Discussion April 2001

discussion@lists.fsfe.org

22 participants
20 discussions

License Distribution
by Bernhard Reiter 21 Jun '01

21 Jun '01

Hi People, recently the question popped up about how many free software is published under which license. We believe that the licenses of the FSF, especially the GNU GPL is the most commonly used and spreaded Free Software license. Probably with BSD like licenses and Public domain coming next (personal guess). This is of course not just a matter of how many code lines are under which license or the number of projects. It is also a matter of importance. Nontheless I tried to collect some numbers I could grasp easily, probably underrepresenting the BSD code out there. Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=13 OSI Approved (8964 projects) Public Domain (242 projects) Other/Proprietary License (216 projects) (I don't know why they allow proprietory licenses....., I always thought they did not, but obviously someone should inquire otherwise the brand sourceforge for free software is damaged.) Comment: OSI generally means that the license is also FSF approved. (with some exceptions, like the Artistic license.) From http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=14 Including PD from above: GNU General Public License (GPL) :6634 GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) : 895 BSD License : 513 Public Domain : 242 Mozilla Public License (MPL) : 154 MIT/X Consortium License : 120 Python License : 80 QT Public License (QPL) : 63 zlib/libpng License : 49 IBM Public License : 11 Ricoh Source Code Public License : 5 MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW) : 4 Artistic License (not free by FSF standards) : 307 Also LWN now publishes annoucement by license. (I have bugged them about this for a long time. :) ) The annoucemente come from freshmeat for each week. Unfortunalty I have not found an easy method to get the license distribution of the freshmeat database. (I have send them mail and asked for it today.) A small script could process the LWN annoucements starting with the 21.9.2000 when the annoucements were done by license the first time. (lynx -dump is your friend.) Here are the results: GPL:4615 LGPL: 376 BSD type: 317 OpenSource: 201 Public Domain: 86 Artistic & GPL: 66 Apache style: 65 MIT: 48 MPL: 44 QPL: 29 The PHP License: 22 IBM Public License: 10 unknown: 6 Eiffel Forum Freeware License: 6 NPL: 2 non-free licenses: freely distributable: 228 * Freeware: 169 * free to use but restricted: 137 * Artistic: 123 * free for non-commercial use: 99 * proprietary: 52 * Free Trial: 45 * source-available proprietary: 31 * Shareware: 23 * Voxel Public License: 3 * Free World Licence: 1 * AFPL: 1 * Conclusion: Active and visible project on freshmeat and sourceforge definately are dominated by the GNU GPL by an order of magnitute! The LGPL seems to be second with unprotected free software types BSD/MIT/PD being in the same league. Therefore my thesis above is backed by some data. And it makes sence, because LGPL and BSD/MIT/PD are useful licenses for some special cases, when GPL protection inhibits other goals of the project. Cheers, Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (fsfeurope.org)

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Belgium
by Henrion Benjamin 03 May '01

03 May '01

What are the plans of FSFEurope to have an office in Belgium? I ask the question because we've tried to create an Open Association around Free Software (see OpenBe.org for more info) but the project is still in StandBy for the moment. I think good ideas could be exchanged between the FSF and OpenBe. If you're interested, there's also a mailing-list on the OpenBe website if you want to talk about freesw in Belgium. That's all... -- BNJ http://lln.udev.org http://openbe.org

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BMWi News Site
by Georg C. F. Greve 28 Apr '01

28 Apr '01

Hi guys, we're in the news section of the German ministry of economics and technology. Check out (in German): http://www.sicherheit-im-internet.de/news/news.phtml?nnid=756 Regards, Georg -- Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)gnu.org> Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org) Brave GNU World (http://brave-gnu-world.org)

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Introducing myself
by Ruben Leote Mendes 27 Apr '01

27 Apr '01

Hello, As requested here is something about myself. My name is Rúben and I was born 29 years ago in Lisbon - Portugal. I took a five year degree in electrical engineering. After that I kept studying and took a masters degree also in electrical engineering. My thesis title was "Telecommunication Systems Implementation using Programmable Logic Devices". You can find it (in Portuguese only), and all the source code and schematics, in my webpage at http://www.nocturno.org/ruben . I finished the masters degree last September and decided to leave Academia and try my luck in the Industry. After talking to a friend we decided to start our own company. The company will focus on Internet Services like web hosting, web development/programming and consulting. We are just finishing incorporating the company and should start operating soon. My first contact with free software was around 1993 when I found Linux. Coming from the MS-Windows world, I was fascinated by the availability of all the source code in Linux for free. At this time my definition of free was still more like "Beer" than like "Freedom". It all changed when I somehow found the FSF homepage and Stallman's writings. His writings made me think and soon I was a convert. :) There is one thing where I disagree with him, probably because of my background in hardware. According to some interviews I read, Stallman doesn't think that Free Hardware is really important as long as manufacturers publish enough data to write free drivers. I think that Free Hardware is also very important, specially because today we can describe hardware using Hardware Description Languages. I really don't have any free software work I have done that is worth mentioning. I use free software almost exclusively and I hope that I can license all software produced by my company as GPL. The only thing that I hope proves my belief in free software and that my intentions are good is an email I sent to Linux Weekly News that was published in the Letters To The Editor section. You can find it at http://lwn.net/2000/0323/backpage.php3 after scrolling down a little bit. There is a lot of work to be done in Europe. I am particularly concerned about the recent EU directive similar to the US DMCA, and also about the software patents that are beeing considered. I hope we can work together and that we can soon meet personaly. -- Rúben Leote Mendes - ruben(a)nocturno.org

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Press echo (in German)
by Georg C. F. Greve 27 Apr '01

27 Apr '01

Hi guys, the "Berliner Zeitung" has brought an article about the FSFE that is actually much better than anything most other magazines have written about Free Software. You can check it out (in German) at: http://www.berlinonline.de/aktuelles/berliner_zeitung/multimedia/.html/3364… Regards, Georg -- Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)gnu.org> Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org) Brave GNU World (http://brave-gnu-world.org)

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Re: Belgium
by MJ Ray 27 Apr '01

27 Apr '01

"Kim Bruning (seperate for lists)" <kim2(a)bruning.demon.nl> writes: > Great Britain has English and Gaelic. I'm not sure (Scots or Irish) Gaelic is recognised. Welsh is an official language in Wales. There's also Cornish about, but nearly dead for all practical purposes. Are we off-topic yet? -- MJR

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Just for fun: FSFE ASCII art
by Peter Gerwinski 27 Apr '01

27 Apr '01

OMNISEN DONOND RETNOND BETURQU IM EF AT OM RESQUA ICITD URNOND ODOH ED UM UM AB AN HABETU HA ENDAEST Peter -- http://home.pages.de/~Peter.Gerwinski/ - G-N-U GmbH: http://www.g-n-u.de Maintainer GNU Pascal - http://home.pages.de/~GNU-Pascal/ - gpc-20010423 GnuPG key fingerprint: 9E7C 0FC4 8A62 5536 1730 A932 9834 65DB 2143 9422 keys: http://www.gerwinski.de/pubkeys/ - AntiSpam: http://spam.abuse.net

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Netherlands
by Kim Bruning (seperate for lists) 26 Apr '01

26 Apr '01

I'm going to try and be available to help with any kind of groundwork that might need to be done for an fsf chapter in the Netherlands. Anyone else working on that? If so, who should I contact? If no one else is working on it yet, I guess I'm going to have to be the vict.. errr volunteer for this part of the continent. If someone else is working on it already, great, I'd love to help you out. :-) read you soon, Kim Bruning

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UK Linux Expo in Birmingham [was: Re: Starting a new Chapter]
by Tim Ney 26 Apr '01

26 Apr '01

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001 15:05:15 +0100, m.a.eberhard(a)aston.ac.uk wrote: Since I'm living in the Birmingham area, I would like to offer my help too. There will be an FSF booth in the Association Village. Perhaps you could volunteer some time to help staff it.

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Portugese translation of latest Press Release
by Frederico S. Mu�oz 25 Apr '01

25 Apr '01

Oooops, wrong mail address... Sorry about that. fsm ----- Forwarded message from fsmunoz ----- To: fsfe-europe(a)gnu.org Cc: discussion(a)fsfeurope.org, jneves(a)ieee.org Subject: Portugese translation of latest Press Release The subject says it all :) This translaion was made by me with revision, corrections and general advices given by João Miguel Neves. I will start sending this one to the media tomorrow; this time I am going to appeal to several ppl I know on the newspapers to send me a notice if/when it gets published. Best Regards, fsm -- Frederico S. Muñoz GNU http://www.gnu.org fsmunoz(a)sdf.lonestar.org Debian http://www.debian.org http://sdf.lonestar.org - SDF Public Access Unix Systems Comunicado de Imprensa da Free Software Foundation Europe (Federação do Software Livre - Europa). "Primeira Assembleia Geral da Free Software Foundation Europe" (Hamburgo/Essen) Em 6 de Maio de 2001 a primeira Assembleia Geral da Free Software Foundation Europe irá tomar lugar na Villa Vogelsang em Essen, Alemanha. Este antiga moradia, anteriormente propriedade de um dono de uma fábrica, evoluiu para o "Centro para o GNU/Linux e Software Livre" duranto os últimos dois anos e será o primeiro escritório da FSF Europa. "Estamos muito felizes que os nossos patrocinadores demonstrem tal interesse pelo Software Livre que nos tenham permitido montar um escritório totalmente funcional com as suas doações contínuas", disse o Dr. Peter Gerwinski, um responsável da FSF Europa. Com o propósito de apresentar os membros da equipa e a localização do escritório ao público e à imprensa está marcada uma reunião informal para a Villa Vogelsang. Às 17:00 os membros da FSF Europa estarão disponíveis para fotografias e pequenas entrevistas. Das 19:00 em diante o evento estará aberto ao público. Um pequeno pré-aviso da parte de quem esteja a pensar assistir será apreciado. "Esta é a nossa primeira Assembleia Geral e muitas coisas são ainda muito novas para nós e para as pessoas com quem trabalhamos, por isso queremos dar a oportunidade a toda a gente de ter tantos de nós num único lugar", disse Georg C. F. Greve. "Ao ser um pouco informal esperamos proporcionar um ambiente mais relaxado onde as pessoas nos possam conhecer". Acerca da FSF Europa: A Free Software Foundation Europa é a organização irmã da Free Software Foundation criada em 1984 por Richard M. Stallman nos Estados Unidos da América. O principal objectivo da FSF Europa é coordenar as iniciativas relativas ao Software Livre por toda a Europa, providenciar centros de competência para políticos e jornalistas e garantir a existência de infraestruturas para projectos de Software Livre e em especial ao Projecto GNU. Mais informações acerca da FSF Europa poderão ser encontradas em http://fsfeurope.org Contactos: Europa Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)gnu.org> Tel: +49-40-23809080 Fax: +49-40-23809081 França Frederic Couchet <fcouchet(a)april.org> Tel: +33 6 60 68 89 31 Alemanha Bernhard Reiter <bernhard(a)intevation.de> Tel: +49-541 - 335 08 - 33 Itália Alessandro Rubini <rubini(a)gnu.org> Tel: +39-0382-529.554 (o .424) Fax: +39-0382-529.424 Suécia Jonas Öberg <jonas(a)gnu.org> Tel: +46-21-144831 Mais informações acerca de contactos de imprensa estão disponíveis em http://fsfeurope.org/press/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Frederico S. Muñoz GNU http://www.gnu.org fsmunoz(a)sdf.lonestar.org Debian http://www.debian.org http://sdf.lonestar.org - SDF Public Access Unix Systems

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Discussion April 2001