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On Friday 16 December 2005 11:10 am, Stuart Dunstan wrote: > Don't know if this came up here already, I haven't > been reading any mail lately, but i found it whilst > surfing. > > http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39238443,00.htm > > Thought I'd post the link in case you hadn't. "the aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product," Thomas Lutz, the manager of public affairs at Microsoft Austria, "This is so obviously stupid and nonsensical that it seems pointless to comment on it: Just another monopolist trying to uphold their monopoly by preventing freedom of markets - which is what Free Software really aims at," Georg Greve, the president of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) Lutz asked that a [separate] reference to the open source operating system Linux be removed as "this is only one particular - anti-commercial - specificity of the open source landscape." Greve criticised Lutz' comments as "Microsoft propaganda". Microsoft obviously haven't understood the RedHat business model. Not particularly surprising when they still consider GNU to be "just another development model". (Comment from the MS representative at LinuxWorld Expo - where one would have hoped that MS would have sent someone who had some level of knowledge about GNU/Linux.) Personally, I think we have ourselves (i.e. the wider GNU community) to blame for this kind of misunderstanding. Too long we've pushed "open source" as the holy grail when what we actually wanted was free software. MS do understand open source - they don't like it but they do 'get it' - what they and other business / corporate groups miss entirely is the freedom requirement of GPL software. It isn't enough to be open source if the licence allows access to the source to be limited in any way - either explicitly for the present or implicitly for the future by allowing others to ADD restrictions of their own. The important GPL section is: To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it. Expressed under clause 6: 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. This is one of the most important differences between the GPL and other (non-free) open source licences. It is also what bit Robin with his contribution to an "open source" program. You can read that story at: http://femm.neil.williamsleesmill.me.uk/ and http://www.dclug.org.uk/archive/2004/10/msg00206.html All those who wish to contribute to any project must check that the relevant section of that project is fully GPL compatible. If it is not, do *not* contribute because your efforts can be subverted into proprietary code. As Robin found, you could be forced to pay prohibitive licence fees even to READ your own contribution to the source code! When you do contribute, make sure your contribution clearly states your copyright details and that it is licenced under the GPL (or a compatible licence). Every single source file should contain a GPL (or compatible) notice and a copyright notice - even if the file is little more than a blank header. Only GPL-compatible licences protect your contribution for the future. I keep mentioning this key difference: Open source is about convenience now and can compromise the future. GNU is about freedom now and no compromise, either now or in the future. If anyone is unclear on why this is important, see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html http://www.opensource.org/index.php Note what is *not* said on the OSI site compared to the GNU approach. We often quote "convenience is the enemy of security", convenience can also be the enemy of freedom. Convenience looks for shortcuts, a shortcut relies on assumptions and an assumption is the mother of all foul-ups. As with Perl6 development - "Fast or Good. Pick one." (fast in terms of development time not performance speed). -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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