Open Source Archive

This was Stallman's first talk since the release of draft 3. He explains how the 'tivoisation' clause was narrowed to encourage wider adoption, how the Novell-MS deal is tackled in two directions, and why the Additional Requirements section was dismantled, among other things. Possibly an interesting sidenote is an interview he gave straight after the talk.

"There are both popular and unpopular ways of circumventing the Free Software Foundation's General Public License. A very unpopular method, we've come to find out, is via promises of patent protection for users of specific software. However, if you're looking to leverage Free Software without completely fulfilling the requirements of the license, a better method would be to exploit the software as a service loophole, which the latest draft of the GPL3 just legalized."

The FSF has released the third draft of the revised third version of the GNU General Public License. Some of the changes in the new draft, such as the increased clarification and legal language, or the housekeeping changes that reflect new aspects of the license are likely to be accepted. However, the license also includes a new approach to the controversial issue of lock-down technologies as well as more explicit language about patents, including language designed to prevent a re-occurrence of agreements such as the one that Novell entered into with Microsoft - all of which is apt to kindle heated debate as the revision process enters its final stages after fifteen months of intensive work.

The third discussion draft of GPL version 3 is scheduled for release at 7 a.m. PDT on Wednesday, Brett Smith, a licensing compliance engineer for the Free Software Foundation said in a mailing list posting Monday. The current GPL 2 governs the rights and restrictions of many open-source and free-software projects, including high-profile ones such as the Linux kernel, Java and MySQL database. A 'last-call' draft is due 60 days after the third discussion draft, and the final GPL 3 will arrive 30 days after that, Smith said.

Almost two years ago, the FSF started work on the first update of the GNU GPL in over a decade. A last-minute hitch, though, is keeping the license from appearing. According to Peter Brown, the FSF's executive director, "We continue to work on the details of the GPLv3 as it relates to the situation presented by the Novell and Microsoft deal. We are researching issues related to potential unintended consequences of the language we plan to adopt. As soon as we are satisfied with the results of our research we plan to bring forward the next draft."

The FLOSS Movement is not yet recognized enough to develop peacefully. There are many obstacles in the way of its expansion: either internal (e.g. lack of standards) or external (e.g. stubborn hardware manufacturers). Those problems could be gradually overcome in a relatively short period of time but a question arises: What will happen if the paranoia wins?

"Is open source still a grassroots social movement made up of idealistic underdogs trying to revolutionize an amoral industry? Or has it become a cloak used by IT vendors large and small to disguise ruthless and self-serving behavior? Some observers argue it's the latter. Despite occasional protests from old-timers - the heated backlash against the Microsoft-Novell détente, for example - open source has become so co-opted by mainstream IT, so transformed by 'accidental open sourcers' simply looking for a better business model, that it's lost its cherished moral edge."

This week FSF Europe announced the release of its Fiduciary License Agreement, a form of copyright assignment in which a free software project can place its collective copyright under the control of a single organization or trustee. The agreement is designed to reduce the problems in managing copyrights in large projects, and to reconcile differences in copyright worldwide. However, exactly how important, useful, or necessary the FLA is depends upon whom you talk to in the free software community. To some extent, FSFE even seems to be operating contrary to the advice of the original Free Software Foundation in the US.

Tucson Amateur Packet Radio is sponsoring a plan to encourage and popularize the idea of open source - for hardware components. The organization released a draft of an open source license for computer hardware this month, and issued a public call for comments on the draft. The new license is already drawing criticism from prominent members of the open source community.

A ham radio club in Tucson, Arizona, is inviting public comment on a draft license governing open hardware designs. The Tucson Amateur Packet Radio club's Open Hardware License version 0.9 is available online for comment and discussion through March 7. TAPR says its OHL was designed to help hardware designers engage in collaborative development, "just as open source programmers do today."

With only 3 weeks until FOSDEM 2007, the staff have published the first batch of interviews with some of their speakers. In this initial round of interviews, Jim Gettys shares his thoughts on the goals of the OLPC project, Federico Mena Quintero, one of GNOME's founders, gives a brief introduction to his speech on profiling desktop applications, and GEGL's main author Oyvind Kolas elaborates a little on the recent resurrection of the GEGL project. More interviews will be posted in the next couple of weeks.

GPLv3 threatens to fork GNU projects and marginalize the Free Software Foundation, writes Linux observer Bill Weinberg in this essay. Drawing on long experience evangelizing open source licensing to business users, Weinberg suggests that the FSF's GPLv3 high road could be a lonesome one.

"Microsoft Windows Vista launched for general purchase on January 29. If you want to get information about modifying and deploying your open source application in Microsoft Windows Vista, you should check out this blog item on Port 25. There is a Q&A style interview about the Microsoft DevReadiness.org community site as well as other resources to help you get your FOSS application Vista-ready."

The European Commission's enterprise and industry department just released the final draft of what could be the biggest academic interdisciplinary study on the economic/innovative impacts of FLOSS. The study was done by an international consortium, led by the United Nations University/University of Maastricht's department of innovation; UNU-MERIT for short. The study was prepared by senior researcher Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, who did a tremendous amount of FLOSS studies the last few years, amongst them on FLOSSpols and FLOSSWorld.