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.
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.
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)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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)
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.
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. :)
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)
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)
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)
Bradley mentioned that C# descends from J++ work inside
Microsoft, which became a point of contention between Sun and
Microsoft. (06:50)
Bradley mentioned his blog
post that has the same topic as this podcast. (11:17)
Meanwhile, back at the point is a reference to LUG Radio, which
is based on the phrase Meanwhile, back at the ranch. The origins of the latter
phrase is likely unclear, although an
unsourced Wikipedia article claims it was a phrase frequently used
by narrators of black & white American cowboy movies and TV shows of the
1940s and 1950s. (12:18)
Bradley mentioned that very few companies have made an overreaching
promise to licenses all their patents in a way acceptable for Free
Software. Red Hat
is one of them, although their promise isn't perfect, it has some
value. (33:34)
Karen noted a few legal points: works are covered by copyright for
a limited period of time, and then fall into the “public
domain”. (21:00) There is also a concept of “fair
use” of works still under copyright. Further, the DMCA provides
for criminal penalties if you circumvent technological anti-copying
measures. (22:09)
Although they are saying it too fast, Bradley and Karen are saying
the word “Affero”, referring to the Affero
GPL. (06:50)
Bradley and Karen discussed weak copyleft, such as the Lesser
GPL. (16:00)
Bradley mentioned thisSoftware Freedom Law Show:
blog post of his where he says most developers have
traditionally seen a licensing decision as something you think about
once and never revisit!. (22:35)
In this episode of the Software Freedom Law Show, Bradley and Karen
interview Brett Smith, the
Licensing Compliance Engineer at the
Free Software Foundation.
Running time: 00:30:57.
Show Notes
Segment 0 (00:26)
Bradley mentioned that the FSF is the one of the oldest non-profit
organizations in the Free Software space. The FSF
was founded on 4 October 1985. (01:25)
Brett and Bradley discussed how old and ground-breaking the FDL was.
FDL
was first released in March 2000. Bradley didn't have a chance to
tell his story as to why the first version was 1.1; maybe he will
sometime. :)
The Software Freedom Law Center is proud to announce its new podcast,
The Software Freedom Law Show. Hosted by Bradley
M. Kuhn and Karen Sandler,
this bi-weekly podcast will bring interviews and explanations on legal
issues related to Free, Libre and Open Software Software (FLOSS).
Our first episode introduces the format and the hosts interview each
other so you can get to know them better.
Running time: 00:32:39.
Show Notes
Our first episode introduces the format and the hosts.
Bradley referred to the laws of robotics, to which Asimov added a Zeroth Law in his later books (making the law the first in priority of application, if not first in order of appearance). (00:52)
Bradley is a “Podcast Monitor”, not a “Hall monitor”. (01:30)
Bradley couldn't find a good web page that discussed the full history
of Backspace vs. DEL in Emacs, but
the Emacs Wiki
hints at the controversy. (19:30)
Bradley briefly mentioned
the Xemacs fork. (19:40)
Bradley probably had his dates mixed up of his first GNU/Linux
install. 0.99pl12 came out in early 1993, so he probably
installed SLS
in early 1993 during his sophomore year in college. He found his Xconfig
file from his old laptop with a filedate of 15 December 1993.
(Remember when you had to write Xconfigs by hand and they would break
your monitor if you did it wrong?) (20:44)
Karen mentioned doing a “Choose your own essay” program in
C for Eben when she was law school, based on the idea
of Choose
Your Own Adventure books, which both Karen and Bradley read as
children. (25:43)
Bradley mentioned Eben and Larry
Wall both being influenced
by APL.
Bradley is sure, although it doesn't seem to appear in the transcripts,
that during one of
hisearly State of
the Onion
speeches, Larry joked that he'd use Unicode Perl operators to
reinvent APL. (26:20)
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