Discussion April 2002

discussion@lists.fsfe.org

45 participants
36 discussions

Re: Why we speak about Free Software
by Loic Dachary 25 Apr '02

25 Apr '02

Jan-Oliver Wagner writes: > no, you are not going mad :-) > StarOffice is _no_ Free Software. > > Yesterday I had a talk on Free Software and GIS at University of > Munster and exactly the same statement came up from the audience. > It is really interesting how it evolved that so many people > think of StarOffice as Free Software. I experience the same problems :-( Sun deliberatly marketed it to achieve this result. Since OpenOffice is Free Software people say StarOffice and OpenOffice interchangeably and they even *use* StarOffice because OpenOffice is Free Software. To me it's like using Oracle because MySQL is Free Software. There is hardly any rationale in this behaviour but it's there anyway. I guess the only thing we can do is to constantly remind people that OpenOffice is Free Software, not StarOffice. That reminds me of people not willing to see the difference between the Open Source movement and the Free Software movement. Cheers, -- Loic Dachary http://www.dachary.org/ loic(a)dachary.org 12 bd Magenta http://www.senga.org/ loic(a)senga.org 75010 Paris T: 33 1 42 45 07 97 loic(a)gnu.org GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt

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Re: LWN letters
by Joerg Schilling 24 Apr '02

24 Apr '02

>From: Bernhard Reiter <bernhard(a)intevation.de> >From: Richard Stallman <rms(a)gnu.org> >Subject: iSCSI and patents > so he argues that a mere > possibility (rather than a likelihood) of a patent problem is not > cause for real alarm. Believe this at your peril! A chance that > patents cover a protocol is like a chance that food has salmonella: > don't find out by eating it! RSCSI can do a lot...... and RSCSI is free. Jörg EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js(a)cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1 schilling(a)fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix

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LWN letters
by Bernhard Reiter 24 Apr '02

24 Apr '02

Just for you that do not read LWN on a regular basis, there are a couple of letter to the current LWN which contain interesting argumentations and defend freedom for software: http://lwn.net/2002/0418/letters.php3 Some quotes: From: Richard Stallman <rms(a)gnu.org> Subject: iSCSI and patents so he argues that a mere possibility (rather than a likelihood) of a patent problem is not cause for real alarm. Believe this at your peril! A chance that patents cover a protocol is like a chance that food has salmonella: don't find out by eating it! From: bryanh(a)giraffe-data.com (Bryan Henderson) Subject: The right to the fruits of one's ideas [ Citing the US constitution. ] It doesn't mean Congress has to create patents or that anyone has a right to one. In fact, in "for a limited time," it goes exactly the other way -- preserving the right of people to sponge off other peoples' work. From: Kay Hayen <kayhayen(a)gmx.de> Subject: http://www.lwn.net/daily/perens-robertson.php3 I agree with that Debian will win in the end. I do not agree with the reason you seem to give, calling Debian "non-profit". I do not necessarily think an open system needs to be non-profit. From: Emile Snyder <esnyder(a)whitesalmon.net> Subject: RMS, property, and freedom the FSF and Mr. Stallman have never argued otherwise. They have only pointed out the social harm in then punishing the buyer from giving away copies to his/her friends and neighbors. This is why the physical/informational distinction is at the crux of the issue. One may disagree with RMS's analysis of the failings of copyright law, but it is irresponsible to impugn his position based on specious analogy to physical property law.

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free software organizations in eurpoe
by Rafal Szczesniak 20 Apr '02

20 Apr '02

Hello all, I'd like to know how many free software organizations are already formally registered across european countries. Does anybody know exact number and names ? cheers, +--------------------------------------------------------+ |Rafal 'Mimir' Szczesniak <mimir(a)spin.ict.pwr.wroc.pl> | |*BSD, GNU/Linux and Samba / |______________________________________________________/

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Software patents and Free Software implementation
by Alexandre Dulaunoy 19 Apr '02

19 Apr '02

Dear all, We (AEL) are trying to have an updated list of patent owners that permit Free Software implementation under a RF licence of their patents. On the other side, we have also a list of people that don't permit Free Software implementation . We want to show that software patents hurt the Free Software. We have for the moment two company in the waiting queue (we are waiting for respond). * Cisco Inc. for #5,473,599 in the US for a Hot Standby Redundacy Protocol * RSA Securities Inc. for #5,724,428 in the US for a Block encryption algorithm with data-dependent rotations If they don't respond in the two weeks, they will be in the bad list ;-) (there is one patent for the moment in the "bad" list and the respond of the owner in the bad list for Free Software) If you have any specific case of software patents hurting Free Software, don't hesitate to send it to us. activists(a)ael.be For more information (the beta page) : http://www.ael.be/node.php?id=52 Don't hesite to give feedback. Thanks. Alexandre Dulaunoy

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Re: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
by Joerg Schilling 17 Apr '02

17 Apr '02

>From: Alex Hudson <home(a)alexhudson.com> >> >Because it's not in the art. The art is Computer Science, not writing >> >Sun's OS. The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from Sun having done >> >it is zero. >>=20 >> Sorry, this is nonsense! >No, it's not. Prior art doesn't mean "an example of something having >been done before". The question to ask is, "Given the claim in this >patent, would it be obvious to a skilled software engineer how to >implement it?". "Obvious" is generally taken to mean that the idea, or >some close parallel, has been published.=20

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Re: Software patents and Free Software implementation
by Loic Dachary 17 Apr '02

17 Apr '02

Alexandre Dulaunoy writes: > > Yes, you are right. We are currently battle to stop patent in Europe (in > Belgium and Luxembourg governement) and they (gvt) have a (bad) general > argument that saying "Software patent exists in the US and Free Software exists > also in the US, so there is not issue with innovation in Free Software". > Of course, they are wrong but we need arguments... As Alessandro pointed out, it is not a matter of stopping software patents in Europe (they are illegal). I know you're very well aware of this fact :-) But your choice of words can lead the reader to think otherwise. It's better to say "We are currently battling to keep software patents out of Europe" or something like that. IMHO the best argument you have (in addition to the numerous documents provided on www.freepatents.org and www.eurolinux.org) is that all politicians in France declared themselves against software patents, including the french government. See http://www.liberation.fr/quotidien/semaine/020312-040031012ECON.html Whatever the result of the presidential election will be, our future president will be someone who declared against software patents. Also, but it's a bit older, the french government declared itself against the European directive: http://www.industrie.gouv.fr/cgi-bin/industrie/sommaire/comm/comm.cgi?COM_I… Such a consensus catches the attention of politicians. It's relatively fresh news (one month old) and, if nothing else, will allow you to meet the conselors of politicians in Belgium and Luxembourg so that you have an opportunity to present them the documents advocating against software patents. That's exactly what we did in France : find a mean to catch their attention, discuss with them, give them documents. Get back to them on a regular basis with an update of the situation. Regarding the list of software patents, I'm unsure if distinguishing between software patents that are friendly Free Software and those that doesn't will do any good. Software patents that are friendly to Free Software are *not* good software patents. There is no such thing as a good software patent. Classifying them in the way you suggest will probably lead to more confusion. A specific example is the RT/Linux patent. It is friendly to GPL software but it is a software patent anyway. People tend to obey this patent because the patent holder does a marketing campaign to scare them. And this is a successfull tactic: people pay royalties to the patent holder. They do not even question the patent, they only fear that the patent holder will sue them. The patent holder convinced them that he will go to court. On the other hand, the very same people run web sites and completly ignore the patent on "System for managing dynamic web page generation requests by intercepting request at web server and routing to page server thereby releasing web server to process other requests" (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=…) although the patent holder could claim it covers Apache and cgi-bins. Everyone would say it's ridiculous. But, hey, everyone also says that the RT/Linux patent is ridiculous. In this specific case, the Free Software friendly software patent is harmfull (because the patent holder scares people) and the Free Software unfriendly software patent is harmless (because the patent holder did no make himself known). Cheers, -- Loic Dachary http://www.dachary.org/ loic(a)dachary.org 12 bd Magenta http://www.senga.org/ loic(a)senga.org 75010 Paris T: 33 1 42 45 07 97 loic(a)gnu.org GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt

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introduction
by Rudy Gevaert 16 Apr '02

16 Apr '02

Hello, I just joined this mailinglist, so I you don't mind I would like to introduce myself (not to personal :)). I live in Belgium (near Brugge and Ghent), 19 years old, almost 2 years GNU/Linux users. At the moment I'm a Computer Science student at the RUG (University of Ghent). There I am also the Chairman of ZeusWPI. This is the "Workgroup Computer Science". We primairly fuction as a GNU/Linux user group for the university. We spread the word :). Next to that, we give a every year a couple of lectures/lessons with self written course notes. We gave courses about: Installation of GNU/Linux, Apps under GNU/Linux, Anti spam, LaTeX, PHP, etc. In other words, we try to spread the GNU word :) Next school year I am also giving an introduction to all the Computer Science freshmen about GNU/Linux. Next year I would like to gave a lecture about GNU it selves... but give by a "certified agent" :). So are there people here who are up to that.... or if you give me some pointers. Thanks in advance, -- Rudy Gevaert - rudy(a)zeus.rug.ac.be - http://www.zeus.rug.ac.be keyserverID=24DC49C6 - http://www.webworm.org <-- UPDATED Private mail with incorrect quoting behavior will remain unanswered I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known. - Walt Disney (1901-1966)

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[LONG] (sub)licensing issue
by Jerome Alet 11 Apr '02

11 Apr '02

Hi, I've written a GPLed (not LGPLed) library which I know is currently used in a software licensed under the BSD license, so this is clearly a GPL violation since the other software license should be GPLed too. I'm currently trying to make the other software authors change their license to GPL to comply with my module's license. However AFAIK it may be impossible for them to comply since they may be disallowed to do so by the company they are a part of, which may want to keep the right to close their sources (we are currently discussing the issue, no need for a flamewar on them) In other words, in the worst case scenario, the two only options available to them are : 1 - don't use my library at all. 2 - ask me for a sublicense in exchange of money (I'm the only author), which I'd be glad to accept ;-) This is if I understand the GPL correctly. Now if they finally choose point 2, and ask for my software under a different license (BSD for example) and I agree, what are my options to : 1 - give them my software under the BSD license in exchange of money. 2 - allow them to give/resell and/or close their sources which include my own BSDized (or other) sources. 3 - don't allow any of their "client" to extract my library's sources from their whole package and redistribute it under the BSD license, since I want to keep my library under the GPL for the rest of the world. So is there a license somewhere to solve this problem, or what would you do in the same situation ? Since IANAL any help on the text of a possible license would be greatly appreciated, especially because I'm french and they aren't... I've read this mailing list archive (April and March) and I've found a somewhat related thread but with no clear answer. I've asked to the FSF but I've got no answer yet. Thanks in advance for any help. PS : Sorry if I'm not clear, just ask for more details if needed. Jerome Alet - alet(a)unice.fr - http://cortex.unice.fr/~jerome Fac de Medecine de Nice http://wwwmed.unice.fr Tel: (+33) 4 93 37 76 30 Fax: (+33) 4 93 53 15 15 28 Avenue de Valombrose - 06107 NICE Cedex 2 - FRANCE

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Re: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue (fwd)
by Jerome Alet 11 Apr '02

11 Apr '02

sorry for the forgotten CC... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 16:12:25 +0200 (MET DST) From: Jerome Alet <jerome(a)cortex.unice.fr> To: Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw(a)users.sourceforge.net> Subject: Re: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: > On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 03:14:07PM +0200, Jerome Alet wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I've written a GPLed (not LGPLed) library which I know is currently used > > in a software licensed under the BSD license, so this is clearly a > > GPL violation since the other software license should be GPLed too. > > You are wrong, it doesn't have to. > As long as they keep their version open, there is no violation of > licence. huh ? reading : http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCWhatDoesCompatMean if they redistribute both their source and mine as a whole then the whole package MUST be GPLed whatever license they use for their own software. if they don't redistribute my package as part of a bigger one which contains their software and mine, then they can distribute their package under BSD or closed. However in the closed case every recipient of their package is not allowed to use my software, so their software won't work at all (legally wise). is that what you mean ? > If somebody will ever take their code and close it, > or if they will close it, they will be unable to legally use your > library. how will I know if they don't comply if this is the case ? thanks in advance. Jerome Alet - alet(a)unice.fr - http://cortex.unice.fr/~jerome Fac de Medecine de Nice http://wwwmed.unice.fr Tel: (+33) 4 93 37 76 30 Fax: (+33) 4 93 53 15 15 28 Avenue de Valombrose - 06107 NICE Cedex 2 - FRANCE

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Discussion April 2002