RMS transcript on GPLv3, Novell/MS, Tivo and more 255
H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "The 5th international GPLv3 conference was held in Tokyo last week. I've made and published a transcript of Stallman's talk where he described the latest on what GPLv3 will do about the MS/Novell deal, Treacherous Computing, patents, Tivo, and the other changes to the licence. While I was at it, I made a transcript of my talk from the next day where I tried to fill in some info that Richard didn't mention."
The "cure" proposal (Score:3, Informative)
There was a bit in there about a way of handling GPL violators who want to be able to redistribute again. According to Stallman, this is because when you redistribute without following the terms of the GPL, you lose any further right you have to distribute it, even if you comply with the GPL later on. In the article, he says he's not sure where the idea originated, but I suspect it's somewhere in the KDE camp, as this is where the idea that you need "forgiveness" from the copyright holder was first seen [linuxtoday.com]. The "cure" proposal would be a way of granting that forgiveness automatically.
Re:Treacherous Computing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What RMS should address (Score:2, Informative)
You have always been able to download any version of SUSE and distribute the GPLed components according to the GPL, for the last several versions the non-oss components have been moved out of the core distribution and are on an additional CD/repository you may use if you wish , so there is not even any "extraction" required. Even the enterprise version is freely downloadable, but don't expect to get a free support contract with it. The same is true of Red hat/fedora.
Re:Treacherous Computing (Score:2, Informative)
Chaintech - old motherboards are not supported. No video drivers for builtin 7AIV S3 ProSavage video card. Last VIA KM133 drivers cause black screen on Win98.
HP - HP Deskjet 1125c. Windows XP drivers are not available, because Windows XP includes drivers for this printer. Included driver sucks when compared with Win2k HP drivers and users use win2k drivers on winxp even when these drivers have quirks. Official HP response - use standard winxp driver. HP ColorLaserJet 3550 - no drivers for Vista and WinXP64. 64 bit drivers are only for IA64.
If you have to maintain older machines or support low end hardware, you know that drivers must be open. RMS and Theo de Raadt are right about open drivers.
If you want software examples - compare PhotoShop Elements 2, Photoshop Elements 5 and Photoshop itself. Try using older CorelDRAW when others use newer version. Get CDR viewer or CorelDRAW Essentials that work with CDR X3 format. Read and modify docx and xlsx documents. Compare Domino or Exchange IMAP implimentation with Cyrus or Courier.
Work some time as system admin on restricted budget and you will start disliking COTS.
Re:The "cure" proposal (Score:5, Informative)
It appears GPLv3 is trying to pull the best bits from other licenses into as generally applicable license as possible, rather than being specific to one software program. I doubt anyone will ever agree on how well it succeeds, but it's a good idea to try, I feel.
Re:Free Systems (Score:2, Informative)
``He was talking about usable operating system.''
No, he wasn't. At least, it doesn't say so in TFA.
``How many people browse the web under Syllabe, Haiku, ReactOS, FreeDOS ???''
Irrelevant; they're still free operating systems (well, maybe not Haiku; I don't know if it runs without proprietary BeOS parts, yet).
Re:The "cure" proposal (Score:3, Informative)
Mea Culpa.
Re:Tivoisation? (Score:3, Informative)
My understanding is that (under US law, anyway -- you don't say where you and your pot are) if you draft a contract, you're expected to address and clarify all your own concerns. Courts take a dim view of your discovering new subtleties or "violations of spirit" in your own words, as you had ample opportunity to make them clear to begin with. The other party gets more benefit of the doubt if he has a similar complaint against you, though.
Re:RMS is always right. Mod parent up. (Score:4, Informative)
1) Everyone agreeing to a particular licence at the same time
2) Everyone agreeing to give someone (Linus? FSF?) the copyright to their submissions.
It's not really that hard. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the code was written by 20% of the contributors. Plus, some of the code in Linux is already GPLv3-compatible, since it's either taken from the BSDs, or it's licenced under GPLv2-or-later. Additionally, older code tends to be replaced over time. If a switch to GPLv3 became popular among today's kernel developers, and Linus imposed a policy of only accepting GPLv2-and-GPLv3-compatible patches, then I suspect that in 5 years, it would be fairly simple to replace the little bit of GPLv3-incompatible code that remains, and drop GPLv2 compatibility.
It could probably also be done in less time and/or without Linus' cooperation, but with substantially more work required.
Would it be a pain? Yes, but I'm very skeptical that it's the impossible task that you claim it to be.
Re:What RMS should address (Score:5, Informative)
The root cause is that the GPL allows for the existence of non-free distros (Novell and RedHat are the ones I know)
Dude, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is provided as source at Red Hat's site. There is at least one large, easy to use distribution which takes those sources and rebuilds them after removing any Red Hat trademarked logos. That distribution is CentOS [centos.org]. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is completely free and GPL compliant. I recommend the contract-supported RHEL for customers that need that support, or need the certification on particular hardware for compliance issues and I recommend CentOS for customers that are comfortable dealing with (or paying me to deal with) a lot of extra issues.
Your statement that RHEL is non-free is thus completely false and demonstrably so.
Further RHEL, unlike SLES, is not complicated by an unclear patent-deal with Microsoft which seems to open Novell and Novell's customers to arcane legal threats due to implicit admission of the existence of infringement of Microsoft patents.
Add to this that Fedora Core is almost completely paid for by Red Hat in terms of infrastructure and developers and is also completely Free and I think that your comment if not a troll is unbelievably off-base.
Re:Market pressure doesn't mean that (Score:2, Informative)
But try to get one in the US: illegal.
If Universal Studios made DVD players, would they be multi-region or not?
So if my Tivo doesn't have "skip the intro" and I want to put that BACK IN, then I need a key to sign my code so the Tivo would accept it. That too harsh for Tivo? Well, they are the ones who made the system require a key.
Re:Assumption (Score:4, Informative)
The whole "protect shareholder value" bit is vastly over-rated by the general run of small investors as a legal excuse. Name a successful suit by shareholders against a corporate management that didn't do something to maximize profits because it was unethical or illegal. The majority of shareholder suits lose, and that includes more vaguely reasonable ones such as the Disney severance pay to Eisner lawsuit.
I just did a simple Google lookabout for currently as yet unsettled shareholder lawsuits. Nothing fancy, just typed in "Shareholder lawsuits", and then looked to see if the case appeared still in process. There were none mentioned on the first four pages (which is where I quit) that did not involve the board having allegedly either restated earnings and projected profits (always with a big decline in projected earnings) or incurred SEC fines. There's not a single one I could find this way that is even about a board simply having picked a bad business approach, so long as they did so openly, let alone one about not having entered any ethically 'gray' areas that could have led to profits. There are no shareholder lawsuits over such decisions as not laying off personnel in a decline, not selling non-exportable tech to nations on prohibited lists or other such actions revealed (at least in this search) either. I've heard of both such cases before, and am actually surprised that I couldn't find such a gase in the quick search. Still, I think this says something useful about how uncommon such cases are, at least.
In many states, the only way a court will even proceed with any shareholder lawsuit is if there is a SEC related decision first, and in some states, these decisions have to result in fines of various minimum values. In such cases, violating the law to maximize profits is the only way to become vulnerable to lawsuits over shareholder profits. That's right, in many cases, you have to break the law in an attempt to increase profits before you can be sued for the attempt failing! There, boards that use this as an excuse are saying, in effect, they had to give in before a threat that only becomes a threat if they give in! Amazing!
In over half of lawsuits of this general type, the shareholders sueing didn't do the most basic steps required before the court would even hear the case. For one example, many consistently failed to either try to get the board of directors to act on complaints before resorting to lawsuits, or to show the board was in some way biased or not sufficiently disinterested before proceeding to litigation. Of lawsuits that make it past such hurdles, most of the remainder failed automatically when the petitioner in effect asked the court to ignore that a violation of criminal law would be required for the board of directors to be in civil compliance. This frequently resulted in the suit being dismissed with prejudice.
A few years ago, a major shareholder in the pharma industry sued over just such an issue, claiming a corporation should have violated U.S. law by bribing Chinese (PRC) officials, since the fines would have been less than the profits. The arguements advanced got his lawyer disbarred, his own LLC dissolved and him convicted of racketeering so he could never form another one (at least in most jurisdictions).
That's doubtless an extreme case, but it shows the real problem here. Some people will sue over absurd, totally meritless claims, and concoct the most bizarre legal justifications. Some people will even go to civil court and argue their own case in such a way as to make it abundantly clear they are committing criminal acts, all the while thinking they are going to win big bucks. Some people will do the equivalent of shooting their parents and then absolutely demanding that the judge must show them mercy because they are an orphan.