Open Source Archive

"The FSF today launched a campaign with a twofold mission of exposing the harms inflicted on computer users by the new Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free software alternatives that respect users' security and privacy rights. "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care", said FSF program administrator John Sullivan."

Open Source Development Labs has cut a third of its staff, lost its chief executive and scaled back some technical work. That leaves a staff of 19, including Tom Hanrahan in charge of engineering, Diane Peters in charge of legal work, and top Linux programmers Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton.

The potentially historic Microsoft-Novell pact announced last week, whereby Microsoft would grant patent peace to users of Novell's Suse Linux software in exchange for royalty payments paid by Novell to Microsoft, will be dead by mid-March, promises Eben Moglen, the general counsel of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF controls the license that governs the distribution of Linux and many other key forms of free and open-source software. "It will surely violate GPL version 3," said Moglen, referring to the forthcoming version. "GPL version 3 will be adjusted so the effect of the current deal is that Microsoft will by giving away access to the very patents Microsoft is trying to assert."

The European division of the Free Software Foundation has published a side-by-side comparison of the two drafts of the upcoming third revision of the GPL. All the removed or added lines are clearly marked.

This guest column by a representative of the Free Software Foundation Europe discusses proposed provisions in a future version 3 of the GNU General Public License that are intended to reduce open-source license proliferation, by making the GPL more flexible.

Novell has partnered with the Software Freedom Law Center to ensure that its partnership with Microsoft does not violate any terms of the General Public Licence. "The SFLC has been offered cooperation by Novell sufficient to permit a confidential audit to determine whether the licence provisions of the GPL have been complied with," SFLC chairman Eben Moglen told vnunet.com.

"I am a linguist by training. Long before I delved into free software and was snagged by the quagmire of marketing, I pondered the marvels of morphology, the grimness of grammar and the splendor of semantics. It is only natural then that my wrangling criticism of industry-speak, in both technical and literary modes, is informed by ingrained linguistic sensibilities, descriptive and proscriptive. Given my background, I find it vexing when open source is used as a verb."

Of course the net is buzzing with reactions to the Novell-Microsoft agreement of yesterday. Bruce Perens is very negative about it all: "What aren't they telling you? First, you can be sure that Microsoft's not out to help a competitor. This announcement paves the way for Microsoft to implement significant control over commercial customer's use of Free Software. And it has significant negative implications for Open Source in general." Eben Moglen of the FSF says about the possible GPL issues: "If you make an agreement which requires you to pay a royalty to anybody for the right to distribute GPL software, you may not distribute it under the GPL."

"When I wrote about the wrangling over the GNU GPLv3 licence a month back, it provoked a lively conversation in the comments. Given this evident passion among readers, I thought it would be interesting to ask the top hackers - the ones actually involved in the discussions - for their thoughts on the matter. So I contacted Richard Stallman for the FSF angle, and a bunch of the top kernel hackers - Linus, Alan Cox, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Andrew Morton and Dave Miller - for their view."

"There is one huge difference between the free and non-free software that has some very practical implications in the way we use it. One of those implications are the dependencies between single software packages in the free software model. What do they have to do with the free software philosophy and why should not you be afraid of them? Read on to find this out."

"There has been lots of talk over the past few years about open source license proliferation. I'm generally of the mind that if you can't solve the problem with the GPL, MPL, or BSD, it's not a licensing problem worth solving. I've therefore been interested to watch the progress of the European Union Public License (Draft here). The EU has stated its rationale (which the Free Software Foundation doesn't buy), but let me add one big reason of my own."

"The European Commission has taken steps to promote the use of open source systems and software in the public sector. It has selected a consortium led by Unisys Belgium to create and manage the Open Source Observatory and Repository, the company announced. Other members of the consortium are the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, consultancy GOPA Cartermill, and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid. They will provide an internet service and portal enabling European administrations to centrally store and share the software code of their open source applications and exchange open source knowledge."

Friday Several kernel developers issued a position paper criticizing the GPLv3 drafts. That prompted Software Freedom Law Center chairman Eben Moglen to issue a 'renewed invitation' yesterday to kernel developers to participate in the GPLv3 process. Linus Torvalds responded to Moglen's statement by saying that his position on the license is clear and that he's "fed up" with the FSF.

"The Free Software Foundation wishes to clarify a few factual points about the Second Discussion Draft of GNU GPL version 3, on which recent discussion has presented inaccurate information. The FSF has no power to force anyone to switch from GPLv2 to GPLv3 on their own code. We intentionally wrote GPLv2 (and GPLv1) so we would not have this power. Software developers will continue to have the right to use GPLv2 for their code after GPLv3 is published, and we will respect their decisions."