
* John McCain (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
* Ron Paul (R) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
* Mitt Romney (R) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
* Tom Tancredo (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Interland
* Fred Thompson (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
* Tommy Thompson (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Time Warner Telecom, Inc.
* Chuck Hagel (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
* Newt Gingrich (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
(Be sure and click through to check out the comments on Mr. Karr’s original post, and if you’d like to thank him for his research, his pay pal account is set up so you can buy him a cup of coffee, which is kind of cool.)
Microsoft’s deal with Linspire inspired (Or should I say “linspired?” No. No, I shouldn’t.) a lot of coverage this week which reverberated in an echo chamber of questions, guesses and speculation. But not all of it was noise.
Here is a grand buffet of some of the most illuminating analysis and reportage of the week.
Patent threats bad for Microsoft business - Red Hat
By Alastair Otter
18 June, 2007Microsoft going around threatening customers with patent litigation does not make good business sense. This is according to Red Hat’s Middle East and Africa channel sales manager, David Postel, who was speaking in Johannesburg last week.
Postel said that Red Hat customers do not have to worry about the threat of patent litigation because not only was it unlikely that this would happen, but the company also provides protection for customers against the possibility. He said that customers were protected at two levels.
“In the first instance Red Hat will repair or replace any software found to infringe patents. And Red Hat will also pay to defend any customer that does have to face ligitation,” said Postel.
Ubuntu, Red Hat reject Microsoft patent deal
By Martin LaMonica and Richard Thurston, CNET News.com
Red Hat Remains Unmoved
“Red Hat said there would be no such deal. Referring to previous statements distancing itself from Microsoft, the company insisted: “Red Hat’s standpoint has not changed.”
“The company referenced a statement written when Microsoft revealed it was partnering with Novell, saying that its position remained unaltered. Red Hat director of corporate communications Leigh Day added: “We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency.”
Many open-source followers argue that Red Hat, as the largest Linux vendor, would have a lot to lose from partnering with Microsoft.
Microsoft’s Linux patent threats dismissed as baseless
By John Fontana
“The reality is that they are not going to sue a single customer,” says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “It would not be in their business interest. Microsoft is not going to sue their customers.”
But Zemlin says the contracts are hurting Linux “only in the fact that Microsoft uses them to create a perception of risk that in reality is not there.”
Microsoft Freshman Course: How To Monetize Patents
Posted by Charles Babcock
Yes, this activity can be interpreted as support for Microsoft’s patents, but please note as well that money is changing hands, $440 million in the case of the Novell pact. Microsoft will spend that amount in give-aways of support for Novell’s SUSE and spend that on other aspects of the deal. It’s a boon for Novell at a time when its business plan is limping.
For Microsoft, doing so strengthens a weak competitor, which helps it fend off future antitrust accusations, while theoretically weakening a strong one, Red Hat.
Interview conducted by Robert Krátký 11 June 2007 for ABCLinux, a Czech site
Q: What is your take on the Novell - Microsoft deal? Should Red Hat be a party to such agreement sometime in the future, what would that mean for you?
A: Personally I think it’s a bad idea and that Novell are going to get stung by the GPLv3, and rightfully so. The license is designed to keep the software free, if it fails to do this then it needs fixing, so GPLv3 hopefully will fix this flaw.
If Red Hat did deals with Microsoft I’d hope they would find a better way to do things, to co-operate on things that help end users but not to compromise the freedom of the code or play any funny games.
Q: Do you share some people’s fear of Microsoft’s threats (concerning patents and intellectual property)?
A: I don’t think they are the biggest danger. As Microsoft has been finding out recently it is the patent trolls, and organisations with buried patents in interesting areas that are the biggest threat in the USA. The real answer to that problem however is to pull the USA back into line with the majority of the world which simply does not recognize patents on software but respects them as literary works subject to copyright law. Also therefore we have to make sure the continuing US attempts to spread bogus patent law into the EU are defeated.
It might seem a little bit of a stretch to equate the open source community’s struggle against Microsoft with a bloody Kentucky coal miners’ strike, but the tactics used by Duke Power and the Eastover Mining Company in 1974 to prevent workers at the Brookside Mine from joining the United Mine Workers of America have something in common with the divide and conquer tactics Microsoft is using to maintain its market dominance.
This isn’t hyperbole, it’s the way big companies and governments have managed to control human beings (and manipulate the marketplace) as long as there have been corporations and kingdoms.
No, Microsoft hasn’t resorted to violence to protect their bottom line, but sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt, and coercing companies to take sides by signing patent agreements is only the most recent version of a classic power play used effectively for generations.
For some real insight into how divide and conquer strategies work, and how they can be overcome, it’s worth watching Barbara Koppel’s Academy Award Winning 1976 documentary, Harlan County, USA. The movie shows how a large corporation uses money and fear to exploit divisions in a community and isolate those who oppose it. Local government and law enforcement is co-opted, racial and religious divisions are exploited, and the end result is a community at war with itself that is too fragmented (and exhausted) to stand up to the company.
The only way to fight the power is through solidarity, something that wears thin when individual liberty and livliehoods are constantly threatened.
Harlan County, USA tells this timeless story in stark terms, and it’s hard to watch it without noticing how unchecked corporate power has an almost reflexive aversion to anything collective. It comes from a faulty binary mindset: on/off, good/evil, male/female, black/white, etc. If it improves pay and conditions for workers, then it must hurt profits and shareholders. What’s good for the many must be bad for the few. Through that lens, it’s easy to understand why Microsoft sees the open source community as such a threat- it’s just in the nature of things.
But fortunately, it’s also in human nature to pull together and resist.
Amnesty International has launched a campaign to bring attention to the growing threat to Internet freedom posed by governments (and acquiescent IT companies) around the world. Unfortunately, it’s a growing problem that needs more attention.
Irrepressible.info is a user-fed news aggregator documenting instances of censorship and persecution for sharing information and other threatening online activities like “reading” or “looking at” forbidden content. There’s even a place where bloggers can find html fragments of banned content to post on their blogs in order to demonstrate that information cannot be repressed.
It’s not as if this issue needs much explaining, but Cory Doctorow’s usual editorial prowess in support of Irrepressible.info is on full display in The Guardian.
Mitchell Baker is floating a draft (Version 0.9) of a Mozilla Manifesto on her blog, and the Mozilla Foundation is backing it up with some cash for the Democracy (soon to be called Miro) Video player, a creation of a shadowy outfit called the Participatory Culture Foundation.
According to seth’s blog, the PCF Miro video player is “is a cool desktop application that’s sort of a mashup of a video player, an RSS reader, an FTP & torrent client, and a channel guide — the experience is that video is regularly delivered to your desktop. They also make a server and have built a ton of great docs to help you get started as a video publisher on the web.”
The Mozilla grant to PCF follows a similar grant to Creative Commons.
Although there are ten principles listed in the manifesto, and 60+ pages worth of comments to be found in the Mozilla Governance Google usenet group, the thrust of the Mozilla mission is “to provide choice and innovation on the Internet.”
So far, the success of Firefox and Thunderbird have shown what comes of following through on high ideals, providing open source advocates with a prime example of the power of common sense, open standards and collaboration.
With any luck, the Democracy/Miro video platform could be a significant step in further realizing the vision expressed in Mozilla’s manifesto.
The fouth and final draft of the GPLv3 is available, and the Free Software Foundation has issued a “final call” for comments.
The latest draft addresses several new issues, primarily restricting distributors who make “discriminatory patent deals” after March 28 from conveying any software under the license. Some changes were made to untie the license from specific US consumer protection statutes in order make it easier to implement outside of the United States.
The new language that has garnered the most comments so far (and speculation in the press) is section 11, a passage inspired by the Microsoft-Novell deal.
According to the FSF’s accompanying discussion FAQ, the GPLv3 now
“…attacks the Microsoft-Novell deal from two angles. First, in the fourth paragraph of section 11, the draft says that if you arrange to provide patent protection to some of the people who get the software from you, that protection is automatically extended to everyone who receives the software, no matter how they get it. This means that the patent protection Microsoft has extended to Novell’s customers would be extended to everyone who uses any software Novell distributes under GPLv3.
“Second, in the fifth paragraph, the draft says that you are prohibited from distributing software under GPLv3 if you make an agreement like the Microsoft-Novell deal. This will prevent other distributors from trying to make other deals like it in the future.”
Richard Stallman posted an essay about why he thinks the GPLv3 is important.
For a more in-depth analysis (more in-depth than this blog’s, not Stallman’s), try this eWeek article by Peter Galli. It’s tight.
In what could have been a devastating blow to the entire open source community, Roberto Moreno crashed his TUX500 project sponsored car in the first turn of the 37th lap at the Indianapolis 500. Moreno was unhurt, but his Linux/Tux-branded car was out of the race. Within seconds, so-called “jokes” were posted in the comments section at YouTube to the effect that “…when Linux crashes…it’s usually due to ‘third-party driver issues.’”
Those “jokes” then sparked a fierce debate among commenters as to the “prior art” and “obviousness” of the alleged “joke” which some had claimed to see on digg earlier. The debate soon escalated into an all-out flame war in which the primary casualty was dignity.
Two months before the motorsports/open source community tore itself apart in a spasm of self-immolating (the YouTube comments smelled like burning rubber and exhaust) mutual humiliation, redemption was already quietly and odorlessly on the prowl in Amsterdam.
Take heart open source motorheads, the C,mm,n (Common) is here! Three prototypes of the world’s first open source car were unveiled back in March by The Netherlands Society of Nature and the Environment in cooperation with the three Dutch technical universities at Delft, Eindhoven, and Twente. The C,mm,n is being designed by a community of engineers as a “mobility concept” car that will be shared (literally) among users (drivers) who join the c,mm,n community.
International racing rules and design specs will have to evolve to catch up to the c,mm,n, but as Linux/Racefans shake off their despair hangovers and try to climb back up the shame-spirals they descended on Monday, there is every reason to optimistic about the future.
From the Memorial Day edition of the New York Times.
Since last year, the military’s embedding rules require that journalists obtain a signed consent from a wounded soldier before the image can be published. Images that put a face on the dead, that make them identifiable, are simply prohibited.
If Joseph Heller were still around, he might appreciate the bureaucratic elegance of paragraph 11(a) of IAW Change 3, DoD Directive 5122.5:
“Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member’s prior written consent.”
According to the Pentagon, the rules were put into place to spare the families of the fallen from the added pain and anguish that might come from discovering the loss of a loved one through the media. Ostensibly, the restriction doesn’t cover un-embedded journalists, but the Iraqi police, enforcing a 1-hour press ban after each bombing, recently fired warning shots over the heads of working press trying to do their jobs.
Fair enough, but it means responsible citizens may have to dig a little deeper to remain informed, and a lot deeper to understand the reality of what our fighting men and women are facing on our behalf.
Fortuantely, there are other ways of finding out what one needs to know.
Everyone knows that today all of humanity drinks Tang, enjoys velcro, and flies around wearing jetpacks because of the technological advances made by our nation’s space program.
But did you also know that NASA uses free and open source software in a big way, and shares many of the same values as the FOSS community?
This Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer pays sweet homage to the open source movement and lists the many ways that collaborative science assisted by free and open source software makes the exploration of space possible.
Strangely, he doesn’t mention Tang or velcro. Or jetpacks.
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Open Source Software Licensing Train Wreck Averted
The Liability of License Enforcement
Universities grow weary of pirate chase
Twelve steps to building an open source community
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