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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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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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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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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March 30, 2010

Bradley and Karen discuss the obligations and details of serving on a Board of Directors of a not-for-profit organization. Following that, they briefly discuss The Open Source Business Conference and LibrePlanet conference.

Running time: 01:00:18.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:31)

• Bradley mentioned the older RFC 822 but, probably meant RFC 821 could not remember that RFC 2821 is the RFC that supersedes it. (02:14)
• Bradley was voted onto the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation. (05:10)
• The IRS now asks non-profits directly if they have whistle-blower policies. (25:44)

Segment 1 (35:30)

• Karen attended and spoke at OSBC and LibrePlanet. Bradley attended and spoke at LibrePlanet. (36:00)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, non-profits

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October 27, 2009

Bradley and Karen discuss the USA IRS Form 990, which non-profit donors can use to understand and check up on the activities of charitable organizations in the USA.

Running time: 00:49:26.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• We have confirmed that John Sullivan does not have H1N1. (01:58)
• Bradley mentioned that on the 2008-06-21 episode of NPR's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me covered the salacious issues regarding former Broadcom executives. (06:35)
• Bradley mentioned GuideStar, which is a place you can find Form 990s at no charge for non-profits in the USA. Bradley noted that you have to sign up for an account to use their search, but the 990 downloads are at no charge. (10:15)

Segment 1 (12:24)

• Bradley mentioned the SNL skits that make fun of Clear Channel morning radio shows and their …And We're back! catchphrase. (12:52)
• Bradley further noted that a Family Guy episode included a similar gag. (13:05)
• Listeners may want to follow along on Conservancy's FY 2008 Form 900 (PDF). (14:26)
• Bradley mentioned that the Boost Project, a member project of Conservancy, has has an annual conference, the revenue from which appears on Line 2 of the Conservancy's Form 990. (21:23)
• Karen mentioned Form 990 Line 3 is usually large for 501(c)(6) organizations, since most of their funds come from membership fees (23:30)
• Bradley mentioned that the Twisted project had work funded that was blogged about publicly. Here's an example of that from February 2009. (32:30)
• Bradley mentioned he was previously the Clerk of the Free Software Foundation, which can be confirmed by looking at the Annual Report Commonwealth of Massachusetts filings for FSF in 2003 and 2004. (35:19)

Segment 2 (43:38)

• Organizations have to file a form with the State or Commonwealth where the organization is incorporated. (43:55)
• New York has more requirements than many states and commonwealths. New York organizations often need a limited review or an audit by an accounting firm. Conservancy made its New York State FY 2008CHAR-500 (PDF) available as well (44:32)
• Bradley uses jwiegley's program, Ledger to keep Conservancy's books. (44:55)
• Bradley mentioned you can get annual reports for Massachusetts non-profits at the Massachusetts Secretary of State website. (46:30)
• Bradley mentioned the discussion we had with Stormy Peters about giving more to non-profits that support FLOSS. (47:50)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, conservancy, non-profits

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September 1, 2009

Karen and Bradley interview Steve Holden of the Python Software Foundation.

Running time: 00:36:03.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:29)

• Law school is three years in the USA. (02:30)
• Karen avoided being quizzed on Dynamic vs. lexical scoping. (06:00)

Segment 1 (06:28)

Steve has been using Python since version 1.5, which was released in 1998. (08:15)

Steve was previously the chairman of Sun UK User Group, and was also involved with DECUS. (10:40)

PSF funds various smaller conferences around the world. (12:30)

PSF's Board is all volunteer. (13:22)

The book that Karen and Steve kept referencing is Fiscal Sponsorship: 6 Ways to Do It Right by Gregory L.Colvin. (17:10)

Steve discussed that the Python License is a permissive Free Software license. (19:20)

Steve discussed Python contributor agreement. (21:43)

Python is trademarked by the Python Software Foundation in the USA. (22:39)

Bradley and Steve discussed the scope of trademarks. No worries about pet stores, they can still sell pythons even though Python is trademarked. (25:30)

Bradley and Steve also mentioned Twisted which is written in Python and is a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy. (26:00)

Video is available from PyCon. (27:20)

Steve mentioned the Parrot Project, which is run by Allison Randal. (31:09)

Segment 2 (32:38)

• Bradley mentioned that he's contributed to Pynie, Python on Parrot. (33:20)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, non-profits, python, Steve Holden

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August 4, 2009

Bradley and Karen interview Justin Erenkrantz of the Apache Software Foundation.

Running time: 00:30:13.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:32)

• Karen liked the Thursday keynote by Kirrily Robert called Standing Out in the Crowd. (01:39)
• Jesse Vincent gave a talk about hacking the Kindle to have a community-built distribution on it. (02:17)
• Jesse is also known for his work on RT, and more recently SD. He's also worked on an Android application, K-9.
• Karen enjoyed Liz Henry's talk on accessibility and hacking medical equipment. (03:11)
• Microsoft claimed they announced their Linux code release at OSCON last Monday at 09:00, but Bradley was there and saw only five people in line for tutorial registration, and no announcement taking place. (03:25)
• Bradley wrote a blog post about the Microsoft code release. (04:01)

Segment 1 (05:23)

• Justin mentioned the tenth anniversary of Apache Foundation which will be celebrated at their conferences. (05:42)
• Justin mentioned Roy Fielding, who was a founding director of the Apache Software Foundation. (06:55)
• Justin and Bradley discussed the benefits of the Apache 2.0 License, particularly its patent provisions. (07:45)
• Justin talked about the Apache Incubator, where new projects come to Apache. (16:01)
• Justin mentioned Spam Assassin was one of the first to come through the Incubator. (16:41)
• The Apache Foundation seeks to free up developers to hack so they don't need to worry about organizational issues (18:05)
• According to Justin, Apache Foundation does not support individual project targeted donations. (19:20)
• Apache Foundation gives PR and marketing support to projects. (21:01)
• Microsoft became a platinum fiscal sponsor of Apache Foundation last year, and Justin reports that now Microsoft employees are contributing code. (22:05)
• Justin encourages everyone to attend ApacheCon US. (25:30)

Segment 2 (26:07)

• Bradley mentioned that one of the key benefits of Apache Foundation appears to be the mentoring for both individuals and companies. (26:50)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, non-profits, apache, Justin Erenkrantz

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May 12, 2009

Bradley and Karen interview the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, Stormy Peters.

Running time: 00:35:22.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:29)

• Karen mentioned the Delta Delta Delta Saturday Night Live skit, when referring to the show number, 0x0D. (00:36)
• Bradley referred to his confusion two episodes ago about mentioning Nehru jackets (00:57). Bradley meant to say “satin baseball jacket”, to refer to the Dead Kennedys' song MTV Get Off The Air. (01:05), but reference to Producer Dan made him think of music and the Beatles first, for various reasons. (Producer Dan's opinions on the Beatles still pending.)
• Bradley mentioned that the only way to talk about music with Free Software is to talk about the Free Software Song, which wouldn't be a good idea. (02:20)
• Bradley mentioned we hadn't previously had SFLC's clients as guests on the show, but Bradley forgot that on the third show, 0x02, Brett Smith of the Free Software Foundation was the guest. (02:50)
• This week's guest is Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation can be found as storming on identi.ca. (03:35)

Segment 1 (05:00)

• Stormy discussed her blog post that covers 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) forms of non-profit structures. (04:22, 06:02)
• The Linux Foundation is an example of a 501(c)(6) trade association. (07:20)
• We discussed the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board (10:11)
• Karen (and Stormy) mentioned the FSF Membership program. (11:48)
• Stormy mentioned the Friends of GNOME program, that allows individuals to support the GNOME Foundation and its work. (12:37)
• Bradley encouraged everyone to give US$200/year to their favorite FLOSS-related non-profits. (13:18) The FLOSS Foundations Group maintains a directory of FLOSS-related non-profits. (13:46)
• Stormy noted that many for-profit companies have lists of non-profits you can donate to through charitable giving. Bradley didn't get a chance to note during the show that you can often have organizations added to these lists by requesting through the HR department. (15:00)
• Karen mentioned that 501(c)(3) non-profits must meet the public support test. (16:44)
• Stormy mentioned that GNOME could use help on the Usability List and the Marketing list (23:50).
• Stormy mentioned that GUADEC is a major annual conference for GNOME, and this year it will be co-located with KDE's annual conference, Akademy. (26:20)

Segment 2 (29:29)

• Bradley could find no easy online references to the old arguments about KDE being six months ahead of GNOME. He is somewhat relieved this is the case. (30:24)
• Bradley mentioned the Travelocity gnome. (32:10)
• Bradley mentioned that a gnome is featured in the 2001 film, Amélie, being photographed around the world (32:30)
• Bradley mentioned that Free Software author Loïc Dachary does the same thing with a duck.

Tags: bkuhn, karen, Stormy Peters, non-profits, gnome