The Free Software Foundation's Statement On Canonical's Updated Licensing Terms 75
New submitter donaldrobertson writes: After two years of negotiations, Canonical has updated the intellectual property rights policy for Ubuntu Linux to address a disagreement over how the software is licensed. The FSF announcement reads in part: "In July 2013, the FSF, after receiving numerous complaints from the free software community, brought serious problems with the policy to Canonical's attention. Since then, on behalf of the FSF, the GNU Project, and a coalition of other concerned free software activists, we have engaged in many conversations with Canonical's management and legal team proposing and analyzing significant revisions of the overall text. We have worked closely throughout this process with the Software Freedom Conservancy, who provides their expert analysis in a statement published today." Richard Stallman thinks there are still other issues to address saying: "While the FSF acknowledges that the first update emerging from that process solves the most pressing issue with the policy ... the policy remains problematic in ways that prevent us from endorsing it as a model for others."
Stallman quote (Score:2, Troll)
While I am not 100% in agreement with Stallman all the time (EG I am vehemently against toe cheese), where the hell did the quote from him in the TFS originate? It is not in TFA.
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D'oh moment. The text of the quote is in TFA, but there is no attribution that it was Stallman who said it.
Re:Stallman quote (Score:4, Funny)
Correction: It's GNU/Stallman.
Re:Extremist (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Stallmann is an extremist and I am extremely grateful that he does take that part.
Without people willing to be extreme and to pay the price for that, we would have a much smaller outlook on the world. We would lead smaller debates and go for smaller goals. And yes, we probably would applaud canonical for being very explicitly about them granting you the rights you already had before.
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Really? You think Stallman is the only one in the free software world? He's not the only one, he's not the first, his just a loud mouth prick that arguably does more to hurt the image than help it.
GNU isn't HIS just because he came up with the idea, he is part of it. It would exist without him in some other form because the people involved with it would still have done it and you have no idea (nor do I) if the world would be more or less friendly to OSS. All he does is rant and rave and make an ass out
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He may not be the only voice in the free software world, but he is one of the most proactive.
Linus is sometimes willing to give his $0.02 about something outside the kernel, if you ask directly. RMS may be highly opinionated and abrasive, but at least he's out there pushing back at those that would take away rights. That's certainly more than a couple complaints on some tech forum (said the AC).
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but he is one of the most proactive.
Nuclear bombs are proactive, but we can both agree they are pretty much never a good thing, can't we?
He takes the nuclear approach, ALWAYS. More harm than good.
Nuclear bombs are not proactive. Nor are they reactive. Nuclear bombs are just that -- nuclear bombs. However, they can be used proactively or reactively, but it is the human person that makes that choice, not the bomb.
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RMS may be highly opinionated and abrasive, but at least he's out there pushing back at those that would take away rights.
These days so much of it is just spreading FUD rather than real issues though. Just look at The Javascript Trap [gnu.org] and tell me why a normal user would care about that. It's a similar story with the anti-Windows, anti-iOS, anti-SaaS, etc... diatribes, we have had Windows for 20-something years and iOS for 8 years so you would think that if that fear-mongering were well founded then there would be countless concrete examples of non-trivial harm done by non-free software that could be referenced to convince users
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It goes further than that. It's the difference between "free" (as in speech) and "free" (as in beer). Its been increasingly the case that you don't own software you paid for, you merely license it.
That's the same with Free Software, it is licensed [gnu.org] to you.
At least with Linux you are free to do whatever you want with it.
Within the terms of the Gnu Public License v2.0 [gnu.org].
Re:Extremist (Score:5, Insightful)
If the GPL didn't exist, corporations would not voluntarily open source ANYTHING for ANY reason and in that 'tragedy of the commons' situation all would suffer (including most IT corporations... except the ones who were already doing well building their own monoliths, e.g. Microsoft.)
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Umm... I seem to recall a different story than you. Software was free, source and all. You paid for the hardware and the support.
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If you're talking about some kind of 80s Sun-ish setup where you paid 5 figures for a workstation, well, despite its success at the time this was not representative of the industry as a whole and that business model obviously was not viable with the rise of the "x86 compatible". I'm specifically talking about the environment surrounding commodity hardware, not early (and doomed) business models that merely shifted the re
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The thing is, there's really three forms of free/libre/open source and what Linus wanted and what RMS wanted happened to overlap, but RMS is preaching something far beyond the actual requirements of the GPLv2.
1. People will contribute back on their own (non-copyleft)
2. I want your code for my project, no keepsies (Linus)
3. Users should be able to modify everything (RMS)
Linus chose the GPLv2 because he as a developer wants to incorporate additions or modifications others have made into his own project, he do
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He makes everyone else in the industry look normal and well adjusted.
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If you publicly do things that most people find extremely bizarre, it affects your credibility, even on completely unrelated things.
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Linux without RMS ==> Linux without the GPL ==> Linux without significant contributions from Red Hat, Suse/Novell, IBM, Canonical, etc. That doesn't me
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RMS ain't no Ghandi.
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What price is he paying? Do not get me wrong - I like what he has done but, really, it is not like he has been burdened by it really. He is an extremist and he gets push back from that but that is just the way things go when you are an extremist. I am grateful for him, I am glad that he has the vision he has. I just do not see it as a burden. You say "pay the price for that" like it has been hard. No, he has gained more from his position than he would have had he been just a moderately concerned person wher
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Your quite ridiculous personal attack on Stallman suggests that you are mentally and socially challenged, with no developed sense of propriety nor common decency, and certainly no ability with logic.
Pot, meet kettle, you're both black.
And best still, the anonymous coward rants against the identified user with excellent karma. Yea, its me that has the social issues, you're so right.
Shut up fanboy.
The Anti-Stallman Brigade rears its head again (Score:5, Insightful)
But no, the man has some 'extreme' personal views, which he does not try to involuntarily foist on any users anywhere and he occasionally tries to convince companies to voluntarily behave in ways that are healthier for the free software ecosystem, so therefore he must be bashed every time his name is mentioned. Oh, and he expects that people who voluntarily agree to the GPL to abide by its terms.
Goddamn terrorist.
Re:The Anti-Stallman Brigade rears its head againn (Score:2)
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Re:The Anti-Stallman Brigade rears its head again (Score:5, Informative)
Stallman is OK with dual licensing, as it is up to the licensee to go with the closed license. The FOSS licensed variant makes sure that one can choose which.
Re:The Anti-Stallman Brigade rears its head again (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct on both counts, and Stallman has publicly agreed with me when I stated that "A duel license is, to the user, no different than a non-copyleft license. The impact on freedom is exactly the same as using the BSD licenses. The user who gets it from you gets freedom, but the user who gets it from a third party may not".
So from his agreement in a public forum when I used that argument, I think we can surmise that he holds the same view. He would not try to stop a dual license anymore than he has tried to stop BSD licenses, he just thinks that copyleft is better.
The really funny thing is that people complain he isn't enough of a pragmatist... which really proves their ignorance. Stallman's ideal world is one where software cannot be copyrighted, and source code distribution is mandatory if you sell binaries. This is repeatedly said in his writings.
But it isn't what he is pushing for, he isn't arguing in courts for that, he isn't sending letters to congress for that. He did not try to pursue a, probably unreachable, ideal - instead he chose a pragmatic solution, the copyleft license, to create a self-perpetuating system that produces free software into the market, forcing non-free software to compete with it.
That will not give him his ideal, it will never eradicate non-free software, but it did make the world a lot better than it would have otherwise been. He also wrote the LGPL - which violates his own cherished ideals even further, because pragmatically - it was better to have it and let proprietory software run on GNU than to NOT have it and have people avoid GNU altogether because they can't replace a proprietory tool yet.
The man's history is not of an extremist or an idealist, quite the contrary - it's a history of tactical pragmatism. He does STATE his ideals, but he has never been so blinded by them as to let the perfect be the ENEMY of the good.
Re: The Anti-Stallman Brigade rears its head again (Score:2)
Strawman. He has never said that without adding: "seriously though, it's ok to use a proprietary program in that scenario provided you contribute in whatever way you can to projects that aim to create free alternatives to that software so that the situation isn't permanent but can ultimately be changed".
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Stallman has a few extreme views. And that's fine, because the track record of his actions and their effect on the IT world are not one of a dangerous extremist. As the parent poster said, they are one of a pragmatist, and I cannot imagine a realistic series of events that would render RMS's slightly nuttier ideas dangerous in
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Re:The Anti-Stallman Brigade rears its head again (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the GPL do for third party driver developers? It's a boat anchor.
That means BSD has terrific hardware support then, right? Oh wait, they have generally had fairly crappy support (especially a few years back) and the only BSD that has had great support is, of course, the completely proprietary and locked down OS X that legally requires the purchase of overpriced hardware to use. Yay permissive licenses!
Also, Google's Apache fetish is something to be viewed with great concern. There is no reason for them to spend so much money and effort replacing GPL components with Apache except to give them a kill switch for AOSP, which they will use the moment they feel the OSS crowd is more of a threat than a boon.
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The fact remains that what Apple did with their OS X (originally NeXTSTEP) is nothing like what Red Hat did with their OS, and these differences are directly traceable to the ramifications of
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Slashdot seems to me to be a proponent of the open source movement, the software development methodology that Bradley Kuhn [ebb.org] rightly called "greenwashing [linux.org.au]" (another copy [slingshot.co.nz]) the free software movement by talking about much the same software and licenses but without the freedom talk in order to placate business interests seeking to proprietarize software. Consider the case in this thread—defending copyleft—this clearly shows the difference between the two movements. The older free software movement wan
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It's completely a-his
Just migrate! (Score:1)
Due to the stupid decisions of Canonical, we have decided to migrate our 3095 Ubuntu boxes to Debian. The future of Ubuntu looks unclear with the clusterfuck that is going on with both the corporation and its community.
Re: Just migrate! (Score:1)
Most Debian users? Is this fact or you just pulling information out of your ass? Care to share your sources?
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OMG! Did you really just add a systemd troll to a Stallman-bashing troll thread?
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What are the stupid decisions from Canonical you talk about? (This is an actual question, I stopped following ubuntu when they broke gnuplot and latex while I was writting my PhD dissertation.)
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I have to be honest here and admit I can not actually see a good reason to have even had Ubuntu as your server OS at a scale that large at all. Servers is not really what they seemed to ever really be interested in - or that market so to speak. They have always wanted to be a viable desktop alternative and have constantly pushed their funding and efforts in that direction or, well, in the direction where it was in the hands of users and not really so important in the hands of admins. That is how I have perc
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Yeah, I think you are missing a bit.
For one, Ubuntu has actually become quite popular on the server at scale, because they have put resources into Ubuntu Server as a product---they just don't necessarily advertise it in ways that get splashy coverage on /. or Ars or such which do tend to be more about consumer-level tech products. But they have indeed put effort into it; they even have their own management tool called Landscape.
Secondly, their release cadence works a bit better than Debian for many server
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That makes more sense. I figured I had to be missing something. I have not really tracked Ubuntu enough I suppose. I do use a derivative though with LinuxMint. I'd not recommend Mint for server use though it would work.
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Just follow your link, then click on "FAQ". Search for link named "Agreement".
http://assets.ubuntu.com/sites/ubuntu/1473/u/files/section/legal/Canonical-HA-CLA-ANY-I_v1.2.pdf [ubuntu.com]