FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Free Software Foundation
Bradley M. Kuhn <pr(a)gnu.org>
Phone: +1-617-542-5942
FSF Lawyer and Board Member Serves as Expert Witness
in Lawsuit Related to GNU GPL
Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Tuesday, February, 26, 2002 - Eben Moglen,
General Counsel to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), will testify as an
expert witness in the Progress Software Corporation vs. MySQL AB case
currently pending in United States District Court in Massachusetts. The
current focus of this case is a preliminary injunction sought by MySQL AB
concerning a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) by Progress
Software Corp.
Progress lost the right to distribute MySQL due to a violation of the GNU
GPL. Progress distributed a proprietary software component, Gemini, that
combined with the GPL'ed MySQL database system. Gemini was linked
statically with the MySQL system to form a single binary program. Many
times, the FSF has enforced the GNU GPL in such situations, when our
copyrights were at stake. We do such enforcement in a confidential
setting without the need of court action. Since Progress distributes no
FSF-copyrighted code, the FSF is not a party in the case; however, the FSF
takes a strong position that Progress is indeed in violation of the GNU
GPL.
Moglen said: "In our minds, Progress Software Corp. has committed a
garden-variety violation of the GNU GPL. We expect to prevail as we
assist MySQL AB in their enforcement action. We are quite surprised that
Progress has brought the action this far."
The preliminary injunction hearing will take place at 2:00 PM on
Wednesday, February, 27, 2002 at the Federal Court House in Boston,
Massachusetts in the court of Judge Patti B. Saris.
Moglen's full affidavit in this case is available at
http://www.fsf.org/press/mysql-affidavit.html. Moglen's full essay about
enforcing the GNU GPL is available at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html.
About Eben Moglen:
Eben Moglen holds a PhD. in history and a J.D. from Yale University.
Moglen is currently a professor of law and legal history at Columbia
University Law School, and serves as general counsel for the Free Software
Foundation.
About Free Software Foundation:
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute
computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as
in freedom) software---particularly the GNU operating system and its
GNU/Linux variants---and free documentation for free software. The FSF
also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of
freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at
http://www.gnu.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux.
They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in
any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Free Software Foundation
Bradley M. Kuhn <pr(a)gnu.org>
Phone: +1-617-542-5942
Media Contact: Free Software Foundation Europe
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)gnu.org>
+49-40-23809080
Guido van Rossum Awarded the Free Software Foundation Award
for the Advancement of Free Software
Brussels, Belgium - Saturday, February 16, 2002 - The Free Software
Foundation (FSF) bestowed today its fourth annual FSF Award for the
Advancement of Free Software. FSF President and founder, Richard
Stallman, presented the award to Guido van Rossum for inventing and
implementing as Free Software the Python programming language.
The award ceremony was hosted at the Free and Open Source Software
Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM) in collaboration with the Free Software
Foundation Europe.
A committee of Free Software pioneers and leaders selected the winner and
two other finalists from the scores of mostly volunteer programmers
worldwide who dedicate their time to advancing Free Software. The
selection committee included: Miguel de Icaza, Ian Murdock, Eric Raymond,
Peter Salus, Vernor Vinge, and Larry Wall. Prior to committee
deliberations, a two month open nominations process decided the list from
which the committee chose these finalists.
Guido van Rossum was chosen from three finalists for the award. The other
finalists were L. Peter Deutsch, for his work on GNU Ghostscript, the
popular Postscript emulation program for GNU/Linux, and Andrew Tridgell,
for his work on Samba, a Microsoft Windows network file system emulation
program.
This was the fourth award of this kind. The prior winners were Larry
Wall, Miguel de Icaza, and Brian Paul.
About the Free Software Foundation Euroope:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe) is a charitable
non-governmental organization dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in
Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital
society. Therefore the freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute
software - as described in the Free Software definition - allow equal
participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues,
securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people freedom
by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSF
Europe, which was founded in 2001 as the European sister organization of
the Free Software Foundation in the United States.
More information about the FSF Europe can be found at
http://www.fsfeurope.org/.
About the Free Software Foundation:
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute
computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of Free (as
in freedom) Software - particularly the GNU operating system and its
GNU/Linux variants - and Free Documentation for Free Software. The FSF
also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of
freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at
http://www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux.
They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.
About GNU/Linux:
GNU/Linux is the integrated combination of the GNU operating system with
the kernel, Linux, written by Linus Torvalds in 1991.
Some people call the GNU/Linux system "Linux", but this misnomer leads to
confusion (people cannot tell whether you mean the whole system or the
kernel, one part), and spreads an inaccurate picture of how, when and
where the system was developed. Making a consistent distinction between
GNU/Linux, the whole operating system, and Linux, the kernel, is the best
way to clear up the confusion. See
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html for more explanation.