News about Free Software, the GNU project and GNU applications

 'Open Source' vs 'Free' Software: Is 'Free Software' Dead?, Dec 29, 2004

"There are some people who are passionate about the differences between 'free software' and 'open source'," wrote Kevin Bedell earlier this year. But he was beginning to wonder if the difference matters, he added. "I think it's time to stop dividing the community using labels. We don't need different names for the same thing."

Modernization is coming to the General Public License, a legal framework that supports a large part of the free and open-source software movements and that has received sharp criticism from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

Efforts under way to revise the popular GNU General Public License could put additional pressure on Microsoft Corp. by the time it tries to push its long-awaited Windows upgrades out the door.

Do you use open source software? You probably do. If you have a GPS navigator, a wireless router or an NAS network storage device, they may well be based on an embedded version of Linux.

The man behind GNU/Linux--not just Linux, he stresses is relentless in his quest to help users worldwide free themselves from the shackles of proprietary software.

Preaching the virtues of free software for two decades has not dimmed the enthusiasm of Richard Stallman, as audiences across Australia discovered last week.

Richard M. Stallman, considered a "guru" of the Open Source Software (OSS) movement, will present a free seminar entitled Impact of the Free Software Movement on the Public Sector and Education in Kuala Lumpur on Oct 20.

Stallman is the founder of the Free Software movement, GNU project, Free Software Foundation and League for Programming Freedom.

Richard Stallman from the FSF, Ray Saunders from the World Scout Bureau and the author discuss the connections between free software and Scouting philosophies.

Software patents are the software project equivalent of land mines: Each design decision carries a risk of stepping on a patent, which can destroy your project.

Developing a large and complex program means combining many ideas, often hundreds or thousands of them. In a country that allows software patents, chances are that some substantial fraction of the ideas in your program will be patented already by various companies. Perhaps hundreds of patents will cover parts of your program. A study in 2004 found almost 300 U.S. patents that covered various parts of a single important program. It is so much work to do such a study that only one has been done.

There are some people who are passionate about the differences between "free software" and "open source." I'm beginning to wonder if the difference matters. The term "free software" came into use at about the same time that Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT, launched the GNU Project, and began writing the software that would eventually become the core of the free software community: emacs, the GNU "C" compile (gcc), the "C" libraries, and a few others.

If you look around the pews in your church next Sunday morning, you may see a few GNUs in the pews. They are software developers, system administrators, and church leaders. They believe in God. They believe in Jesus. And they believe in free and open source software.

The appearance of Web sites, growing number of participating believers, and the growing number of free and open source software applications for church and missions organizations are all evidence of a new movement afoot among Christians. They are looking to build their churches' technology infrastructure on a GNU foundation. While it's difficult to put numbers on the growth, the free and open source software movement is gaining ground among Christians.

Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.

Dan Ravicher, founder and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, conducted the analysis for Open Source Risk Management. OSRM is like an insurance company, selling legal protection against Linux copyright-infringement claims. It plans to expand the program to patent protections.

Of the 283 patents, 98 are owned by Linux allies, OSRM said, including 60 from IBM, 20 from Hewlett-Packard and 11 from Intel. The months-long review examined versions 2.4 and 2.6 of the kernel, or heart, of Linux, Ravicher said.

"The Munich District Court has ruled on May 19, 2004 that the main clauses of the GNU General Public License are valid under German copyright and contract law. This seems to be the first judgment worldwide proofing the validity of the most popular free software license..."

A German court has ordered a company to stop selling its wireless router because the company was not complying with the terms of the General Public License – which underpins the distribution of most open source software.

In what is thought to be the world's first reported case considering the terms of the GPL, a Munich court granted a preliminary injunction against the German subsidiary of Sitecom in respect of its wireless router.

The beauty of the open source software community -- and the General Public License that governs Linux and open source -- is that innovation must be shared with the community.

This can also cause a bevy of sleepless nights for vendors, IT managers, developers and enterprise

The GPL is, as far as I can see, the most innovative adjustment to copyright and IP contracts that has occurred for decades - maybe even centuries. The idea is, in essence, a simple one. Previously creators and collaborators in the creation of IP (or works covered by copyright - software happens to fall into both categories at times) chose either to defend their legal ownership via copyright and/or the lodging of patents or they chose to make it freely available. The GPL plows a middle course, allowing free usage of software source code on condition that whatever is added (source code and IP) is also provided to others on the same basis. It thus encourages collaboration by those who wish to share the fruits of their labour without direct commercial reward, but wish to retain a level of control on it usage.

A change in licensing terms by the well-known open source projects Apache and XFree86 has led to the Free Software Foundation listing both licences as being incompatible with the General Public Licence or GPL.

The new licence approved by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) was meant to be compatible with other open source licences, such as the GPL, and one that remained true to the original goals of the Apache Group.

The netfilter/iptables project (http://www.netfilter.org/) announces out-of-court settlement with Allnet GmbH (http://www.allnet.de/) on Allnet's infringing use of copyrighted material.

Allnet was offering two products, a wireless access router and a load-balancing DSL router, both including software developed by the netfilter/iptables project.

However, Allnet did not fulfill the obligations of the GNU General Public License covering the netfilter/iptables software. Specifically, Allnet did not make any source code offering or include the GPL license terms with their products.

A recent article by Richard Stallman on the subject of the direction of the Free Software community provoked a lot of discussion, in particular on whether he is right to push so strongly his principles of Free Software over and above the pragmatic principles of Open Source. In this article I would like to defend Stallman's vision of software, and its place in community rather than as a consumer product, and re-advocate Stallman's assertion that the right to form a community is more important than the ability to use particular software.

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