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O:9:"MagpieRSS":23:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:10:{i:0;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:70:"Microsoft Releases GPL'd Software (Again): Does This Change Anything?
";s:4:"link";s:62:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jul/29/microsoft-gpl/";s:11:"description";s:5048:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>Microsoft has received much undeserved press about their recent release
of Linux drivers for their virtualization technology under GPLv2. I say
“undeserved” because I don't particularly see why Microsoft
should be lauded merely for doing something that is in their own
interest that they've done before.</p>
<p>Most people have forgotten that Microsoft once had a GPL-based product
available for Windows NT. It was called <cite>Windows Services for
UNIX</cite>, and AFAICT, remains available today (although perhaps
they've transitioned in recent years to no longer include GPL'd
software).</p>
<p>This product
was <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/Sept99/softwayPR.mspx">acquired
by Microsoft when they purchased Softway Systems</a>. The product was
based on GCC, and included a variety of GNU system utilities ported to
Windows. Microsoft was a compliant distributor of this software for
years, right during the time when they were calling the GPL an unAmerican
cancerous virus that eats up software like PacMan. The GPL is not a new
license to Microsoft; they only pretend that it is to give bad press to
the GPL or to give good press to themselves.</p>
<p>Another thing that's not new to Microsoft is that they have no
interesting in contributing to Free Software unless it makes their
proprietary software more desirable. In my old example above, they
hoped to entice developers who preferred a Unix development environment to
switch to Windows NT. In the recent Linux driver release, they seek to
convince developers to switch from Xen and KVM to their proprietary
virtualization technology.</p>
<p>In fact, the only difference in this particular release is that, unlike
in the case of Softway's
software, <a href="http://linux-network-plumber.blogspot.com/2009/07/congratulations-microsoft.html">Microsoft
was apparently (according to Steve Hemminger) out of compliance
briefly</a>. According to Steve, Microsoft distributed binaries linked
to various GPL parts.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Sam Ramji claimed that Microsoft were already planning to
release the software before Hemminger and Greg K-H contacted them. I do
believe Sam when he says that there was already talk inside Microsoft
about releasing the source underway before the Linux developers
began their enforcement effort. However, that internal Microsoft talk
doesn't mean that there wasn't a problem. As soon as one distributes
the binaries of a GPL'd work, one must provide the source (or an offer therefor) alongside
those binaries. Thus, if Microsoft released binaries and delayed in
releasing source, there was a GPL violation.</p>
<p>Like all GPL violations (and potential GPL violations), it's left to
the copyright holders of the software to engage in enforcement. I think
it's great
that, <a href="http://linux-network-plumber.blogspot.com/2009/07/congratulations-microsoft.html">according
to Steve</a> and <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=3433">related press coverage</a>, the Linux developers used the most common enforcement
strategy in the GPL community — quietly contact the company,
inform them of their obligations, and help them in a friendly way into
compliance. That process almost always works, and the fact that
Microsoft came into compliance shows the value of our community's
standard enforcement practice.</p>
<p>Still, there is a more important item of note from a perspective of
software freedom. This Linux driver — whether it is released properly
under the GPL or kept proprietary in violation of the GPL — is designed to convince users to give up Free
virtualization platforms like Xen and KVM and use Microsoft's
virtualization technology instead. From that perspective, it matters
little that it was released as Free Software: people should avoid the
software and use platforms for virtualization that respect their
freedom.</p>
<p>Someday, perhaps, Microsoft will take a proper place among other large
companies that actually contribute code that improves the general
infrastructure of Free Software. Many companies give generally useful
improvements back to Linux, GCC, and various other parts of the
GNU/Linux system. Microsoft has never done this: they only contribute
code when it improves Free Software interoperability with their
proprietary technology. The day that Microsoft actually changes its
attitude toward Free Software did not occur last week. Microsoft's old
strategy stays the
same: <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jul/17/microsoft-patent-aggression/">try
to kill Free Software with patents</a>, and in the meantime, convince as
many Free Software users as possible to begin relying on Microsoft
proprietary technology.</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:45:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:62:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jul/29/microsoft-gpl/";s:7:"summary";s:5048:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>Microsoft has received much undeserved press about their recent release
of Linux drivers for their virtualization technology under GPLv2. I say
“undeserved” because I don't particularly see why Microsoft
should be lauded merely for doing something that is in their own
interest that they've done before.</p>
<p>Most people have forgotten that Microsoft once had a GPL-based product
available for Windows NT. It was called <cite>Windows Services for
UNIX</cite>, and AFAICT, remains available today (although perhaps
they've transitioned in recent years to no longer include GPL'd
software).</p>
<p>This product
was <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/Sept99/softwayPR.mspx">acquired
by Microsoft when they purchased Softway Systems</a>. The product was
based on GCC, and included a variety of GNU system utilities ported to
Windows. Microsoft was a compliant distributor of this software for
years, right during the time when they were calling the GPL an unAmerican
cancerous virus that eats up software like PacMan. The GPL is not a new
license to Microsoft; they only pretend that it is to give bad press to
the GPL or to give good press to themselves.</p>
<p>Another thing that's not new to Microsoft is that they have no
interesting in contributing to Free Software unless it makes their
proprietary software more desirable. In my old example above, they
hoped to entice developers who preferred a Unix development environment to
switch to Windows NT. In the recent Linux driver release, they seek to
convince developers to switch from Xen and KVM to their proprietary
virtualization technology.</p>
<p>In fact, the only difference in this particular release is that, unlike
in the case of Softway's
software, <a href="http://linux-network-plumber.blogspot.com/2009/07/congratulations-microsoft.html">Microsoft
was apparently (according to Steve Hemminger) out of compliance
briefly</a>. According to Steve, Microsoft distributed binaries linked
to various GPL parts.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Sam Ramji claimed that Microsoft were already planning to
release the software before Hemminger and Greg K-H contacted them. I do
believe Sam when he says that there was already talk inside Microsoft
about releasing the source underway before the Linux developers
began their enforcement effort. However, that internal Microsoft talk
doesn't mean that there wasn't a problem. As soon as one distributes
the binaries of a GPL'd work, one must provide the source (or an offer therefor) alongside
those binaries. Thus, if Microsoft released binaries and delayed in
releasing source, there was a GPL violation.</p>
<p>Like all GPL violations (and potential GPL violations), it's left to
the copyright holders of the software to engage in enforcement. I think
it's great
that, <a href="http://linux-network-plumber.blogspot.com/2009/07/congratulations-microsoft.html">according
to Steve</a> and <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=3433">related press coverage</a>, the Linux developers used the most common enforcement
strategy in the GPL community — quietly contact the company,
inform them of their obligations, and help them in a friendly way into
compliance. That process almost always works, and the fact that
Microsoft came into compliance shows the value of our community's
standard enforcement practice.</p>
<p>Still, there is a more important item of note from a perspective of
software freedom. This Linux driver — whether it is released properly
under the GPL or kept proprietary in violation of the GPL — is designed to convince users to give up Free
virtualization platforms like Xen and KVM and use Microsoft's
virtualization technology instead. From that perspective, it matters
little that it was released as Free Software: people should avoid the
software and use platforms for virtualization that respect their
freedom.</p>
<p>Someday, perhaps, Microsoft will take a proper place among other large
companies that actually contribute code that improves the general
infrastructure of Free Software. Many companies give generally useful
improvements back to Linux, GCC, and various other parts of the
GNU/Linux system. Microsoft has never done this: they only contribute
code when it improves Free Software interoperability with their
proprietary technology. The day that Microsoft actually changes its
attitude toward Free Software did not occur last week. Microsoft's old
strategy stays the
same: <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jul/17/microsoft-patent-aggression/">try
to kill Free Software with patents</a>, and in the meantime, convince as
many Free Software users as possible to begin relying on Microsoft
proprietary technology.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1248871500;}i:1;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:60:"Microsoft Patent Aggression Continues Against Free Software
";s:4:"link";s:76:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jul/17/microsoft-patent-aggression/";s:11:"description";s:2062:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>I think this <a
href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218500894&subSection=News">news
item from yesterday</a> mostly speaks for itself, but I could not let the
incident go by without blogging briefly about it.</p>
<p>There has been so much talk in the last two weeks that Microsoft has
changed with regard to its patent policy toward Free Software. We fool
ourselves if we trust any of the window-dressing that Microsoft has put
forward to convince us that we can trust them in this regard. Indeed, I
spoke extensively about this in <a
href="http://linuxoutlaws.com/podcast/102">my interview on the <cite>Linux
Outlaws</cite> show</a> this week.</p>
<p>What we see in this agreement between the Melco Group and Microsoft is
another little above-water piece of the same patent aggression iceberg
that Microsoft has placed in our community's way. They continue to shake
down companies that distribute GNU/Linux systems for patent royalties. As
I've written about before, <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/16/tomtom-microsoft/">it's
difficult to judge if these are GPLv2-compliant, but they are almost
certainly not GPLv3-compliant</a>. If there were ever a moment for the
community to scramble to GPLv3, this would be it, if for no other reason
to defend ourselves against the looming aggression.</p>
<p>In the meantime, we'd be foolish to trust any sort of promises
Microsoft has to make about their patents. Would they really make a
reliable promise that would prevent their ongoing campaign of patent
aggression against Free Software?</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> In related news, I was also glad to read <a href="http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono">FSF's new statement on the issue</a>, which includes some of the same comments I made on <cite>Linux Outlaws</cite> Episode 102.</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:28:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:76:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jul/17/microsoft-patent-aggression/";s:7:"summary";s:2062:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>I think this <a
href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218500894&subSection=News">news
item from yesterday</a> mostly speaks for itself, but I could not let the
incident go by without blogging briefly about it.</p>
<p>There has been so much talk in the last two weeks that Microsoft has
changed with regard to its patent policy toward Free Software. We fool
ourselves if we trust any of the window-dressing that Microsoft has put
forward to convince us that we can trust them in this regard. Indeed, I
spoke extensively about this in <a
href="http://linuxoutlaws.com/podcast/102">my interview on the <cite>Linux
Outlaws</cite> show</a> this week.</p>
<p>What we see in this agreement between the Melco Group and Microsoft is
another little above-water piece of the same patent aggression iceberg
that Microsoft has placed in our community's way. They continue to shake
down companies that distribute GNU/Linux systems for patent royalties. As
I've written about before, <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/16/tomtom-microsoft/">it's
difficult to judge if these are GPLv2-compliant, but they are almost
certainly not GPLv3-compliant</a>. If there were ever a moment for the
community to scramble to GPLv3, this would be it, if for no other reason
to defend ourselves against the looming aggression.</p>
<p>In the meantime, we'd be foolish to trust any sort of promises
Microsoft has to make about their patents. Would they really make a
reliable promise that would prevent their ongoing campaign of patent
aggression against Free Software?</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> In related news, I was also glad to read <a href="http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono">FSF's new statement on the issue</a>, which includes some of the same comments I made on <cite>Linux Outlaws</cite> Episode 102.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1247840880;}i:2;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:53:"Black Duck Report is Meaningless Without Source Code
";s:4:"link";s:93:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jul/06/black-duck-report-meaningless-without-source/";s:11:"description";s:5544:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Aaron Williamson</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:aaronw@softwarefreedom.org"><aaronw@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>Black Duck Software recently published some summary statistics
about free and open source software license adoption, based on data it
collected by crawling the web.
The <a href="http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss" alt="Black Duck
report">report</a> lists “top 20 licenses that are used in open
source projects” and the proportion of projects which use each
license, as well as historical figures purportedly representing the
number of projects using and planning to use GPLv3 variants for each
month of the last two years.</p>
<p>In
its <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gplv3-licenses-quadruple-in-2009-but-gpl-projects-drop-by-five-percent-from-2008-levels">press
release</a>, Black Duck focuses on a supposed 5% decline in the use of
GPL-variant licenses in the year since its 2008 report. Taking Black Duck's cue,
commentators have drawn all sorts of conclusions from this figure,
including
that <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10276903-16.html">licensing
is becoming increasingly irrelevant</a> as web services replace
traditional software, or
that <a href="http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/">more software
is being produced by universities</a>. Black Duck's own (carefully
implicit) conclusion is that the community is simply warming up to
proprietary software companies: “Many developers are selecting
licenses that are less restrictive, a move that underscores the
broader adoption and value of open source in today's multi-source
development environments.”</p>
<p>Any of these conclusions might be reasonable if the 5% figure was
meaningful, but Black Duck has given us no reason to believe it is; if
anything, their own statements suggest it isn't. Programatically
capturing data on the prevalence of various FOSS licenses is
inherently difficult. At its edges, it's an artificial intelligence
problem (specifically a natural language understanding problem), because the many
home-grown and modified licenses in the world don't necessarily adhere
to standard language. But even the core task of cataloging the use of
the most common licenses is fraught: by the wide dispersal of projects
across centralized hosting services and single-project sites (and the
movement of individual projects between them), by inconsistencies in
how developers apply licenses to code (e.g. idiosyncratic headers and
directory structures), and by countless other variables.</p>
<p>Black Duck's techniques and algorithms for dealing with these
difficulties did not emerge fully formed. The company's engineers no
doubt continually refine the license-identification code. If these
refinements affected the data on all licenses equally, their effect on
the figures from year to year would probably be insignificant. But in
reality, GPL variants are much easier to identify than the whole set
of permissive licenses whose use has supposedly increased over the
last year. Each GPL variant's text is fixed. On the other hand,
there exists a whole category of licenses which are popularly referred to as
"BSD-style" licenses because, while the individual licenses resemble
the original BSD license in scope and style, they have been adapted
and rewritten liberally by various developers, universities, and
companies. These variations make permissive licenses particularly
difficult to identify, and for this reason improvements in Black
Duck's algorithms are likely to disproportionately capture more
previously unidentified uses of permissive rather than GPL-variant
licenses.</p>
<p>Black Duck's dataset has also changed: the company has begun
crawling 300 new sites (7.5% of its current total) just
since <a href="http://www.blackducksoftware.com/news/releases/2008-09-16">last
year's report</a>. We the nonpaying public have no way of
knowing the extent of the effect, because Black Duck's system is a black box: the company
doesn't disclose how the inclusion of new sources of data affects
its numbers.</p>
<p>For these reasons, it is impossible to know whether the 5% GPL
delta is meaningful until we know how the source data and the
algorithms have changed from one year to the next. The process of
cataloging and quantifying the use of FOSS licenses is a scientific
one, requiring the application of principles of computer science and
statistical analysis. As with any scientific pursuit, the methods
used must be verifiable before the results can be considered
trustworthy. I encourage Black Duck Software to release its own
software under a free software license—whether by joining the
alleged groundswell and using a permissive license, or by resort to a
retrograde copyleft license—so that its methods can be evaluated
by the community (not to mention its customers) and its reports can be
rendered meaningful.</p>
<p><strong>Correction:</strong> this post previously said that Black Duck only began crawling Microsoft's CodePlex site in May 2009. The <a href="http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/05/black-duck-agrees-to-index-microsoft-codeplex-projects.ars">press release</a> cited in fact says that Microsoft began pushing data from CodePlex to Black Duck in May. Peter Vescuso of Black Duck <a href="http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10535-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66489&messageID=1256032">says</a> that the company has been crawling CodePlex "for years."</p>
";s:6:"author";s:45:"aaronw@softwarefreedom.org (Aaron Williamson)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:34:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:93:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jul/06/black-duck-report-meaningless-without-source/";s:7:"summary";s:5544:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Aaron Williamson</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:aaronw@softwarefreedom.org"><aaronw@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>Black Duck Software recently published some summary statistics
about free and open source software license adoption, based on data it
collected by crawling the web.
The <a href="http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss" alt="Black Duck
report">report</a> lists “top 20 licenses that are used in open
source projects” and the proportion of projects which use each
license, as well as historical figures purportedly representing the
number of projects using and planning to use GPLv3 variants for each
month of the last two years.</p>
<p>In
its <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gplv3-licenses-quadruple-in-2009-but-gpl-projects-drop-by-five-percent-from-2008-levels">press
release</a>, Black Duck focuses on a supposed 5% decline in the use of
GPL-variant licenses in the year since its 2008 report. Taking Black Duck's cue,
commentators have drawn all sorts of conclusions from this figure,
including
that <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10276903-16.html">licensing
is becoming increasingly irrelevant</a> as web services replace
traditional software, or
that <a href="http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/">more software
is being produced by universities</a>. Black Duck's own (carefully
implicit) conclusion is that the community is simply warming up to
proprietary software companies: “Many developers are selecting
licenses that are less restrictive, a move that underscores the
broader adoption and value of open source in today's multi-source
development environments.”</p>
<p>Any of these conclusions might be reasonable if the 5% figure was
meaningful, but Black Duck has given us no reason to believe it is; if
anything, their own statements suggest it isn't. Programatically
capturing data on the prevalence of various FOSS licenses is
inherently difficult. At its edges, it's an artificial intelligence
problem (specifically a natural language understanding problem), because the many
home-grown and modified licenses in the world don't necessarily adhere
to standard language. But even the core task of cataloging the use of
the most common licenses is fraught: by the wide dispersal of projects
across centralized hosting services and single-project sites (and the
movement of individual projects between them), by inconsistencies in
how developers apply licenses to code (e.g. idiosyncratic headers and
directory structures), and by countless other variables.</p>
<p>Black Duck's techniques and algorithms for dealing with these
difficulties did not emerge fully formed. The company's engineers no
doubt continually refine the license-identification code. If these
refinements affected the data on all licenses equally, their effect on
the figures from year to year would probably be insignificant. But in
reality, GPL variants are much easier to identify than the whole set
of permissive licenses whose use has supposedly increased over the
last year. Each GPL variant's text is fixed. On the other hand,
there exists a whole category of licenses which are popularly referred to as
"BSD-style" licenses because, while the individual licenses resemble
the original BSD license in scope and style, they have been adapted
and rewritten liberally by various developers, universities, and
companies. These variations make permissive licenses particularly
difficult to identify, and for this reason improvements in Black
Duck's algorithms are likely to disproportionately capture more
previously unidentified uses of permissive rather than GPL-variant
licenses.</p>
<p>Black Duck's dataset has also changed: the company has begun
crawling 300 new sites (7.5% of its current total) just
since <a href="http://www.blackducksoftware.com/news/releases/2008-09-16">last
year's report</a>. We the nonpaying public have no way of
knowing the extent of the effect, because Black Duck's system is a black box: the company
doesn't disclose how the inclusion of new sources of data affects
its numbers.</p>
<p>For these reasons, it is impossible to know whether the 5% GPL
delta is meaningful until we know how the source data and the
algorithms have changed from one year to the next. The process of
cataloging and quantifying the use of FOSS licenses is a scientific
one, requiring the application of principles of computer science and
statistical analysis. As with any scientific pursuit, the methods
used must be verifiable before the results can be considered
trustworthy. I encourage Black Duck Software to release its own
software under a free software license—whether by joining the
alleged groundswell and using a permissive license, or by resort to a
retrograde copyleft license—so that its methods can be evaluated
by the community (not to mention its customers) and its reports can be
rendered meaningful.</p>
<p><strong>Correction:</strong> this post previously said that Black Duck only began crawling Microsoft's CodePlex site in May 2009. The <a href="http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/05/black-duck-agrees-to-index-microsoft-codeplex-projects.ars">press release</a> cited in fact says that Microsoft began pushing data from CodePlex to Black Duck in May. Peter Vescuso of Black Duck <a href="http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10535-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66489&messageID=1256032">says</a> that the company has been crawling CodePlex "for years."</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1246912440;}i:3;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:63:"Considerations on Patents that Read on Language Infrastructure
";s:4:"link";s:65:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jun/29/language-patents/";s:11:"description";s:8332:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>In an essay last Friday
entitled <a href="http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono"><cite>Why
free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C#</cite>, RMS argued</a> a
key point that I agree with: the software freedom community should
minimize its use of programming language infrastructure that comes
primarily from anti-software-freedom companies, notwithstanding FaiF
(Free as in Freedom) implementations. I've been thinking about an
extension of that argument: that language infrastructure created in a
community process is likely more resilient against attacks from
proprietary software companies.</p>
<p>Specifically, I am considering the risk that a patent attack will occur
against the language or its canonical implementation. We know that the
USPTO appears to have no bounds in constantly granting so-called
“software patents”, most of which are invalid within their
own system, and the rest may be like
the <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2008/dec/09/gpg-gen-key-decade/">RSA
patent</a>, and will force our community to invent around them, or (as
we had to do with RSA), “wait them out”. I'd like to
consider how these known facts apply to the implementation of language
infrastructure in the Free Software world.</p>
<p>Programming languages and their associated standard libraries and
implementations evolve in three basic ways:
<ul>
<li>A Free Software community designs and implements the language in a
grassroots fashion. Perl, PHP, and Python are a few examples.</li>
<li>A single corporate entity controls the language and its canonical
implementation. They perhaps also convince some standards body to adopt
it, but usually retain complete control. C# and Java a few
examples.</li>
<li>A single corporate entity controlled the language initially, but more
than 20 years have passed and the language now has many proprietary and
Free Software implementations. C and C++ are a few examples.</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>The patent issues in each of these situations deserves different
consideration, primarily related to the dispersion of patents that
likely read on the given language implementation. We have to assume
that the USPTO has granted many patents that read on any software a
person can conceivably write. The question is always: of all the things
you can write, which has the most risk of patent attack from the patent
holders in question?</p>
<p>In the case of the community-designed and Free-Software-implemented
languages, the patent risk is likely spread across many companies, and
mitigated by the fact that few have probably filed patents applications
designed specifically to read on the language and its implementation.
Since various individuals and companies contributed to the development
and design, and because it was a process run by the community, it's
unlikely there was a master plan by one entity to apply specifically for
patents on the language. So, while there are likely many patents that
read on the implementation, a single holder is unlikely to hold all the
patents, and those patents were probably not crafted for the specific
language. Only some of these many patent-holding entities will have a
desire to attack Free Software. It is therefore less likely that a user
of the language will be sued; a patent troll would have to do some work
to acquire the relevant patent. If that unlikely event does anyway
occur, the fact that the patent was not specifically designed to read on
the language implementation may indeed help, either by easing the
process of “inventing around” or by making it more difficult
for the patent troll to show the patent reads on the language
implementation. Finally, if the implementation is under a license like
GPL, or the Apache License (or any license with a patent grant), those
companies that did contribute to the language implementation may have
granted a patent license already.</p>
<p>Of course, these are all relative arguments against the alternative: a
language designed by a single company. If a single corporate entity
designed and implemented the language more recently than 20 years ago,
that company likely filed many yet-unexpired patents throughout the
process of designing and implementing the language and its
infrastructure. When the Free Software community implements fresh
versions of the language from scratch, it's very likely that it will
generate software that reads on those patents. Thus, the community must
live in constant and direct fear of that company. We must assume the
patents exist, and we know who holds them, and we know they filed them
with this very language in mind. It may be tough to invent around them
and still keep the Free Software implementation compatible. This is why
I and other Free Software advocates have insisted for years the all
companies who claim to support software freedom should grant
GPL-compatible patent licenses for all their patents. (I still await
Sam Ramji's response on my call for Microsoft to do so.)</p>
<p>Without that explicit patent license, we certainly should prefer the
community-driven and Free-Software-developed languages over those
developed by companies (like Microsoft) that have a history of anti-Free
Software practices. Regarding companies with a more ambiguous history
toward Free Software, some might argue that patents consolidated in a
“friendly” company is safest of all alternatives. They
might argue that with all those patents consolidated, patent trolls will
have a tough time acquiring patents and attacking FaiF implementations.
However, while this can sometimes be temporarily true, one cannot rely
on this safety. Java, for example, is in a precarious situation now.
Oracle is not a friend to Free Software, and soon will hold all Sun's
Java patents — a looming threat to FaiF Java implementations.
While I think it's more likely that Microsoft will attack FaiF C#
implementations with its patents eventually, an Oracle attack on FaiF
Java is a possibility. (We should also not forget that Sun in the late
1990s was very opposed to Free Software implementations of Java; the
corporate winds always change and we should not throw ourselves to
them.)</p>
<p>The last case in my list deserves at least a brief mention. Languages
like C (which was a purely AT&T endeavor initially) have reached the
age that the early patents would have now expired, and such languages
have slowly moved into community and standards-driven control. Thus,
over long periods of time, history shows us that companies do loosen
their iron grip of proprietary control of language implementations.
However, during that first 20 year period, we should face them with
great trepidation and stick with languages developed by the Free
Software community itself.</p>
<p>Finally, I close with the advice that I and my colleagues at SFLC
constantly give Free Software projects: don't be paralyzed with fear
over software patents. There are likely some USA patents that read on
any software you write. Make good choices (like avoiding C#, as RMS
suggests, and favoring languages like Perl, Python, PHP and C), and get
on with your work. If, as a non-profit Free Software developer, someone
writes you a threatening letter about patents or sues you for patent infringement, write
to <a href="mailto:help@softwarefreedom.org"><help@softwarefreedom.org></a>;
that's what SFLC is there for.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong>While my analysis was focused on the patent issues around languages, I couldn't resist this orthogonal topic <a href="http://blog.davebsd.com/2009/06/28/five-steps-to-vanquish-mono/">posted by David Siegel with some very helpful suggestions to developers who wish to limit the use of C#</a>. FLOSS is about using good software development to help solve legal, social and technological impediments to freedom. David is right on course with his suggestions.</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:41:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:65:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jun/29/language-patents/";s:7:"summary";s:8332:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>In an essay last Friday
entitled <a href="http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono"><cite>Why
free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C#</cite>, RMS argued</a> a
key point that I agree with: the software freedom community should
minimize its use of programming language infrastructure that comes
primarily from anti-software-freedom companies, notwithstanding FaiF
(Free as in Freedom) implementations. I've been thinking about an
extension of that argument: that language infrastructure created in a
community process is likely more resilient against attacks from
proprietary software companies.</p>
<p>Specifically, I am considering the risk that a patent attack will occur
against the language or its canonical implementation. We know that the
USPTO appears to have no bounds in constantly granting so-called
“software patents”, most of which are invalid within their
own system, and the rest may be like
the <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2008/dec/09/gpg-gen-key-decade/">RSA
patent</a>, and will force our community to invent around them, or (as
we had to do with RSA), “wait them out”. I'd like to
consider how these known facts apply to the implementation of language
infrastructure in the Free Software world.</p>
<p>Programming languages and their associated standard libraries and
implementations evolve in three basic ways:
<ul>
<li>A Free Software community designs and implements the language in a
grassroots fashion. Perl, PHP, and Python are a few examples.</li>
<li>A single corporate entity controls the language and its canonical
implementation. They perhaps also convince some standards body to adopt
it, but usually retain complete control. C# and Java a few
examples.</li>
<li>A single corporate entity controlled the language initially, but more
than 20 years have passed and the language now has many proprietary and
Free Software implementations. C and C++ are a few examples.</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>The patent issues in each of these situations deserves different
consideration, primarily related to the dispersion of patents that
likely read on the given language implementation. We have to assume
that the USPTO has granted many patents that read on any software a
person can conceivably write. The question is always: of all the things
you can write, which has the most risk of patent attack from the patent
holders in question?</p>
<p>In the case of the community-designed and Free-Software-implemented
languages, the patent risk is likely spread across many companies, and
mitigated by the fact that few have probably filed patents applications
designed specifically to read on the language and its implementation.
Since various individuals and companies contributed to the development
and design, and because it was a process run by the community, it's
unlikely there was a master plan by one entity to apply specifically for
patents on the language. So, while there are likely many patents that
read on the implementation, a single holder is unlikely to hold all the
patents, and those patents were probably not crafted for the specific
language. Only some of these many patent-holding entities will have a
desire to attack Free Software. It is therefore less likely that a user
of the language will be sued; a patent troll would have to do some work
to acquire the relevant patent. If that unlikely event does anyway
occur, the fact that the patent was not specifically designed to read on
the language implementation may indeed help, either by easing the
process of “inventing around” or by making it more difficult
for the patent troll to show the patent reads on the language
implementation. Finally, if the implementation is under a license like
GPL, or the Apache License (or any license with a patent grant), those
companies that did contribute to the language implementation may have
granted a patent license already.</p>
<p>Of course, these are all relative arguments against the alternative: a
language designed by a single company. If a single corporate entity
designed and implemented the language more recently than 20 years ago,
that company likely filed many yet-unexpired patents throughout the
process of designing and implementing the language and its
infrastructure. When the Free Software community implements fresh
versions of the language from scratch, it's very likely that it will
generate software that reads on those patents. Thus, the community must
live in constant and direct fear of that company. We must assume the
patents exist, and we know who holds them, and we know they filed them
with this very language in mind. It may be tough to invent around them
and still keep the Free Software implementation compatible. This is why
I and other Free Software advocates have insisted for years the all
companies who claim to support software freedom should grant
GPL-compatible patent licenses for all their patents. (I still await
Sam Ramji's response on my call for Microsoft to do so.)</p>
<p>Without that explicit patent license, we certainly should prefer the
community-driven and Free-Software-developed languages over those
developed by companies (like Microsoft) that have a history of anti-Free
Software practices. Regarding companies with a more ambiguous history
toward Free Software, some might argue that patents consolidated in a
“friendly” company is safest of all alternatives. They
might argue that with all those patents consolidated, patent trolls will
have a tough time acquiring patents and attacking FaiF implementations.
However, while this can sometimes be temporarily true, one cannot rely
on this safety. Java, for example, is in a precarious situation now.
Oracle is not a friend to Free Software, and soon will hold all Sun's
Java patents — a looming threat to FaiF Java implementations.
While I think it's more likely that Microsoft will attack FaiF C#
implementations with its patents eventually, an Oracle attack on FaiF
Java is a possibility. (We should also not forget that Sun in the late
1990s was very opposed to Free Software implementations of Java; the
corporate winds always change and we should not throw ourselves to
them.)</p>
<p>The last case in my list deserves at least a brief mention. Languages
like C (which was a purely AT&T endeavor initially) have reached the
age that the early patents would have now expired, and such languages
have slowly moved into community and standards-driven control. Thus,
over long periods of time, history shows us that companies do loosen
their iron grip of proprietary control of language implementations.
However, during that first 20 year period, we should face them with
great trepidation and stick with languages developed by the Free
Software community itself.</p>
<p>Finally, I close with the advice that I and my colleagues at SFLC
constantly give Free Software projects: don't be paralyzed with fear
over software patents. There are likely some USA patents that read on
any software you write. Make good choices (like avoiding C#, as RMS
suggests, and favoring languages like Perl, Python, PHP and C), and get
on with your work. If, as a non-profit Free Software developer, someone
writes you a threatening letter about patents or sues you for patent infringement, write
to <a href="mailto:help@softwarefreedom.org"><help@softwarefreedom.org></a>;
that's what SFLC is there for.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong>While my analysis was focused on the patent issues around languages, I couldn't resist this orthogonal topic <a href="http://blog.davebsd.com/2009/06/28/five-steps-to-vanquish-mono/">posted by David Siegel with some very helpful suggestions to developers who wish to limit the use of C#</a>. FLOSS is about using good software development to help solve legal, social and technological impediments to freedom. David is right on course with his suggestions.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1246279260;}i:4;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:51:"Support Your Friendly Neighborhood FLOSS Charities
";s:4:"link";s:61:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/may/12/start-giving/";s:11:"description";s:4739:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>I don't think we talk enough in the FLOSS community about the importance of individual support of FLOSS-related charitable organizations.
On a
recent <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2009/may/12/0x0D/">Software
Freedom Law Show episode</a>, Karen and I discuss
with <a href="http://www.stormyscorner.com/">Stormy Peters</a> how
important it is for geeks — who may well often give lots of code
to many FLOSS projects — also should consider giving a little bit
of financial funding to FLOSS organizations as well.</p>
<p>Of course, it's essential that people give their time to the charities
and the causes that they care about. In the FLOSS world, we typically
do that by giving code or documentation to our favorite FLOSS project.
I think that's led us all into the classic “I gave at the
office” feeling. Indeed, I know that I too have fallen into this
rut at times myself.</p>
<p>I suppose I could easily claim that, more than most people, I've given
enough at the office. Working at various non-profit organizations since
the 1990s, I've always made substantially less in salary than I would in
the for-profit industry for similar work. I also have always
volunteered my time in addition to my weekly work schedule. For
example, I currently get paid for my 40 hour/week job at the SFLC, but I
also donate about 20 hours of work for
the <a href="http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/donate">Software
Freedom Conservancy</a> each week.</p>
<p>Still, I don't believe that this is enough. There
are <a href="http://flossfoundations.org/foundation-directory">many,
many FLOSS non-profits</a> that deserve support — more than I have time to give. Meanwhile, very small
amounts of money, aggregated over many people giving, makes a world of
difference in a number of ways to these organizations.</p>
<p>Non-profits that are funded by a broad base of supporters are much more
stable and have greater longevity than other types of non-profits that
are funded primarily by corporate donations. This is because one donor
or even a few disappearing is not disaster. Also, through these donations, organizations
build a constituency of supporters that truly represent the people
that the non-profit seeks to serve.</p>
<p>Traditionally (with a few notable exceptions), non-profits in the FLOSS
world have relied primarily on corporate donations. I generally think
this is not ideal for a community that wishes to be fully represented by
the non-profits that embody the projects we care about. We want these
projects to represent the interest of developers and users, not
necessarily the for-profit corporate interests. Plus, we want the
organizations to survive even when companies stop supporting FLOSS or
just simply go out of business.</p>
<p>If we all contribute, it doesn't take that much for each individual to
be a part of making a real difference. I believe that if each person
who has benefited seriously from FLOSS gave $200/year, we'd make a
substantial change and a wonderful positive impact on the non-profit
organizations that shepherd and keep these FLOSS projects alive. I'm
not suggesting giving to any specific organization: just to take
$200/year and divide in the way you think is best across 2-4 different
FLOSS non-profits that sponsor project you personally care about or
benefit from.</p>
<p>Think about it: $200/year breaks down to $16/month. For me (and likely
for most people in a major city), $16/month means one fewer dinner at a
restaurant each month. Can't we all eat at home one more time per
month, and share that savings to help FLOSS non-profits?</p>
<p>If you are looking for a list of non-profits that could use your
support,
the <a href="http://flossfoundations.org/foundation-directory">FLOSS
Foundations Directory</a> is a good place to start. FWIW, in addition
to my volunteer work
with <a href="http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/donate">Conservancy</a>,
here's the list of non-profits that I'm supporting with a total of $200
this year (in
alphabetical order): <a href="http://member.fsf.org/join?referrer=1">The Free
Software Foundation</a>, <a href="http://www.gnome.org/friends/">GNOME
Foundation</a>, <a href="http://www.parrot.org/foundation">The Parrot
Foundation</a>,
and <a href="http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TwistedSoftwareFoundation">The
Twisted Project</a>. Which ones will you give to this year?</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 12 May 2009 07:07:07 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:61:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/may/12/start-giving/";s:7:"summary";s:4739:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>I don't think we talk enough in the FLOSS community about the importance of individual support of FLOSS-related charitable organizations.
On a
recent <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2009/may/12/0x0D/">Software
Freedom Law Show episode</a>, Karen and I discuss
with <a href="http://www.stormyscorner.com/">Stormy Peters</a> how
important it is for geeks — who may well often give lots of code
to many FLOSS projects — also should consider giving a little bit
of financial funding to FLOSS organizations as well.</p>
<p>Of course, it's essential that people give their time to the charities
and the causes that they care about. In the FLOSS world, we typically
do that by giving code or documentation to our favorite FLOSS project.
I think that's led us all into the classic “I gave at the
office” feeling. Indeed, I know that I too have fallen into this
rut at times myself.</p>
<p>I suppose I could easily claim that, more than most people, I've given
enough at the office. Working at various non-profit organizations since
the 1990s, I've always made substantially less in salary than I would in
the for-profit industry for similar work. I also have always
volunteered my time in addition to my weekly work schedule. For
example, I currently get paid for my 40 hour/week job at the SFLC, but I
also donate about 20 hours of work for
the <a href="http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/donate">Software
Freedom Conservancy</a> each week.</p>
<p>Still, I don't believe that this is enough. There
are <a href="http://flossfoundations.org/foundation-directory">many,
many FLOSS non-profits</a> that deserve support — more than I have time to give. Meanwhile, very small
amounts of money, aggregated over many people giving, makes a world of
difference in a number of ways to these organizations.</p>
<p>Non-profits that are funded by a broad base of supporters are much more
stable and have greater longevity than other types of non-profits that
are funded primarily by corporate donations. This is because one donor
or even a few disappearing is not disaster. Also, through these donations, organizations
build a constituency of supporters that truly represent the people
that the non-profit seeks to serve.</p>
<p>Traditionally (with a few notable exceptions), non-profits in the FLOSS
world have relied primarily on corporate donations. I generally think
this is not ideal for a community that wishes to be fully represented by
the non-profits that embody the projects we care about. We want these
projects to represent the interest of developers and users, not
necessarily the for-profit corporate interests. Plus, we want the
organizations to survive even when companies stop supporting FLOSS or
just simply go out of business.</p>
<p>If we all contribute, it doesn't take that much for each individual to
be a part of making a real difference. I believe that if each person
who has benefited seriously from FLOSS gave $200/year, we'd make a
substantial change and a wonderful positive impact on the non-profit
organizations that shepherd and keep these FLOSS projects alive. I'm
not suggesting giving to any specific organization: just to take
$200/year and divide in the way you think is best across 2-4 different
FLOSS non-profits that sponsor project you personally care about or
benefit from.</p>
<p>Think about it: $200/year breaks down to $16/month. For me (and likely
for most people in a major city), $16/month means one fewer dinner at a
restaurant each month. Can't we all eat at home one more time per
month, and share that savings to help FLOSS non-profits?</p>
<p>If you are looking for a list of non-profits that could use your
support,
the <a href="http://flossfoundations.org/foundation-directory">FLOSS
Foundations Directory</a> is a good place to start. FWIW, in addition
to my volunteer work
with <a href="http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/donate">Conservancy</a>,
here's the list of non-profits that I'm supporting with a total of $200
this year (in
alphabetical order): <a href="http://member.fsf.org/join?referrer=1">The Free
Software Foundation</a>, <a href="http://www.gnome.org/friends/">GNOME
Foundation</a>, <a href="http://www.parrot.org/foundation">The Parrot
Foundation</a>,
and <a href="http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TwistedSoftwareFoundation">The
Twisted Project</a>. Which ones will you give to this year?</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1242126427;}i:5;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:78:"If We Can't End Software Patents Tomorrow, What Should We Do In the Meantime?
";s:4:"link";s:74:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/28/meantime-fighting-patents/";s:11:"description";s:4462:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>As we've talked about in
our <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2009/apr/14/0x0B/">recent</a> <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2009/apr/28/0x0C/">podcasts</a>,
and as I mentioned
in <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/16/tomtom-microsoft/">various</a>
<a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2008/dec/09/gpg-gen-key-decade/">blog
posts</a>, software patents (i.e., patents that read on software) are a
major threat to software freedom. Due to this constant threat, the
primary goal of the Software Freedom community must be an end to all
software patents
worldwide. <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/patent-reform-is-not-enough.html">“Patent
reform” will never be enough</a>. The hard part, though, given
that abolishing the software patent system is such a long and tough war,
is what to do in the meantime about software patents that stand in the
way of immediate advancement of software freedom.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3513440381.html">We've all known for some time that Microsoft will pressure</a> (and sometimes
convince) companies to give in to Microsoft's patent aggression. They
know that a software patent pool can be used both as a tool to attack
FLOSS, and as a revenue stream by engaging in trolling behavior. It is,
effectively, their last ditch effort to kill FLOSS.</p>
<p>If we had the necessary political power and resources, we'd be able to
end software patents soon, so that all software patents would be
nullified. There are <a href="http://www.endsoftpatents.org">
people working</a> <a href="http://www.ffii.org/">on this</a>, and we should put the primary resources available behind efforts to end software patents. That's
unlikely to happen soon, and meanwhile we've <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/16/tomtom-microsoft/">already
seen Microsoft acting as a patent troll against FLOSS
redistributors</a>. So, the question is, what can we do in the
meantime, specifically about patents that have been actively
asserted?</p>
<p>While we cannot make the strategic move of ending software patents
quickly, we must turn to tactical plans. The tactical move, then, is to
disable the weapons we see actively used against FLOSS redistributors.
The weapons, in this case, are individual patents that anyone holds that
are actively enforced against a FLOSS redistributor.</p>
<p>To that end, the <a href="http://www.post-issue.org/">Post Issue Peer
To Patent</a> project has begun requesting prior art on the
patents, such as the FAT filesystem ones, that have been used to
attack FLOSS. If you go to their website, you can follow the links to
a form that allows you to submit things you've seen in the world that
could be used as prior art to reexam and perhaps destroy those
patents.</p>
<p>It's worthwhile for folks who are privy to some information that might
be prior art to submit there. This won't push forward our ultimate goal
of ending software patents, but it might create an opportunity to
disarm a few of the active weapons used to hurt FLOSS. The problem
remains that there are thousands of these weapons out there — some
of which will surely be <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2008/dec/09/gpg-gen-key-decade/">like
the RSA patent</a> and resilient to any reexam or other such destruction
attempt. Thus, we shouldn't let this tactical goal distract us from the
strategic one of ending software patents.</p>
<p>Finally, I can't let an opportunity go by without again mentioning, as
I always do, the easiest thing that developers can do that will ultimately
have the greatest impact on stopping software patents. Relicense your
software under AGPLv3, GPLv3, LGPLv3, or some other GPLv3-based software
license. GPLv3 and its derivatives have the strongest patent protections
available in any FLOSS license. As a FLOSS developer, it's unlikely
you've got at your fingertips some usable prior art for some existing patent, or
have political power to change the USPTO. However, you have the power to
pick the license of your software, so pick the one that defends against
patents best.</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:06:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:74:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/28/meantime-fighting-patents/";s:7:"summary";s:4462:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>As we've talked about in
our <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2009/apr/14/0x0B/">recent</a> <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2009/apr/28/0x0C/">podcasts</a>,
and as I mentioned
in <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/16/tomtom-microsoft/">various</a>
<a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2008/dec/09/gpg-gen-key-decade/">blog
posts</a>, software patents (i.e., patents that read on software) are a
major threat to software freedom. Due to this constant threat, the
primary goal of the Software Freedom community must be an end to all
software patents
worldwide. <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/patent-reform-is-not-enough.html">“Patent
reform” will never be enough</a>. The hard part, though, given
that abolishing the software patent system is such a long and tough war,
is what to do in the meantime about software patents that stand in the
way of immediate advancement of software freedom.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3513440381.html">We've all known for some time that Microsoft will pressure</a> (and sometimes
convince) companies to give in to Microsoft's patent aggression. They
know that a software patent pool can be used both as a tool to attack
FLOSS, and as a revenue stream by engaging in trolling behavior. It is,
effectively, their last ditch effort to kill FLOSS.</p>
<p>If we had the necessary political power and resources, we'd be able to
end software patents soon, so that all software patents would be
nullified. There are <a href="http://www.endsoftpatents.org">
people working</a> <a href="http://www.ffii.org/">on this</a>, and we should put the primary resources available behind efforts to end software patents. That's
unlikely to happen soon, and meanwhile we've <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/16/tomtom-microsoft/">already
seen Microsoft acting as a patent troll against FLOSS
redistributors</a>. So, the question is, what can we do in the
meantime, specifically about patents that have been actively
asserted?</p>
<p>While we cannot make the strategic move of ending software patents
quickly, we must turn to tactical plans. The tactical move, then, is to
disable the weapons we see actively used against FLOSS redistributors.
The weapons, in this case, are individual patents that anyone holds that
are actively enforced against a FLOSS redistributor.</p>
<p>To that end, the <a href="http://www.post-issue.org/">Post Issue Peer
To Patent</a> project has begun requesting prior art on the
patents, such as the FAT filesystem ones, that have been used to
attack FLOSS. If you go to their website, you can follow the links to
a form that allows you to submit things you've seen in the world that
could be used as prior art to reexam and perhaps destroy those
patents.</p>
<p>It's worthwhile for folks who are privy to some information that might
be prior art to submit there. This won't push forward our ultimate goal
of ending software patents, but it might create an opportunity to
disarm a few of the active weapons used to hurt FLOSS. The problem
remains that there are thousands of these weapons out there — some
of which will surely be <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2008/dec/09/gpg-gen-key-decade/">like
the RSA patent</a> and resilient to any reexam or other such destruction
attempt. Thus, we shouldn't let this tactical goal distract us from the
strategic one of ending software patents.</p>
<p>Finally, I can't let an opportunity go by without again mentioning, as
I always do, the easiest thing that developers can do that will ultimately
have the greatest impact on stopping software patents. Relicense your
software under AGPLv3, GPLv3, LGPLv3, or some other GPLv3-based software
license. GPLv3 and its derivatives have the strongest patent protections
available in any FLOSS license. As a FLOSS developer, it's unlikely
you've got at your fingertips some usable prior art for some existing patent, or
have political power to change the USPTO. However, you have the power to
pick the license of your software, so pick the one that defends against
patents best.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1240941960;}i:6;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:57:"Fork Well: It Could Be The Last, Best Hope for Community
";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/24/fork-well/";s:11:"description";s:6321:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>I have faced with much trepidation the news of Oracle's looming purchase
of Sun. Oracle has never shown any interest in community development,
particularly in the database area. They are the largest proprietary
database vendor on the planet, and they probably have very simple plans
for MySQL: kill it.</p>
<p>That's why I read with relief
<a href="http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-be-free-or-not-to-be-free.html">this
post by Monty (co-founder of the MySQL project) this week</a>, wherein
Monty plans (and encourages others, too) to put their full force behind
a MySQL “fork” that will be centered outside of Oracle.</p>
<p>Monty is undoubtedly correct when he says <q>I don't think that anyone
can own an open source project; the projects are defined by the de-facto
project leaders and the developers that are working on the project.</q>
and that <q>[w]ith Oracle now owning MySQL, I think that the need for an
independent true Open Source entity for MySQL is even bigger than ever
before.</q></p>
<p>I don't find the root of this problem in that one company has sold
itself to another, pursuant to the the greater glory of the
<a href="http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition">Ferengi
Rules of Acquisition</a>. Instead, I think the error is that projects
inside Sun did not have a non-profit entity to shepherd them. When a
single for-profit company is in control of a project's copyrights, its
trademarks, and employs nearly all its core developers, there is a gross
imbalance. The community around the project isn't healthy, and can
easily be disrupted by the winds of corporate change, which blow in
service of the only goal of for-profit existence: higher profits.</p>
<p>I encourage Monty, as well as core developers of VirtualBox,
OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, Sun's Java, and any other project that is
currently under the full control of Sun (or indeed any other for-profit
corporation) to think about this idea. Non-profits, particularly
501(c)(3)'s, are fundamentally different than for-profits. They exist
to serve a community or a constituency and the public good, never
profit. Therefore, the health of the codebase, the diversity of the
developer and user community, and the advancement of software freedom
can be the clear mission of a non-profit that houses a FLOSS project. A
non-profit ensures that while corporate funding comes and goes, the
mission of the project and its institutional embodiment stay stable.
For example, just like shareholders have a duty to fire a CEO when he
fails to make enough profit (i.e., the for-profit company is not
reaching its maximal goal), boards of directors and/or memberships of
non-profits must fire the President and/or Executive Director when they
fail to serve the community well. Instead of the “profit
motive”, 501(c)(3)'s have the “community motive”.</p>
<p>Yet, the challenge of focusing on such goals remains difficult for
projects that did not spawn from a community to start. GNU and Linux
were both started by individual developers that built strong communities
before there was any for-profit corporate interest in the software.
When a project started inside a company with profit in mind, shoehorning
community principles into the project can rarely succeed. I believe
that a community must usually evolve from the ashes of some incident
that wakes everyone up to realize the project will come to harm due to
strict adherence to the profit motive.</p>
<p>I should probably remind everyone that I'm not opposed to capitalism
per se. Indeed, I've often fought on the other side of this equation
when licenses (such as MySQL's own very early pre-GPL license) permit
noncommercial use but prohibit commercial use. I believe that
commercial and non-commercial <em>activity with the code</em> should be
equally permitted in a non-discriminatory way. However, the center of
gravity for developers, where the copyrights and trademarks live, and
how core work on the codebase is funded are all orthogonal questions to
the question of the software's license.</p>
<p>My experience has anecdotally taught me that FLOSS communities function
best when the following two things are true: (a) the codebase is held
neutrally, either in the hands of the individual developers who wrote
the code, or in a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and (b) not too many core
developers share the same employer. I believe that reaching that state
should be Job One of any for-profit seeking to build a FLOSS community.
Sadly, this type of community health is often at direct odds with
the <em>traditional</em> capitalist thinking of for-profit shareholders.
I'm thus not surprised when FLOSS community managers in for-profit
companies can only do so much. The rest is really up to the community
of developers to fork and demand that a non-profit or other neutral and
diverse developer-controlled management team exist. Attempts at this,
sadly, fail much more often than they succeed.</p>
<p>Monty's post likely had more hope in it than this one. Monty didn't
jump to my conclusion that Oracle will kill MySQL; Monty considers it
also possible that Oracle might sell MySQL or (and here's the
possibility I really doubt) that Oracle will change into a
community-driven FLOSS company. I love Monty's optimism in even
considering this possible. I honestly hope my pragmatism about this is
shown to be sheer pessimism. In the meantime, focusing on the MySQL
forks and pressuring Oracle to engage the FLOSS community in a genuine
way is the best strategy no matter what outcome you think is most
likely.</p>
<p><strong>Update (on 17 May 2009):</strong> Monty <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10241626-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20">announced an industry consortium</a> that will seek to be a neutral space for MySQL development. I tend to prefer charitable non-profits to trade associations, but better the latter than hoping for Oracle to do the right thing.</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:03:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:58:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/24/fork-well/";s:7:"summary";s:6321:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>I have faced with much trepidation the news of Oracle's looming purchase
of Sun. Oracle has never shown any interest in community development,
particularly in the database area. They are the largest proprietary
database vendor on the planet, and they probably have very simple plans
for MySQL: kill it.</p>
<p>That's why I read with relief
<a href="http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-be-free-or-not-to-be-free.html">this
post by Monty (co-founder of the MySQL project) this week</a>, wherein
Monty plans (and encourages others, too) to put their full force behind
a MySQL “fork” that will be centered outside of Oracle.</p>
<p>Monty is undoubtedly correct when he says <q>I don't think that anyone
can own an open source project; the projects are defined by the de-facto
project leaders and the developers that are working on the project.</q>
and that <q>[w]ith Oracle now owning MySQL, I think that the need for an
independent true Open Source entity for MySQL is even bigger than ever
before.</q></p>
<p>I don't find the root of this problem in that one company has sold
itself to another, pursuant to the the greater glory of the
<a href="http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition">Ferengi
Rules of Acquisition</a>. Instead, I think the error is that projects
inside Sun did not have a non-profit entity to shepherd them. When a
single for-profit company is in control of a project's copyrights, its
trademarks, and employs nearly all its core developers, there is a gross
imbalance. The community around the project isn't healthy, and can
easily be disrupted by the winds of corporate change, which blow in
service of the only goal of for-profit existence: higher profits.</p>
<p>I encourage Monty, as well as core developers of VirtualBox,
OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, Sun's Java, and any other project that is
currently under the full control of Sun (or indeed any other for-profit
corporation) to think about this idea. Non-profits, particularly
501(c)(3)'s, are fundamentally different than for-profits. They exist
to serve a community or a constituency and the public good, never
profit. Therefore, the health of the codebase, the diversity of the
developer and user community, and the advancement of software freedom
can be the clear mission of a non-profit that houses a FLOSS project. A
non-profit ensures that while corporate funding comes and goes, the
mission of the project and its institutional embodiment stay stable.
For example, just like shareholders have a duty to fire a CEO when he
fails to make enough profit (i.e., the for-profit company is not
reaching its maximal goal), boards of directors and/or memberships of
non-profits must fire the President and/or Executive Director when they
fail to serve the community well. Instead of the “profit
motive”, 501(c)(3)'s have the “community motive”.</p>
<p>Yet, the challenge of focusing on such goals remains difficult for
projects that did not spawn from a community to start. GNU and Linux
were both started by individual developers that built strong communities
before there was any for-profit corporate interest in the software.
When a project started inside a company with profit in mind, shoehorning
community principles into the project can rarely succeed. I believe
that a community must usually evolve from the ashes of some incident
that wakes everyone up to realize the project will come to harm due to
strict adherence to the profit motive.</p>
<p>I should probably remind everyone that I'm not opposed to capitalism
per se. Indeed, I've often fought on the other side of this equation
when licenses (such as MySQL's own very early pre-GPL license) permit
noncommercial use but prohibit commercial use. I believe that
commercial and non-commercial <em>activity with the code</em> should be
equally permitted in a non-discriminatory way. However, the center of
gravity for developers, where the copyrights and trademarks live, and
how core work on the codebase is funded are all orthogonal questions to
the question of the software's license.</p>
<p>My experience has anecdotally taught me that FLOSS communities function
best when the following two things are true: (a) the codebase is held
neutrally, either in the hands of the individual developers who wrote
the code, or in a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and (b) not too many core
developers share the same employer. I believe that reaching that state
should be Job One of any for-profit seeking to build a FLOSS community.
Sadly, this type of community health is often at direct odds with
the <em>traditional</em> capitalist thinking of for-profit shareholders.
I'm thus not surprised when FLOSS community managers in for-profit
companies can only do so much. The rest is really up to the community
of developers to fork and demand that a non-profit or other neutral and
diverse developer-controlled management team exist. Attempts at this,
sadly, fail much more often than they succeed.</p>
<p>Monty's post likely had more hope in it than this one. Monty didn't
jump to my conclusion that Oracle will kill MySQL; Monty considers it
also possible that Oracle might sell MySQL or (and here's the
possibility I really doubt) that Oracle will change into a
community-driven FLOSS company. I love Monty's optimism in even
considering this possible. I honestly hope my pragmatism about this is
shown to be sheer pessimism. In the meantime, focusing on the MySQL
forks and pressuring Oracle to engage the FLOSS community in a genuine
way is the best strategy no matter what outcome you think is most
likely.</p>
<p><strong>Update (on 17 May 2009):</strong> Monty <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10241626-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20">announced an industry consortium</a> that will seek to be a neutral space for MySQL development. I tend to prefer charitable non-profits to trade associations, but better the latter than hoping for Oracle to do the right thing.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1240603380;}i:7;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:53:"TomTom/Microsoft: A Wake-Up Call for GPLv3 Migration
";s:4:"link";s:65:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/16/tomtom-microsoft/";s:11:"description";s:13836:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>There has been a lot of press coverage about the Microsoft/TomTom
settlement. Unfortunately, so far, I have seen no one speak directly
about the dangers that this deal could pose to software freedom, and
what our community should consider in its wake. Karen and I discussed
some of these
details <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2009/apr/14/0x0B/">on
our podcast</a>, but I thought it would be useful to have a blog post
about this issue as well.</p>
<p>Most settlement agreements are sealed. This means that we won't ever
actually know what TomTom agreed to and whether or not it violates
GPLv2. The violation, if one exists, would likely be of GPLv2's §
7. The problem has always been that it's difficult to actually witness
a v2§7 violation occurring (due in large part to less than perfect
wording of that section). To find a violation v2§7, you have to
discover that there were <q>conditions imposed on [TomTom] ... that
contradict the conditions of [GPLv2]</q>. So, we won't actually know if
this agreement violates GPLv2 unless we read the agreement itself, or if
we observe some behavior by Microsoft or TomTom that shows that the
agreement must be in violation.</p>
<p>To clarify the last statement, consider the hypothetical options. For
TomTom to have agreed to something GPLv2-compliant with Microsoft, the
agreement would have needed to either (a) not grant a patent license at
all (perhaps, for example, Microsoft conceded in the sealed agreement
that the patents aren't actually enforceable on the GPLv2'd components),
or (b) give a patent license that was royalty-free and permitted all
GPLv2-protected activities by all recipients of patent-practicing
GPLv2'd code from TomTom, or downstream from TomTom.</p>
<p>It's certainly possible Microsoft either capitulated regarding the
unenforceability (or irrelevancy) of its patents on the GPLv2'd software
in question, or granted some sort of license. We won't know directly
without seeing the agreement, or by observing a later action by
Microsoft. If, for example, Microsoft later is observed enforcing the
FAT patent against a Linux distributor, one might successfully argue
that the user <strong>must</strong> have the right to practice those
Microsoft patents in the GPLv2 code, because otherwise, how was TomTom
able to distribute under GPLv2? (Note, BTW, that <strong>any</strong>
redistributor of Linux could make themselves downstream from TomTom,
since TomTom distributes source on their website.) If no such
permission existed, TomTom would then be caught in a violation —
at least in my (perhaps minority) reading of GPLv2.<sup><a
id="return-footnote-hypothetical-text-changes"
href="#footnote-hypothetical-text-changes">0</a></sup></p>
<p>Many have argued that GPLv2 § 7 isn't worded well enough to
verify this line of thinking. I and a few other key GPL thinkers
disagree, mainly because this reading is clearly the intent of GPLv2
when you read the Preamble. But, there are multiple interpretations of
GPLv2's wording on this issue, and, the wording was written before the
drafters really knew exactly how patents would be used to hurt Free
Software. We'll thus probably never really have complete certainty that
such patent deals violate GPLv2.</p>
<p>This TomTom/Microsoft deal (and indeed, probably dozens of others like
it whose existence is not public, because lawsuits aren't involved)
almost surely plays into this interpretation ambiguity. Microsoft
likely convinced TomTom that the deal is GPLv2-compliant, and that's why
there are so many statements in the press opining about its likely GPLv2
compliance. I, Jeremy Allison, and others might be in the minority in
our belief of the strength of GPLv2 § 7, but no one can disagree
with the intent of the section, as stated in the Preamble. Microsoft is
manipulating the interpretation disagreements to convince smaller
companies like Novell, TomTom, and probably others into believing that
these complicated patent licensing deals and/or covenants are
GPLv2-compliant. Since most of them are about the kernel named Linux,
and the Linux copyright holders are the only ones with power to enforce,
Microsoft is winning on this front.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the GPLv3 clarifies this issue, and improves the
situation. Therefore, this is a great moment in our community to
reflect on the importance of GPLv3 migration. The drafters of GPLv3, responding to the Microsoft/Novell deal,
considered carefully how to address these sorts of agreements.
Specifically, we have these two paragraphs in GPLv3:
<blockquote>
<p> If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or
arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a
covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties
receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify
or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license
you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered
work and works based on it.</p>
<p> A patent license is “discriminatory” if it does not include
within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is
conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are
specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered
work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in
the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the
third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work,
and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would
receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license (a) in
connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or copies made
from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific
products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered
into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28
March 2007.</p>
</blockquote>
</p>
<p>Were Linux under GPLv3 (but not GPLv2), these terms, particularly those
in the second paragraph, would clearly and unequivocally prohibit TomTom
from entering into any arrangement with Microsoft that doesn't grant a
license to any Microsoft patent that reads on Linux. Indeed, even what
has been publicly said about this agreement seems to indicate strongly
that this deal would violate GPLv3. While the Novell/Microsoft deal was
grandfathered in (via the date above), this new agreement is not. Yet,
the most frustrating aspect of the press coverage of this deal is that
few have taken the opportunity to advocate for GPLv3 adoption by more
projects. I hope now that we're a few weeks out from the coverage,
project leaders will begin again to consider adding this additional
patent protection for their users and redistributors.</p>
<p>Toward the goal of convincing GPLv2 users to switch to GPLv3, I should
explain a bit why special patent licensing deals like this are bad for
software freedom; it's not completely obvious. To do so, we can look
specifically at what TomTom and Microsoft said in the press coverage of
their deal: <q>The agreement protects TomTom's customers under the
patents …, the companies said</q>
(<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10206988-56.html"><cite>Microsoft,
TomTom Settle Patent Dispute</cite></a>, Ina Fried).
</p>
<p>Thus, according to Microsoft and TomTom, the agreement gives some sort
of “patent protection” to TomTom <strong>customers</strong>,
and presumably no one else. This means that if someone buys a
GNU/Linux-based TomTom product, they have greater protection from
Microsoft's patents than if they don't. It creates two unequal classes of
users: those who pay TomTom and those who don't. The ones who don't pay
TomTom will have to worry if they will be the next ones sued or attacked
in some other way by Microsoft over patent infringement.</p>
<p>Creating haves and have-nots in the software licensing space is
precisely what all versions of the GPL seek to prevent. This is why the
Preamble of GPLv2 said: <q>any free program is threatened constantly by
software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a
free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making
the program proprietary.</q></p>
<p>Further to this point, in
the <a href="http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl3-dd3-rationale.pdf"><cite>Rationale
Document for the Third Discussion Draft of GPLv3</cite></a>, a similar
argument is given in more detail:
<blockquote>
<p>The basic harm that such an agreement can do is to make the free
software subject to it effectively proprietary. This result occurs to the
extent that users feel compelled, by the threat of the patent, to get
their copies in this way. So far, the Microsoft/Novell deal does not seem
to have had this result, or at least not very much: users do not seem to
be choosing Novell for this reason. But we cannot take for granted that
such threats will always fail to harm the community. We take the threat
seriously, and we have decided to act to block such threats, and to reduce
their potential to do harm. Such deals also offer patent holders a crack
through which to split the community. Offering commercial users the chance
to buy limited promises of patent safety in effect invites each of them to
make a separate peace with patent aggressors, and abandon the rest of our
community to its fate.</p>
</blockquote>
</p>
<p>It's true that one can blissfully use, redistribute, sell and modify
some patent-covered software for years without ever facing a patent
enforcement action. But, particularly in situations where known patents
have been asserted, those without a patent license often live in fear of
copying, modifying and sharing code that exercises the teachings of the
patent. We saw this <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2008/dec/09/gpg-gen-key-decade/">throughout the 1990s with RSA</a>, and today most
commonly with audio and video codecs. Microsoft and other anti-Free
Software companies have enough patents to attack if we let them. The
first steps in stopping it are to (a) adopt GPLv3, LGPLv3 and AGPLv3
with the improved patent provisions, and (b) condemning GPLv2-only deals
that solve a patent problem for some users but leave the rest out in the
cold, and (c) pointing out that the purported certainty that such deals
are GPLv2-compliant is definitely in question.</p>
<p>Patents always remain a serious threat, and, while the protection under
GPLv2 has probably been underestimated, we cannot overestimate the
additional protection that GPLv3 gives us in this regard. Microsoft
clearly knows that the GPLv3 terms will kill their patent aggression
business model, and have therefore focused their attacks on
GPLv2-licensed code. Shouldn't we start to flank them by making less
GPLv2 code available for these sorts of deals?</p>
<p>Finally, I would like to draw specific attention the fact that TomTom,
as a company, is not necessarily an ally of software freedom. They are
like most for-profit companies; they use FLOSS when it is convenient for
them, and give back when the licenses obligate them to do so, or when it
behooves them in some way. As a for-profit company, they made this deal
to please their shareholders, not the Free Software community. Admittedly, their use of the FLOSS in their
products was done legitimately (that
is, <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20041024-linux-tomtom.html">once
their GPLv2 non-compliance was corrected by Harald Welte in 2004</a>).
However, I do not think we should look upon TomTom as a particularly
helpful member of the community. Indeed, most of the patents that
Microsoft asserted against TomTom were on their proprietary components,
not their FLOSS ones. Thus, most of this dispute was a proprietary
software company arguing with another proprietary software company over
patents that read on proprietary software. Our community should tell
TomTom that if they want to join and support the FLOSS world, they
should release their software under a FLOSS license — including
software that they aren't obligated to do so by the licenses. Wouldn't it be quite interesting if TomTom's mapping display software were available under, say, GPLv3?</p>
<p>(Added later): Even if TomTom fails to release their mapping applications as Free Software, our minimal demand should be a license to their patents for use in Free Software. Recall that TomTom <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/03/tomtom_needs_to.html">countersued Microsoft, also alleging patent infringement</a> on TomTom's patents. TomTom has still yet to offer a public license on those patents for use by the Free Software community. If they are actually not hostile to software freedom, wouldn't they allow us to <em>at least</em> practice the teachings of their patents in GPL'd software?</p>
<hr class="footnote-separator"/>
<p><sup><a id="footnote-hypothetical-text-changes"
href="#return-footnote-hypothetical-text-changes">0</a></sup><strong>Update:</strong>
Andrew Tridgell pointed out that my verb tenses in my hypothetical example
made the text sound more broadly worded than I intended. I've thus
corrected the text in the hypothetical example to be clearer. Thanks for
the clarification, Tridge!</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:46:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:65:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/16/tomtom-microsoft/";s:7:"summary";s:13836:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>There has been a lot of press coverage about the Microsoft/TomTom
settlement. Unfortunately, so far, I have seen no one speak directly
about the dangers that this deal could pose to software freedom, and
what our community should consider in its wake. Karen and I discussed
some of these
details <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2009/apr/14/0x0B/">on
our podcast</a>, but I thought it would be useful to have a blog post
about this issue as well.</p>
<p>Most settlement agreements are sealed. This means that we won't ever
actually know what TomTom agreed to and whether or not it violates
GPLv2. The violation, if one exists, would likely be of GPLv2's §
7. The problem has always been that it's difficult to actually witness
a v2§7 violation occurring (due in large part to less than perfect
wording of that section). To find a violation v2§7, you have to
discover that there were <q>conditions imposed on [TomTom] ... that
contradict the conditions of [GPLv2]</q>. So, we won't actually know if
this agreement violates GPLv2 unless we read the agreement itself, or if
we observe some behavior by Microsoft or TomTom that shows that the
agreement must be in violation.</p>
<p>To clarify the last statement, consider the hypothetical options. For
TomTom to have agreed to something GPLv2-compliant with Microsoft, the
agreement would have needed to either (a) not grant a patent license at
all (perhaps, for example, Microsoft conceded in the sealed agreement
that the patents aren't actually enforceable on the GPLv2'd components),
or (b) give a patent license that was royalty-free and permitted all
GPLv2-protected activities by all recipients of patent-practicing
GPLv2'd code from TomTom, or downstream from TomTom.</p>
<p>It's certainly possible Microsoft either capitulated regarding the
unenforceability (or irrelevancy) of its patents on the GPLv2'd software
in question, or granted some sort of license. We won't know directly
without seeing the agreement, or by observing a later action by
Microsoft. If, for example, Microsoft later is observed enforcing the
FAT patent against a Linux distributor, one might successfully argue
that the user <strong>must</strong> have the right to practice those
Microsoft patents in the GPLv2 code, because otherwise, how was TomTom
able to distribute under GPLv2? (Note, BTW, that <strong>any</strong>
redistributor of Linux could make themselves downstream from TomTom,
since TomTom distributes source on their website.) If no such
permission existed, TomTom would then be caught in a violation —
at least in my (perhaps minority) reading of GPLv2.<sup><a
id="return-footnote-hypothetical-text-changes"
href="#footnote-hypothetical-text-changes">0</a></sup></p>
<p>Many have argued that GPLv2 § 7 isn't worded well enough to
verify this line of thinking. I and a few other key GPL thinkers
disagree, mainly because this reading is clearly the intent of GPLv2
when you read the Preamble. But, there are multiple interpretations of
GPLv2's wording on this issue, and, the wording was written before the
drafters really knew exactly how patents would be used to hurt Free
Software. We'll thus probably never really have complete certainty that
such patent deals violate GPLv2.</p>
<p>This TomTom/Microsoft deal (and indeed, probably dozens of others like
it whose existence is not public, because lawsuits aren't involved)
almost surely plays into this interpretation ambiguity. Microsoft
likely convinced TomTom that the deal is GPLv2-compliant, and that's why
there are so many statements in the press opining about its likely GPLv2
compliance. I, Jeremy Allison, and others might be in the minority in
our belief of the strength of GPLv2 § 7, but no one can disagree
with the intent of the section, as stated in the Preamble. Microsoft is
manipulating the interpretation disagreements to convince smaller
companies like Novell, TomTom, and probably others into believing that
these complicated patent licensing deals and/or covenants are
GPLv2-compliant. Since most of them are about the kernel named Linux,
and the Linux copyright holders are the only ones with power to enforce,
Microsoft is winning on this front.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the GPLv3 clarifies this issue, and improves the
situation. Therefore, this is a great moment in our community to
reflect on the importance of GPLv3 migration. The drafters of GPLv3, responding to the Microsoft/Novell deal,
considered carefully how to address these sorts of agreements.
Specifically, we have these two paragraphs in GPLv3:
<blockquote>
<p> If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or
arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a
covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties
receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify
or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license
you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered
work and works based on it.</p>
<p> A patent license is “discriminatory” if it does not include
within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is
conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are
specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered
work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in
the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the
third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work,
and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would
receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license (a) in
connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or copies made
from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific
products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered
into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28
March 2007.</p>
</blockquote>
</p>
<p>Were Linux under GPLv3 (but not GPLv2), these terms, particularly those
in the second paragraph, would clearly and unequivocally prohibit TomTom
from entering into any arrangement with Microsoft that doesn't grant a
license to any Microsoft patent that reads on Linux. Indeed, even what
has been publicly said about this agreement seems to indicate strongly
that this deal would violate GPLv3. While the Novell/Microsoft deal was
grandfathered in (via the date above), this new agreement is not. Yet,
the most frustrating aspect of the press coverage of this deal is that
few have taken the opportunity to advocate for GPLv3 adoption by more
projects. I hope now that we're a few weeks out from the coverage,
project leaders will begin again to consider adding this additional
patent protection for their users and redistributors.</p>
<p>Toward the goal of convincing GPLv2 users to switch to GPLv3, I should
explain a bit why special patent licensing deals like this are bad for
software freedom; it's not completely obvious. To do so, we can look
specifically at what TomTom and Microsoft said in the press coverage of
their deal: <q>The agreement protects TomTom's customers under the
patents …, the companies said</q>
(<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10206988-56.html"><cite>Microsoft,
TomTom Settle Patent Dispute</cite></a>, Ina Fried).
</p>
<p>Thus, according to Microsoft and TomTom, the agreement gives some sort
of “patent protection” to TomTom <strong>customers</strong>,
and presumably no one else. This means that if someone buys a
GNU/Linux-based TomTom product, they have greater protection from
Microsoft's patents than if they don't. It creates two unequal classes of
users: those who pay TomTom and those who don't. The ones who don't pay
TomTom will have to worry if they will be the next ones sued or attacked
in some other way by Microsoft over patent infringement.</p>
<p>Creating haves and have-nots in the software licensing space is
precisely what all versions of the GPL seek to prevent. This is why the
Preamble of GPLv2 said: <q>any free program is threatened constantly by
software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a
free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making
the program proprietary.</q></p>
<p>Further to this point, in
the <a href="http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl3-dd3-rationale.pdf"><cite>Rationale
Document for the Third Discussion Draft of GPLv3</cite></a>, a similar
argument is given in more detail:
<blockquote>
<p>The basic harm that such an agreement can do is to make the free
software subject to it effectively proprietary. This result occurs to the
extent that users feel compelled, by the threat of the patent, to get
their copies in this way. So far, the Microsoft/Novell deal does not seem
to have had this result, or at least not very much: users do not seem to
be choosing Novell for this reason. But we cannot take for granted that
such threats will always fail to harm the community. We take the threat
seriously, and we have decided to act to block such threats, and to reduce
their potential to do harm. Such deals also offer patent holders a crack
through which to split the community. Offering commercial users the chance
to buy limited promises of patent safety in effect invites each of them to
make a separate peace with patent aggressors, and abandon the rest of our
community to its fate.</p>
</blockquote>
</p>
<p>It's true that one can blissfully use, redistribute, sell and modify
some patent-covered software for years without ever facing a patent
enforcement action. But, particularly in situations where known patents
have been asserted, those without a patent license often live in fear of
copying, modifying and sharing code that exercises the teachings of the
patent. We saw this <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2008/dec/09/gpg-gen-key-decade/">throughout the 1990s with RSA</a>, and today most
commonly with audio and video codecs. Microsoft and other anti-Free
Software companies have enough patents to attack if we let them. The
first steps in stopping it are to (a) adopt GPLv3, LGPLv3 and AGPLv3
with the improved patent provisions, and (b) condemning GPLv2-only deals
that solve a patent problem for some users but leave the rest out in the
cold, and (c) pointing out that the purported certainty that such deals
are GPLv2-compliant is definitely in question.</p>
<p>Patents always remain a serious threat, and, while the protection under
GPLv2 has probably been underestimated, we cannot overestimate the
additional protection that GPLv3 gives us in this regard. Microsoft
clearly knows that the GPLv3 terms will kill their patent aggression
business model, and have therefore focused their attacks on
GPLv2-licensed code. Shouldn't we start to flank them by making less
GPLv2 code available for these sorts of deals?</p>
<p>Finally, I would like to draw specific attention the fact that TomTom,
as a company, is not necessarily an ally of software freedom. They are
like most for-profit companies; they use FLOSS when it is convenient for
them, and give back when the licenses obligate them to do so, or when it
behooves them in some way. As a for-profit company, they made this deal
to please their shareholders, not the Free Software community. Admittedly, their use of the FLOSS in their
products was done legitimately (that
is, <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20041024-linux-tomtom.html">once
their GPLv2 non-compliance was corrected by Harald Welte in 2004</a>).
However, I do not think we should look upon TomTom as a particularly
helpful member of the community. Indeed, most of the patents that
Microsoft asserted against TomTom were on their proprietary components,
not their FLOSS ones. Thus, most of this dispute was a proprietary
software company arguing with another proprietary software company over
patents that read on proprietary software. Our community should tell
TomTom that if they want to join and support the FLOSS world, they
should release their software under a FLOSS license — including
software that they aren't obligated to do so by the licenses. Wouldn't it be quite interesting if TomTom's mapping display software were available under, say, GPLv3?</p>
<p>(Added later): Even if TomTom fails to release their mapping applications as Free Software, our minimal demand should be a license to their patents for use in Free Software. Recall that TomTom <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/03/tomtom_needs_to.html">countersued Microsoft, also alleging patent infringement</a> on TomTom's patents. TomTom has still yet to offer a public license on those patents for use by the Free Software community. If they are actually not hostile to software freedom, wouldn't they allow us to <em>at least</em> practice the teachings of their patents in GPL'd software?</p>
<hr class="footnote-separator"/>
<p><sup><a id="footnote-hypothetical-text-changes"
href="#return-footnote-hypothetical-text-changes">0</a></sup><strong>Update:</strong>
Andrew Tridgell pointed out that my verb tenses in my hypothetical example
made the text sound more broadly worded than I intended. I've thus
corrected the text in the hypothetical example to be clearer. Thanks for
the clarification, Tridge!</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1239896760;}i:8;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:45:"Neary on Copyright Assignment: Some Thoughts
";s:4:"link";s:75:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/08/neary-copyright-assignment/";s:11:"description";s:5635:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p><a href="http://dneary.free.fr/">Dave Neary</a> found me during
breakfast at the Linux Collaboration Summit this morning and mentioned
that he was being flamed for a blog post he made,
<a href="http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2009/04/08/copyright-assignment-and-other-barriers-to-entry/"><cite>Copyright
assignment and other barriers to entry</cite></a>. Or, as some might title it
in a Computer Science academic tradition: <cite>Copyright Assignment
Considered Harmful</cite>. I took a look at Dave's post, and I
definitely think it's worth reading and considering, regardless of
whether you agree with it or flame it. For my part, I think I agree
with most of his points.</p>
<p>One of the distinctions that Dave is making that some might miss is the
difference between non-profit, community-controlled copyright assignment
assignees and for-profit copyright assignees. He
<a href="http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/06/07/on-trusting-open-source-companies/">quotes
Luis Villa</a> to make the point that companies, ultimately, aren't the
best destinations as a final home of FLOSS copyrights. If copyright
assignment is looked only through the lens of a for-profit corporate
entity — with only the duty to its shareholders to determine its
future — then indeed it's a dangerous situation for many of the
reasons that Dave raises.</p>
<p>I believe strongly that assigning copyright to a for-profit corporate
entity is usually problematic. As Dave points out, corporations aren't
really community members proper of a Free Software community; rather,
their employees typically are. I have always felt that either
copyrights should be assigned to a transparently-run non-profit
501(c)(3) entity, or they should be held by individual contributors.
Indeed, the <a href="http://www.samba.org">Samba project</a> even has a
<a href="http://www.samba.org/samba/devel/copyright-policy.html">policy
to accept absolutely no corporate copyrights in their codebase</a>, and
I would love to see more projects adopt that policy.</p>
<p>I trust 501(c)(3) non-profits more than for-profits not only because
I've spent most of my career in the former, and have enjoyed that time
more than my time at the latter. I trust non-profits more because their
charters and founding documents require a duty to a public-benefiting
mission and to a community. They are failing to act properly under
their charters if they put the needs of a for-profit entity ahead of the
needs of the community and the public. This is exactly the correct
alignment of incentives for a consolidation of FLOSS copyrights.</p>
<p>Some projects don't like centralized copyright for various reasons.
While I do prefer it myself, I can understand this desire among
individuals to each keep their stake of control in the project. Thus, I
don't object to projects that want each individual contributor to have
their own copyright. In this situation, the incentives are still
properly aligned, because individuals who helped make the project happen
have the legal control. While these individuals have
no <em>required</em> commitment to the public good like a non-profit,
they <strong>are</strong> members of a community and are much more
likely to put the community needs above the profit motive that controls
all for-profit entities.</p>
<p>When Dave says copyright assignment might be harmful, he seems to talk
primarily about for-profit corporate assignment. I agree with him on
that point. however, when he mentions that it's unnecessary, I don't
completely agree, but he raises well the points that I would raise as to
why it's important.</p>
<p>However, in the middle of Dave's post is the bigger concern that
deserves special mention. The important task is keeping a clear record
of the copyright provenance about where the work came from, and who
might have a copyright claim. Copyright assignment is a short-hand way
to do this in an organized and clear fashion. It's a simple solution
with some overhead, and sometimes projects over the years have been
annoyed with (and even ridiculed) that overhead. However, the more
complex solutions have overhead, too. If you don't do assignment, you
must keep careful track of every contributor, what their employer
agreements say, and whether they have the right to submit patches under
their own copyrights to the project. Some projects do this better than
others.</p>
<p>Regardless, all of this is hard work. For years, I've seen it as a
personal task of mine to help develop systems and recommendations that
help make either process (assignment or good copyright record-keeping)
less burdensome. I haven't worked on this task as much as I should
have, but I have not forgotten that it needs attention. I envision
integrated hooks and systems with revision control systems that help
with this. I think we eventually need something that makes it trivial
for hackers to implement and easy to maintain. I understand that the
last thing any Free Software hacker wants to do is sit and contemplate
the legal implications of contributions they've received. As such, all
of us who follow this issue hope to make it easier for projects to do
the work. In the meantime, I think discussion about this is good, and
I'm thankful for Dave to raising the issue again.</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:07:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:75:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/apr/08/neary-copyright-assignment/";s:7:"summary";s:5635:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p><a href="http://dneary.free.fr/">Dave Neary</a> found me during
breakfast at the Linux Collaboration Summit this morning and mentioned
that he was being flamed for a blog post he made,
<a href="http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2009/04/08/copyright-assignment-and-other-barriers-to-entry/"><cite>Copyright
assignment and other barriers to entry</cite></a>. Or, as some might title it
in a Computer Science academic tradition: <cite>Copyright Assignment
Considered Harmful</cite>. I took a look at Dave's post, and I
definitely think it's worth reading and considering, regardless of
whether you agree with it or flame it. For my part, I think I agree
with most of his points.</p>
<p>One of the distinctions that Dave is making that some might miss is the
difference between non-profit, community-controlled copyright assignment
assignees and for-profit copyright assignees. He
<a href="http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/06/07/on-trusting-open-source-companies/">quotes
Luis Villa</a> to make the point that companies, ultimately, aren't the
best destinations as a final home of FLOSS copyrights. If copyright
assignment is looked only through the lens of a for-profit corporate
entity — with only the duty to its shareholders to determine its
future — then indeed it's a dangerous situation for many of the
reasons that Dave raises.</p>
<p>I believe strongly that assigning copyright to a for-profit corporate
entity is usually problematic. As Dave points out, corporations aren't
really community members proper of a Free Software community; rather,
their employees typically are. I have always felt that either
copyrights should be assigned to a transparently-run non-profit
501(c)(3) entity, or they should be held by individual contributors.
Indeed, the <a href="http://www.samba.org">Samba project</a> even has a
<a href="http://www.samba.org/samba/devel/copyright-policy.html">policy
to accept absolutely no corporate copyrights in their codebase</a>, and
I would love to see more projects adopt that policy.</p>
<p>I trust 501(c)(3) non-profits more than for-profits not only because
I've spent most of my career in the former, and have enjoyed that time
more than my time at the latter. I trust non-profits more because their
charters and founding documents require a duty to a public-benefiting
mission and to a community. They are failing to act properly under
their charters if they put the needs of a for-profit entity ahead of the
needs of the community and the public. This is exactly the correct
alignment of incentives for a consolidation of FLOSS copyrights.</p>
<p>Some projects don't like centralized copyright for various reasons.
While I do prefer it myself, I can understand this desire among
individuals to each keep their stake of control in the project. Thus, I
don't object to projects that want each individual contributor to have
their own copyright. In this situation, the incentives are still
properly aligned, because individuals who helped make the project happen
have the legal control. While these individuals have
no <em>required</em> commitment to the public good like a non-profit,
they <strong>are</strong> members of a community and are much more
likely to put the community needs above the profit motive that controls
all for-profit entities.</p>
<p>When Dave says copyright assignment might be harmful, he seems to talk
primarily about for-profit corporate assignment. I agree with him on
that point. however, when he mentions that it's unnecessary, I don't
completely agree, but he raises well the points that I would raise as to
why it's important.</p>
<p>However, in the middle of Dave's post is the bigger concern that
deserves special mention. The important task is keeping a clear record
of the copyright provenance about where the work came from, and who
might have a copyright claim. Copyright assignment is a short-hand way
to do this in an organized and clear fashion. It's a simple solution
with some overhead, and sometimes projects over the years have been
annoyed with (and even ridiculed) that overhead. However, the more
complex solutions have overhead, too. If you don't do assignment, you
must keep careful track of every contributor, what their employer
agreements say, and whether they have the right to submit patches under
their own copyrights to the project. Some projects do this better than
others.</p>
<p>Regardless, all of this is hard work. For years, I've seen it as a
personal task of mine to help develop systems and recommendations that
help make either process (assignment or good copyright record-keeping)
less burdensome. I haven't worked on this task as much as I should
have, but I have not forgotten that it needs attention. I envision
integrated hooks and systems with revision control systems that help
with this. I think we eventually need something that makes it trivial
for hackers to implement and easy to maintain. I understand that the
last thing any Free Software hacker wants to do is sit and contemplate
the legal implications of contributions they've received. As such, all
of us who follow this issue hope to make it easier for projects to do
the work. In the meantime, I think discussion about this is good, and
I'm thankful for Dave to raising the issue again.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1239210420;}i:9;a:8:{s:5:"title";s:23:"Scale 7x Keynote Redux
";s:4:"link";s:65:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/mar/17/scale-7x-keynote/";s:11:"description";s:1557:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>Many people have been commenting on and/or asking about <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2009/scale-2009-keynote/">my keynote,
<cite>When Software Is A Services, Is Only the “Network
Luddite” Free?</cite></a> from <a
href="http://scale7x.socallinuxexpo.org/conference-info/bradley-kuhn">Scale
7x</a> in late February. There is finally <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2009/scale7x/2009-02-21_bkuhn-keynote_scale7x.mp4">a
downloadable H264/MPEG-4 AAC version (114MB) available</a>. There is also <a href="http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale7x-audio/Saturday/Keynote/Keynote.mp3">an audio recording of the same speech available from SCALE's website</a>. Finally, please
note that the keynote is substantially similar to my <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2008/dec/23/0x03/">Plone
Conference Keynote, which we released as a podcast</a>.</p>
<p>I'm working with the SCALE 7x organizers to see if I can get the video
and audio of the keynote in a freer format. However, since the mp4 file
linked above does play in vlc, I figured it's worth getting it out to
folks who are looking for it now.</p>
<p>There was also an <a href="http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/02/ars-at-scale-sflc-tech-director-wants-to-liberate-the-cloud.ars">article in <cite>Ars Technica</cite> that covered my keynote</a>.</p>
";s:6:"author";s:43:"bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org (Bradley M. Kuhn)";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:03:00 -0400";s:4:"guid";s:65:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/mar/17/scale-7x-keynote/";s:7:"summary";s:1557:"<p><i>Blog post by <strong>Bradley M. Kuhn</strong>. Please email any comments on this entry to <a href="mailto:bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org"><bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org></a>.</i></p>
<p>Many people have been commenting on and/or asking about <a href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2009/scale-2009-keynote/">my keynote,
<cite>When Software Is A Services, Is Only the “Network
Luddite” Free?</cite></a> from <a
href="http://scale7x.socallinuxexpo.org/conference-info/bradley-kuhn">Scale
7x</a> in late February. There is finally <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2009/scale7x/2009-02-21_bkuhn-keynote_scale7x.mp4">a
downloadable H264/MPEG-4 AAC version (114MB) available</a>. There is also <a href="http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale7x-audio/Saturday/Keynote/Keynote.mp3">an audio recording of the same speech available from SCALE's website</a>. Finally, please
note that the keynote is substantially similar to my <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2008/dec/23/0x03/">Plone
Conference Keynote, which we released as a podcast</a>.</p>
<p>I'm working with the SCALE 7x organizers to see if I can get the video
and audio of the keynote in a freer format. However, since the mp4 file
linked above does play in vlc, I figured it's worth getting it out to
folks who are looking for it now.</p>
<p>There was also an <a href="http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/02/ars-at-scale-sflc-tech-director-wants-to-liberate-the-cloud.ars">article in <cite>Ars Technica</cite> that covered my keynote</a>.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1237309380;}}s:7:"channel";a:6:{s:5:"title";s:37:"The Software Freedom Law Center Blog.";s:4:"link";s:36:"http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/";s:11:"description";s:45:"All blogs at the Software Freedom Law Center.";s:8:"language";s:5:"en-us";s:13:"lastbuilddate";s:31:"Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:45:00 -0400";s:7:"tagline";s:45:"All blogs at the Software Freedom Law Center.";}s:9:"textinput";a:0:{}s:5:"image";a:0:{}s:9:"feed_type";s:3:"RSS";s:12:"feed_version";s:3:"2.0";s:8:"encoding";s:5:"UTF-8";s:16:"_source_encoding";s:0:"";s:5:"ERROR";s:0:"";s:7:"WARNING";s:0:"";s:19:"_CONTENT_CONSTRUCTS";a:6:{i:0;s:7:"content";i:1;s:7:"summary";i:2;s:4:"info";i:3;s:5:"title";i:4;s:7:"tagline";i:5;s:9:"copyright";}s:16:"_KNOWN_ENCODINGS";a:3:{i:0;s:5:"UTF-8";i:1;s:8:"US-ASCII";i:2;s:10:"ISO-8859-1";}s:5:"stack";a:0:{}s:9:"inchannel";b:0;s:6:"initem";b:0;s:9:"incontent";b:0;s:11:"intextinput";b:0;s:7:"inimage";b:0;s:17:"current_namespace";b:0;s:13:"last_modified";s:31:"Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:54:43 GMT
";s:4:"etag";s:36:""87c1d39e055e967c82075afaaec3204a"
";}