August 16, 2011

Bradley and Karen play and comment on a talk recording of Aaron Williamson's and Karen's presentation at OSCON 2011, entitled Legal Basics for Developers.

Running time: 00:53:53.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley mentioned the birthday attack when explaining to Karen how likely it might be that the number of the show might match the number of the day. (01:38)
• This show is a recording of Aaron and Karen's OSCON 2011 talk, Legal Basics for Developers. (02:20)

Segment 1 (05:53)

• The slides for the Legal Basics for Developers are available to follow along with the recording (05:53)

Segment 2 (49:36)

• Richard Fontana gave at a talk at OSCON as well, which was recorded, and Karen and Bradley have asked for his permission to play it. (50:45)
• Bradley asked folks to ping Richard on identi.ca to ask him to allow us to use his audio on the oggcast. (51:05)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, non-commercial, sflc, oscon, fontana, creative-commons, aaronw, patents, copyrights, trademarks, public domain, license compatibility, compliance, non-profits, gnome, questions, conferences, gpl

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June 21, 2011

Karen announces her new job, and Bradley and Karen discuss the recent USA Supreme Court decisions on patents.

Running time: 00:54:31.

Show Notes

Be sure to make sure your feeds available on faif.us if you haven't already!

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:37)

• If you have not moved your RSS feed already away from softwarefreedom.org, and to faif.us, you should do that now! Here's links to the ogg RSS feed and mp3 RSS feed. New FaiF shows won't appear on softwarefreedom.org.
• Karen is now the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. (04:30)
• Bradley served on the GNOME Foundation Executive Director Hiring Committee, but resigned when Karen became a serious candidate. (05:13)
• Karen will continue as General Counsel of Question Copyright, and pro-bono counsel to Software Freedom Conservancy. She will also continue pro bono on some matters for SFLC. (06:30)
• Bradley has been working on GNU Bash. (07:34)
• Berlin's Tegel airport is closing soon. (14:40)
• Bradley mentioned that he incorrectly said in 0x11 that Red Hat doesn't provide sources publicly for RHEL. The RHEL SRPMS are actually on Red Hat's FTP site. (18:20)
• There are various identica threads on the RHEL issue from 0x11.(18:47)
• Bradley has previously explained the history of the term “punditocracy” in episode 0x0A. (27:46)

Segment 1 (28:58)

• Bradley and Karen discuss the USA Supreme Court decision in the Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S. A. case, on which SFLC submitted an amicus brief, which was previously discussed in FaiF Episode 0x05. (29:55)
• Bradley and Karen discuss the USA Supreme Court decision in the Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership case, on which the EFF submitted an amicus brief. (40:11)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, sflc, patents, gnome

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May 24, 2011

Dan Lynch (filling in for Karen) and Bradley play and discuss Matthew Garrett's talk GPL Violations: What Are We Doing? (aka Linux License Violations) from the Linux Collaboration Summit 2011.

Running time: 01:24:10.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• FaiF Producer Dan Lynch is filling in for Karen as co-host this week. (00:43)
• Karen got married on the day Dan and Bradley recorded the oggcast. (01:03)
• Dan is also known as the co-host of Linux Outlaws, host of Rat Hole Radio, and occasional co-host of FLOSS Weekly. (02:05)
• Bradley mentioned Dick Van Dyke's admission (06:56)

Segment 1 (08:05)

• This segment is Matthew Garrett's talk GPL Violations: What Are We Doing? (aka Linux License Violations) from the Linux Collaboration Summit 2011.
• Matthew Garrett released the slides from his talk which you can follow along with during the talk.

Segment 2 (51:29)

• Bradley mentioned that Matthew is particularly interested in the GPL violations on Android/Linux devices that he's found. (52:57)
• Bradley mentioned Greg Kroah-Hartman's GPL enforcement against Microsoft, which Bradley also blogged about a few years ago. (55:51)
• Dan asked Bradley about DMCA usage in GPL enforcement. Bradley explained that there is a process called DMCA takedown that Matthew was discussing. (57:30)
• Dan and Bradley discussed the Linux Foundation Open Compliance Program. (1:05:05)
• Bradley mentions that he is completely opposed to criminal penalties for copyright infringement, and mentioned his ACTA commenting blog post. (1:12:13)
• Bradley and Dan discussed the Sony DVD rootkit. (1:15:17)
• Karen's wedding invitation got some press since it was a working record player. (1:16:58)
• Karen and Mike's wedding song is at the end of the oggcast, but you can also download the song from the wedding website. (1:21:08)

Tags: bkuhn

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May 10, 2011

This episode is a recording of Jeremy Allison's talk, Why Samba Switched to GPLv3 from the 2011 Linux Collaboration Summit, with some commentary from Bradley and Karen on the talk.

Running time: 01:00:51.

Show Notes

Ironically (or perhaps appropriately), Bradley was at Samba XP with Jeremy the day this show was released. So, there he wasn't able to get show notes together in detail for this show.

However, Jeremy's slides from the talk are available (in PDF), and also ODP format. So, you can follow along with it in the talk.

Also, you may be interested to read Bradley live-dent'd Jeremy's talk, so the discussion there might be useful to read as well.

Tags: bkuhn, karen, gpl, gplv3, Jeremy Allison, samba, conferences, or-later

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April 26, 2011

This episode is a recording of Richard Fontana's talk, Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement from the 2011 Linux Collaboration Summit, with some commentary from Bradley and Karen on the talk.

Running time: 01:02:48.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

Bradley is still recovering from a rhinovirus which he didn't take care of and also made him sicker, which explains the problems with his voice. In fact, the coughing in the background during Fontana's talk is all Bradley. He apologizes. (00:50)

This show is Richard Fontana's Linux Collaboration Summit 2011 talk, Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement. (03:24)

Segment 1 (03:48)

Richard Fontana's slides for his talk, Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement are available on his website. (04:29)

Bradley was live-denting Fontana's LCS talk. (04:31)

Richard Fontana is the purveyor of the disturbing group on identi.ca. (04:30)

Fontana makes reference to a Bradley's blog post on switching back to Debian from Ubuntu. (05:55)

Fontana pointed out that the GNU Manifesto deals a lot with how !Free Software is completely compatible with many business models. (12:30)

Fontana pointed out that many of the relationships between companies in FaiF software have great variability in level of transparency. (16:00)

In the background, you hear Bradley saying something. He's giving Josh Berkus credit for the phrase throw code over the wall, a phrase which both Fontana and Bradley now use regularly. (32:28)

Segment 2 (48:25)

Fontana made an interesting analogy to commissioned art and its similarity to FLOSS. (50:33)

Fontana noted later on identi.ca that he does support non-profit as solution to entanglement problem. (54:48)

Bradley mentioned the 60 Minutes story about Mortenson's Central Asia Institute (CAI) (55:30)

Fontana now talking about GE/NBC relationship, but Bradley was surprised that . Fontana didn't mention Ben Bagdikian's book, The Media Monopoly. (18:26, 56:30)

Bradley was glad that Fontana called proprietary relicensing illegitimate. Bradley points out that sometimes community members, including himself, have too easily forgiven business models on the edges of software freedom. (25:13, 30:50 58:30)

Tags: fontana, red hat, non-profits, conferences, governance

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April 12, 2011

This episode is a recording of Karen's talk, Sign on the Dotted Line: NDAs, Employment Agreements and Free and Open Source Software from the 2011 Linux Collaboration Summit.

Running time: 00:42:44.

Show Notes

Show Notes:

Segment 1 (01:33)

You can download a copy of Karen's slides from the talk if you'd like to follow along.

Tags: linux foundation, confidentiality, NDA, conferences, employee, karen, agreements, employment, employer

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March 29, 2011

Bradley and Karen discuss two debates going on in the free and open source software community. One recent and seemingly inflated, and one long and confusing.

Running time: 00:43:18.

Show Notes

Segment 1 (03:12)

• Bradley wrote a blog post about the Bionic issues that were raised. (03:44)
• On the old oggcast, Karen and Bradley discussed the Android/Linux system and Bionic specifically. (04:09)
• Karen mentioned an old oggcast where permissive vs. copyleft licensing was discussed. (06:19)
• Jake Edge wrote an LWN article that discussed Bionic (07:58)
• Bradley mentioned Raymond Nimmer's blog that started the debate (10:52)
• Bradley also mentioned Edward Naughton's blog post and paper on Bionic. (11:38)
• Raymond Nimmer is not David Nimmer, who is known for writings on copyright (18:10)
• There is now an disturbing group on identica, which is more disturbing than a tag about disturbing. (19:15)
• Joe Brockmeier did some research on Edward Naughton's ties to Microsoft. (20:05)
• Karen mentioned a paper on deep legal analysis of header files and on originality requirements in copyright (24:40)

Segment 2 (26:07)

• Karen wanted to clear up some confusion about the discussion last episode about the “Open Source” and “Free Software” terminology.

Tags: fontana, copyrights, gpl, android, linux, bkuhn, karen, fsf, google

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March 15, 2011

Bradley and Karen have an introductory discussion on how non-profit governance interacts with Free Software projects and what issues are important for developers who want their project to have a non-profit existence.

Running time: 00:34:42.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Bradley and Karen began the discussion by commenting on this blog post by Andy Updegrove about non-profit governance. (01:50)
• Bradley and Karen tend to agree that non-profit settings are better places to foster and help Free Software development. (03:40)
• Bradley mentioned that Roland McGrath wrote GNU C Library (and other GNU programs) while working as an employee at the FSF, and many of those programs are now often maintained by Red Hat (or other company's) developers, under the auspices of the GNU project, as overseen by the FSF. (04:50)
• Corporate form and organization questions should be secondary to project leadership ones. (09:50)
• One of the most important things is to have an organization in a place where people are willing to do the work to keep the organization going. (20:10)
• Enthusiasm to keep the organization running is the most important resource for running the organization. (22:26)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, fsf, conservancy, non-profits, governance

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March 1, 2011

Bradley and Karen discussed the Windows Phone 7 Application Store terms and conditions which prohibit GPL'd and other copylefted software in the application store.

Running time: 00:38:13.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Karen and Bradley discussed the Microsoft Phone Marketplace agreement, which was heavily covered in news and blogs. (02:50)
• Karen quoted directly from the § 1(l) from the Windows Phone Marketplace Application Provider Agreement (03:20)
• Bradley credited Jello Biafra with coining the term “punditocracy”, but it seems to have been first used by Charles Reynell in The Economist in 1989 and popularized by Eric Alterman in his 1992 book, Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy.
• Bradley mentioned the brouhaha about the order of succession after Regan was shot in 1981. (Bradley incorrectly said 1980 on the show.) (09:47)
• Karen and Bradley previously discussed the Apple Online Store agreement on FaiF Episode 0x03.
• Bradley mentioned that the arm port of Windows 7 isn't even done (21:30)
• According to a Canalys study quoted on Wikipedia's Smartphone entry, RIM is only 14% of the market now, when it was previously much larger. Symbian is still the largest, surprisingly. (25:21)
• K-9 Mail is a fork of the last Free Software version of Google's Android Mail application. (30:21)
• Bradley compared what's happening with Android to the history of X Windows
(31:40)
• Bradley joked about the naming length controversy for the Windows Phone 7. (33:00)
• Steve Ballmer strangely kept saying: The operating system is called Windows while talking to market analysis back in July 2010. (36:04)

After the show was recorded, there was an announcement that Microsoft would allow employees to build their own companies writing Windows 7 Series Windows Mobile applications.

Tags: gplv3, microsoft, gpl, mobile

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February 15, 2011

Bradley and Karen discuss types of copyleft generally and introduce the basics of license compatibility and -or-later clauses.

Running time: 00:41:57.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

• This show discusses copyleft and basic issues of license compatibility (04:09)
• Karen mentioned an episode of the old Software Freedom Law Show, Episode 0x08, where Bradley and Karen discussed selecting a FLOSS license and what the various options are. (04:45)
• license compatibility 06:28
• Bradley incorrectly said that the original Emacs license didn't have the word General in it. However, the other explanations appear to be correct. There's a useful history page that someone wrote about the history of GPL. It appears the non-general GNU copylefts existed from 1984-1988. (06:57)
• Karen noted that the Library GPL was renamed to the Lesser GPL which happened in 1999. (09:30)
• Bradley mentioned that when he and RMS worked on the GNU Classpath Exception, Bradley suggested it be called the Least GPL. (10:38)
• GPL doesn't have a choice of law clause. If a another copyleft does, it surely is incompatible with the GPL. (14:17)
• AGPLv3 § 13 and GPLv3 § 13 explicitly make themselves compatibility with each other, which Bradley calls compatibility by fiat. (15:40)
• Karen mentioned that the Mozilla Public License § 13 has a section about multiple licensed code (16:50).
• Bradley mentioned that Mozilla Firefox uses a combinatorial license: (GPL|LGPL|MPL), which is a disjunctive tri-license. (19:00).
• Bradley mentioned that the old Software Freedom Law Show Episode 0x17 discussed compatibility of permissively licensed software and copylefted software. (20:22 )
• Apache Software License 2.0 was likely the first FLOSS license to have an explicit patent licensing provision (23:40)
• Bradley and Karen discussed the fact that -only vs. -or-later are options with the GPL, while they are not with other copylefts, such as CC-By-SA. (30:11)

Tags: agpl, license compatibility, copyrights, gpl, bkuhn, gplv3, karen, sflc, fsf, mpl, or-later

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February 1, 2011

Bradley and Karen discuss non-commercial-only commons licenses, particularly the CC-By-NC license, and how they compare to Free Culture and Free Software licenses, and why some authors pick NC licenses instead of Free Culture/Software ones.

Running time: 00:49:32.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Listeners seeking a show on how to select a Free Software license, differences between copyleft and non-copyleft, and how they interact with copyright are encouraged to listen to episode 0x08 of the old Software Freedom Law Show which covered these topics. Please write in again if that show doesn't cover your questions on the issue. (02:10)
• Bradley reminisced about the crass “Brian and O'Brien” show on Baltimore's B-104 Gary Huddles who was notorious locally in Baltimore because he was implicated in Maryland's version of the 1980s Savings and Loan scandals. (03:30)
• Karen mentioned that freedomdefined.org is the source for the Free Culture definition that defines what licenses are Free Culture licenses. (12:54)
• Bradley suggested listening to some of the old versions of RMS' Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks. In fact, there is an audio recording of the one at MIT on 19 April 2001 that Bradley attended, and an audio recording of the one that Bradley heard at Cardozo Law School. There is audio of the Q&A session, wherein RMS engages in that discussion Bradley mentioned with Free Culture activists. (10:10, 14:04)
• Bradley mentioned that Linus Torvalds switched to GPL for Linux because he realized non-commercial restrictions weren't appropriate. (Search the string GPL on that link to find Linus' answer on that.) (19:00)
• Karen mentioned that Creative Commons did a study considering what people understand commercial vs. non-commercial to mean. (20:43)
• Karen and Bradley discussed the text of CC-By-NC. (23:00)
• Karen mentioned various CC-By-SA licensed derivatives that had been made from Sita Sings the Blues. (38:24)
• Bradley discussed the Harry Potter Lexicon case and Karen mentioned the so-called IP Colloquium discussion on it. (44:30)
• Bradley mentioned Memory Alpha, which is a CC-By-NC wiki regarding Star Trek, which is tolerated by Paramount. (45:20)

Tags: copyrights, creative-commons, gpl, bkuhn, karen, fsf, free-culture, non-commercial

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January 18, 2011

Bradley and Karen discuss a few corrections from previous shows, and then discuss misunderstandings about the GPL regarding “revocation” of the GPL.

Running time: 00:44:45.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Bradley issued a correction regarding FaiF 0x06. Christopher Allan Webber mentioned that FSF sometimes accepts copyright assignments in cases where the entire code base is not assigned. (02:40)
• Karen issued a correction regarding FaiF 0x04 about women being hired to be at the party, but in fact that was not the case, despite being mentioned in this article.
• Karen's paper on Medical Devices was linked to from a ZD Net UK blog. (05:48)
• Bradley mentioned this Android bug regarding mis-sent SMS, which was widely covered in the press. Apparently the bug has been resolved upstream, somewhat disproving Bradley's point. (08:40)

Segment 1 (12:19)

• Bradley is quoted in an article about revocation of the GPL (12:35).
• The story was originalyl covered on slashdot. (13:17)
• The WinMTR site now says: By popular request, WinMTR will be available under GPL v2. (19:50)
• Karen mentioned the FSF's GPL FAQ. (29:27)
• Bradley mentioned the four rationale documents There's also one for AGPLv3 draft 2 and LGPLv3 draft 2. (30:13)

Tags: bkuhn, copyrights, gpl, medical-devices, conferences, karen, sflc, fsf, correction, revocation

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January 4, 2011

Bradley and Karen discussed the inclusion of ZFS code now included in GRUB, as the GRUB Project announced and was covered at LWN by Jonathan Corbet.

Running time: 00:47:58.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• It's not mandatory that GNU projects have assignment to the FSF. The GNU Maintainer's guide discuss the requirements when items are assigned to FSF (14:40)
• FSF requires that the entire codebase be assigned once GNU project maintainers choose to assign copyrights. Conservancy's policy on copyright assignment differs here; Conservancy will accept partial copyright assignment. (16:07)
• Bradley mentioned the COBOL front end to GCC that is not in the main GCC codebase because it is not copyright assigned to FSF. (17:40)
• Bradley and Karen discussed the Squeak relicensing last call. (25:49)
• Bradley posted a comment to Corbet's article. (32:30)

Final (45:45)

• The calendar Bradley was thinking of was the International Fixed Calendar, which Wikipedia confirms, with a sourced link, was used by the Eastman Kodak Company from rom 1928 to 1989.

Tags: bkuhn, karen, fsf, conservancy, gplv3, copyrights

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December 21, 2010

Bradley and Karen welcome special co-presenter and guest, Aaron Williamson, to discuss the OpenBSD email regarding purported FBI backdoors. In the main segment, they discuss the amicus brief filed by SFLC (where Aaron and Karen work) in the Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB USA Supreme Court case.

Running time: 00:54:59.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Aaron brought up a message forwarded to the OpenBSD developers list by Theo de Raadt. This story has been covered widely online. (02:50)
• Aaron mentioned that Glyn Moody wrote a blog post about what issues about “Open Source” security this raises. (04:06)
• Bradley mentioned the gnuftp/Savannah site crack that occurred in 2003 and its security implications. Those seeking more information on this can read the slashdot coverage, Savannah forum posts, the CERT advisory and even the missing files still on the GNU FTP site. (05:21)
• Bradley again mentioned Thompson's hack which he loves to mention when security issues come up (06:26).
• Karen mentioned SFLC's medical devices paper, Killed by Code: Software Transparency in Implantable Medical Devices, which she loves to mention. (08:23)
• Bradley mentioned the Debian/Ubuntu OpenSSL bug that occurred in mid-2008, which was widely discussed online. (10:18)
• Bradley mentioned a case in 2000 where the FBI was able to open a mobster's PGP mail merely by getting his passphrase. (12:49)
• Bradley offers an even-money bet that there are no FBI-inserted bugs in OpenBSD. (13:46)

Segment 1 (14:18)

• The canonical page on Wikipedia for what Karen and Bradley are on FaiF says they are presenters, rather than hosts. (15:06)
• Aaron and Karen's organization, the Software Freedom Law Center, announced that they filed an amicus brief in the Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB case. (16:30)
• Despite the beliefs of a Jeopardy! contestant last month, “Maria” is Sonia Sotomayor's middle name. Antonin Scalia's middle name is “Gregory” (17:20)
• Bradley again reviewed the issues of classical vs. church pronunciations. (19:20)Bradley asked Aaron if what was being sold in this case was equivalent to the Cornballer as introduced on the television show, Arrested Development. (20:30)
• Bradley mentioned that on FaiF 0x02, they discussed the issue of how higher courts consider issues of law more than the detailed facts of the case. (23:30)
• RMS's speech, The Danger of Software Patents, is available as a transcript and audio (ogg) (35:22)
• Aaron mentioned Newegg's brief, which is a reseller. (40:50)
• Aaron mentioned the SCOTUS blog summary which included links to other amici briefs. (41:01)
• Bradley referenced Don's staff answer to their boss, Don, in the Kids in the Hall movie, Brain Candy. (45:57)

Final (54:16)

• Aaron, Karen and Bradley are discussing the alternative lyrics to the Stars and Stripes Forever (54:20)

These show notes are Copyright © 2010, Karen Sandler and Bradley M. Kuhn of Free as in Freedom, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC-By-SA-3.0 Unported).

Tags: bkuhn, karen, sflc, patents, aaronw

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December 7, 2010

In this episode of Free as in Freedom, Karen and Bradley discuss in the first segment recent press coverage of sexist attitudes at Free Software conferences, and in the second segment, discuss the public filings related to the Novell sale.

Running time: 00:58:16.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:40)

• Karen and Bradley discuss an article called The Dark Side of Open Source Conference, which was covered some in the tech press, in press outside of technology. Deb Nicholson wrote a blog post about it, as did Valerie (the original article's author. (01:06)
• Bradley mentioned his blog post where he discussed issues of gender equality across all Computer Science, not just the Free Software community. (05:29)
• Karen mentioned Kirrily “Skud” Robert. (10:27)

Segment 1 (32:18)

• There was an announcement that Novell will be sold (32:15)
• Karen mentioned that Andy Updegrove blogged twice on the subject (32:30)
• Karen talked about the 8K filing that Novell made regarding the purchase. (34:30)
• Karen mentioned a post on groklaw. (42:43)
• Bradley mentioned that the OIN patent license is incredibly narrow and not particularly useful, because the definition of the “Linux system“ is so narrow, and because OIN is a pro-patent, for-profit company that doesn't have the interest of Free Software at its heart. (45:30)
• Karen disagrees with Bradley's comments on OIN and thinks his characterization of the patent pool is a serious exaggeration. (46:00)

These show notes are Copyright © 2010, Karen Sandler and Bradley M. Kuhn of Free as in Freedom, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC-By-SA-3.0 Unported).

Tags: bkuhn, karen, conferences, novell, sexism

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November 23, 2010

Karen and Bradley discuss the debates regarding Apple's online store restrictions that make it impossible to distribute GPL'd software via Apple's store. Then, they discuss question the usefulness of the term “Open Core”

Running time: 00:45:04.

Show Notes

Note: Bradley's audio was too low compared to Karen's on this episode. We're still sorting out our recording issues, and apologize for this. This is completely Bradley's fault: don't blame Producer Dan. :)

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Karen mentioned first Brett's statement on the VLC mailing list, although that is toward the end of the story that was covered last month. (05:30)
• Bradley mentioned that the story started with FSF's enforcement regarding Apple's distribution of GNU Go in Apple's application store. (05:54)
• Don't confused GNU Go (the game) with Google Go (the programming language). Bradley pointed out that Google did assign some of its copyright on the language Go, for the GCC frontend for the Go language. (06:51)
• Bradley mentioned that the game Go has been around thousands of years, although according the Go Wikipedia entry, it's been around for approximately 2,500 years. (08:21)
• Bradley pointed out that the primary goal of GPL enforcement is to get compliance, not to get companies to cease distribution, but sometimes the companies prefer to cease distribution rather than complying with the license. (09:57)
• There was disagreement in the VLC community about the enforcement action (11:50). There's an original thread on the VLC mailing list that discussed this (12:35), and then Brett's response on that list. (13:25)
• GPLv2 requires in § 6 that you cannot impose terms that restrict the downstream more than GPL otherwise does. (15:40)
• FSF made a statement that linked this issue to the DRM issue, which caused some confusion. It's our view that what Apple is doing against GPL software is part of their initiative to put DRM (both for software and more traditional content) onto devices. (17:20)
• Bradley mentioned that Apple lawyers have a pathological hatred of GPL, which he believes comes directly down from Steve Jobs, who began his dislike of GPL when he tried, while at NeXT, to distribute a proprietary front-end for GCC for Objective-C. (RMS discussed the story briefly in his essay Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism.) (23:45)

Segment 1 (27:40)

• Bradley has decided that the term “Open Core” is so confusing that it's now useless.
• The Gnus IMAP backend is being rewritten, and Joel Adamson mentioned that he's using Emacs development mainline and the new IMAP implementation is working well. (29:58)
• Alexandre Oliva started a project called Linux Libre, to remove proprietary software from Linux. (31:31)
• There is a file called WHENCE in Linux that is a long list of proprietary software included inside Linux. Richard Fontana linked the WHENCE file on identi.ca (31:02)
• Alexandre made an announcement calling Linux an “Open Core” project. (32:56)
• Bradley mentioned that Alexandre appears to have been convinced that Open Core is a problematic term in this context (during this identica conversation). Alexandre seems to be favoring the term “Free Bait” now. (35:16)
• Karen mentioned Nina Paley's intellectual pooperty cartoon. (38:39)
• Bradley mentioned the softer side of Sears marketing campaign, which was used as a cruel joke by Cordelia in the pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to make fun of Willow's clothes. Sears apparently dropped the campaign in 1999. (40:23)
• Join us on #faif on freenode and the !FaiFCast group on identi.ca (43:47)

Tags: fsf, gplv3, smith, mobile, Apple, vlc

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November 9, 2010

Karen and Bradley discuss Stormy Peters' departure from the GNOME Foundation, an issue of deep confusion regarding copyright licensing, and references to Spock in a recent court decision.

Running time: 00:39:56.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley confirmed the entire show is licensed CC-By-SA 3.0 (02:30)
• Stormy Peters is leaving the position of GNOME Foundation's Executive Director. (04:10)
• The GNOME Advisory Board is a group of for-profit and non-profit organizations that meet regularly to give advice to GNOME Foundation. (04:34)
• Stormy is going to a job at the Mozilla Foundation. (09:10)
• You don't have to be a developer to become a member of the GNOME Foundation. (09:57)
• Bradley mentioned that he did an FSF booth at COMDEX Chicago in early 2001 (which Bradley incorrectly called CES Chicago in the recording). (12:20)

Segment 1 (15:43)

• A LiveJournal post introduced an interesting issue of copyright confusion. (16:30)
• Karen mentioned there was discussion in other fora other than the original LiveJournal post, such as on the NY Frunch (Free Culture Lunch) mailing list and, since then, on NPR. (17:24)
• Bradley mentioned Fanzines, wondering if there are still fanzines. (18:57)
• Karen pointed out that both copyright infringement and plagiarism were at issue here. (20:25)
• Bradley is quite upset about the idea that people confuse public domain with FaiF licensing or any other actual license terms. (21:00)
• Karen notes that if you don't see a license, you have to assume it's all rights reserved. (23:10)
• Bradley described a Slashdot story that linked to a Techdirt article. (30:29)
• A footnote in the concurrence is what mentions Star Trek (33:03) .
• Bradley mentioned a mediocre novel he read in the 1990s called Brain Storm by Richard Dooling. (33:26)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, copyrights, Stormy Peters, public domain, Star Trek

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October 29, 2010

Bradley and Karen discuss the new license of their show, multi-platform Free Software projects and conferences Bradley attended this month.

Running time: 00:46:13.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:32)

• All recordings for the first 0x01 attempt had an annoying audio buzz. (01:18)
• The Free as in Freedom oggcast is now licensed CC-By-SA 3.0 Unported (03:10)
• Karl Fogel is Executive Director of Question Copyright. (03:35)
• Karen mentioned the Free Culture definition. (08:22)
• Larry Lessig presented to an FSF Members Meeting using Mac. (09:22)
• Bradley and Karen argued about whether or not OpenOffice.org and/or Firefox run better on non-GNU/Linux systems than on GNU/Linux. (18:00)
• Bradley and Karen argued about whether or not otherwise proprietary company control of Free Software causes problems by default. (21:10)

Segment 1 (27:00)

• Lara Moy got Ubuntu running on her Mac hardware. (27:30)
• Bradley attended the jQuery Conference Boston 2010 (28:30)
• Bradley was at the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit. (36:26)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, conservancy, creative-commons

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October 6, 2010

Bradley and Karen announced that the Software Freedom Law Show is over. Karen and Bradley announced a new show, called Free as in Freedom, that is a joint effort by Karen (still at the SFLC) and Bradley (no longer at SFLC).

Running time: 00:32:32.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:28)

• Bradley mentioned OsamaK is not happy at Bradley and Karen for not having a new oggcast for a month. (00:45)
• Bradley no long works at the Software Freedom Law Center. He now works full time at the Software Freedom Conservancy. (02:00)
• Bradley thinks everything related to FLOSS should be called “Software Freedom”. (03:10)
• Karen and Bradley mention that many people in the software freedom world are involved in multiple organizations. (04:00)
• Karen is an officer and lawyer to Software Freedom Conservancy. (04:30)
• Conservancy provides non-profit infrastructure and services. (05:10)
• Conservancy helps software freedom projects focus on development, and aggregate projects into one place. (06:20)
• Conservancy will be expanding its service plan now that Bradley is full time. (06:46)
• Conservancy will try do copyright assignment in a community-focused way, only if the developers want it. Conservancy will also do much more GPL enforcement than it has previously. (07:20)
• Bradley mentioned that Matthew Garrett has been doing some GPL enforcement, and Bradley thanked him for it publicly. (07:50)
• Karen thinks we'll see more enforcement over time, by more people. (08:14)
• Bradley wants to help Conservancy's member projects do more fundraising for initiatives to fund software development activity. (08:40)
• Bradley mentioned that Matt Mackall is doing Mercurial development funded through Conservancy. (09:20)
• As of earlier this year, Bradley is a volunteer director of the FSF, and now has additional volunteer work that he needs to do, while Conservancy (his former volunteer work) becomes his day job. (11:09)
• Bradley mentions that once you start doing something in the software freedom world, it's hard to stop once people start to rely on your work. (12:30)
• Conservancy handles a lot of “boring” but essential stuff for developers to continue in their project. (14:20)
• Bradley mentioned that his early volunteer work at FSF was also doing the boring stuff, and indeed a lot of his work has been willing to do the boring stuff (15:30)
• Karen mentions that no one fights over the work that just needs to get done. (16:30)
• Bradley discussed the fact that for-profit corporate control of projects is dangerous, and one of the things Conservancy and similar non-profits offers is an opportunity to have a non-profit with the public interest at heart in the center of their community. (17:39)
• Bradley mentioned the LibreOffice by the Document Foundation (18:03)
• Karen points out that for-profit and non-profit go hand-in-hand. But, Bradley argues that steward of a FLOSS project should always be a non-profit. Karen agrees. (19:00-19:30)
• Bradley doesn't really believe that there are projects that would “never happen” without a for-profit company starting it. Karen disagrees.
• The Software Freedom Law Show is over This is the last episode of the Software Freedom Law Show. (21:10)
• Karen will make sure that the SFLC RSS feeds remain valid. Bradley points out that there are new RSS feeds for both the mp3 version and the ogg version of the new show, Free as in Freedom (21:33, 22:41)
• The new show is basically just the Karen and Bradley show, now named Free as in Freedom, hosted on faif.us. (23:43)
• Bradley mentioned that everywhere he's ever worked, he always had root on most of the boxes. He doesn't know what it's like to work somewhere and not have root. (27:50)
• Karen got in trouble at her first law firm job for installing software on computers. (28:21)
• Dan Scott sent a gift to Bradley and Karen Soap with 20-Ds in them.

Tags: bkuhn, karen, sflc, conservancy, non-profits

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August 17, 2010

Karen and Bradley discuss the enforcement activities of the Software Freedom Conservancy, recent conferences and medical devices.

Running time: 35:21.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley is President of the Software Freedom Conservancy, and Karen is one of the Conservancy's pro bono lawyers. Karen is also an officer of the Conservancy, and Bradley is a director of the FSF. Got that?(03:17)
• Thanks for sending us your ideas!(06:22)
• The SFLC is not the EFF, despite what slashdot says.(09:18)
• To learn more about the default judgment you can read the court's opinion or listen to Episode 0x29.
• If you liked Episode 0x21, you should check out the paper that SFLC published about software transparency on medical devices (25:05).

Tags: compliance, gpl, medical-devices, bkuhn, karen, sflc, fsf, conservancy