Submitted by This was Stallman’s first talk since the release of draft 3. He explains how the ‘tivoisation’ clause was narrowed to encourage wider adoption, how the Novell-MS deal is tackled in two directions, and why the Additional Requirements section was dismantled, among other things. Possibly an interesting sidenote is an interview he gave straight after the talk.
That passage where Richard is asking “What DRM clause?” reminded me so much of Bill Gates deposition, where he claimed not to understand what the questioner meant by the word “browser”.
I thought it was hilarious then. And I think the same now!
This is exactly the road to take with GPL 3. More and more issues have been dealt with and more and more of the influential and important people within Linux are beginning to embrace the new draft.
What’s more important is the fact that RMS is listening to the community to make this draft a solution that most–if not all–of the linux community and businesses alike can sink their teeth into.
Hats off to RMS…visionary, pioneer and GNU/Linux stalwart supporter.
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This is exactly the road to take with GPL 3.
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From the interview:
“Richard Stallman: Part of the goal of the process is so that I won’t have to look at lots of comments from people”
This explains much, IMO.
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Part of the goal of the process is so that I won’t have to look at lots of comments from people but rather to think about the issues that are raised by their comments.
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So if there are ten comments saying the same thing, he will be passed one issue which describes that thing. He is “listening” in that he is paying attention – not ignoring the comments.
To be fair, the last draft out of the FSF indicates to me that he *finally* did start listening. And I commend that. I sincerely hope that he keeps doing that through the final GPLv3 release.
I’ll further say that his abruptness in the interview was… understandable. The question about “why is this taking so long” was politely worded, but fairly obnoxious at the core.
I’m glad that after well over a year the “Year of Debate” that was supposed to have occurred in 2006, has finally begun.
My quote of him *was* out of context. But I *do* honestly think that it accurately represents his attitude throughout 2006.
Edited 2007-04-04 23:11
‘My quote of him *was* out of context. But I *do* honestly think that it accurately represents his attitude throughout 2006.’
then you should dig up some quotes that aren’t out of context and actually represents that attitude. looking through your posts regarding stallman you try to paint him as some mad dictator who makes decisions based upon whims. the fact that it’s the third draft and will likely be a fourth indicates that in reality it’s the exact opposite. do you have any arguments at all or are you just someone taking potshots due to some personal reasons? is it the person or what he stands for that you dislike so much?
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looking through your posts regarding stallman you try to paint him as some mad dictator who makes decisions based upon whims.
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Well, you are the one taking the conversation in this direction. But I tend to think of Stallman less as a mad dictator, and more as a loony old aunt in the attic.
That said, he does have a following, and I have been concerned about just what he might do on a whim with respect to GPLv3. Have you ever read “Jane Eyre”?
I have found recent developments encouraging, however.
Edited 2007-04-04 23:35
‘Well, you are the one taking the conversation in this direction. But I tend to think of Stallman less as a mad dictator, and more as a loony old aunt in the attic.’
i based it upon your past comments such as:
‘This may yet turn out to be “Our License” and not just Richard’s license.’
‘If the greater community were somehow able to thwart Richard’s ramrodding-through of his GPLv3, I suspect we’d see some Olympic Class chair throwing on his part.’
‘Richard can be pragmatic, too, when it is necessary to further his political interests.’
‘Richard Stallman is a deceiver, who believes that deception, as a means, is justified by the end.’
to me you seem very fixated on finding fault with the person rather than the licence. in fairness you have voiced arguments on the licence such as :
‘Indeed, GPL is causing an increasing number of problems within the FOSS community itself. To make matters worse, as the FSF thinks it can get away with it, it tightens its grip. Even GPLv2 projects are vulnerable to the viral nature of the GPLv3 (draft).
I hate to admit it. But perhaps Balmer was right, and GPL really *is* a cancer. ‘
i don’t agree with your opinions but these are atleast arguments that can be discussed
Mary Anne,
Your interest in my posting history is quite flattering. Especially since you just registered on this site a little while ago.
My name is Steve, by the way.
My position is quite simple. And you should understand it if you have studied my previous posts.
I’m not sure that we need a GPLv3. But if we have to have one, and that would seem a given due to Richard’s determination that we *are* going to have one, then I am happy with it as long as there is enough of a consensus on it that it does not fragment our code bases excessively.
It is a given that it will fragment them some. Up to now, GPL projects have been able to share code with other GPL projects. That will not necessarily be true after the GPLv3 release.
But at least a well designed GPLv3, complete with the requisite compromises, might minimize that to the point that the benefits *might* just outweigh the costs.
I stand by the statements that you have quoted. In particular ‘This may yet turn out to be “Our License” and not just Richard’s license’, which is from a recent post, reflects my current feelings on the matter.
Does that make sense to you?
Edited 2007-04-05 00:44
some things make sense to me even if i don’t fully agree. other like ‘our licence and not just richards licence’ is a bad attempt to make it into the will of richard against the combined will of the rest. many people like what fsf is doing with gpl3. others don’t. but there is no ‘our’ licence. compromises can only go so far and gpl is foremost about protecting the rights of the end users. it can never be perfect for everyone. i understand the stance of fsf and i also understand the stance of linus. linus is paid to make linux a better enterprise option. fsf is about protecting rights of the end users. when these interests collide there might not always be room for compromises.
you seem to want to make it about stallmans will against the rest of the world. but in reality stallman is bound by protecting end user rights as in the 4 freedoms and linus is bound by his paid commitment to further linux enterprise adaption. these two interests cant always see eye to eye and then one must take precedence. to me it is clear that the original intent of the gpl should take precedence when these two interests collide. which is to protect end user rights.
btw! mary anne is the name of my gf! my name is Johan
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other like ‘our licence and not just richards licence’ is a bad attempt to make it into the will of richard against the combined will of the rest.
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It’s not an attempt. To a great degree, Richard does want to push through his own views to the exclusion of others.
I’m surprised that you seize upon that statement of mine, which is actually an expression of my real hope that the final version of the license *is* going to be agreeable to most everyone, unlike previous drafts. If you don’t try to read too much into it, it is a statement of my cautious optimism.
I do not worship Richard. And though I am a strong advocate of FOSS, I am careful not to make it my religion. That is where I really disagree with him.
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btw! mary anne is the name of my gf! my name is Johan
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Well, then I should probably stop calling you Mary Anne.
Nice to meet you, Johan.
-Steve
> I’ll further say that his abruptness in the
> interview was… understandable.
I’d suspect this as the primary reason:
> Mr. Stallman was kind enough to do an interview for
> Groklaw right afterward, which we appreciate,
> especially because Sean tells me rms was so
> exhausted before his speech that he pushed the chair
> away and did it standing up, to make sure he stayed
> awake.
i wonder how many other ‘out of context’ comments sbergman will pick out to try subverting the meaning of what stallman actually said… he is like someone throwing stones at you when you have your back turned. now what was that word again… ahh yes… a ‘coward’.
This explains much, IMO.
What does it explain, IYO?
I agree. I was vehemently opposed to the “digital signatures” language in draft 2 as it attempted to limit the kinds of functionality we can implement with free software. But now the language has been softened considerable while keeping the core idea that just about everyone in the free software community can agree upon (I think).
Now the only thing you can’t implement is technology that restricts the ability to build and run modifications of the distributed software, but even this is allowed so long as you document any special information (keys, for example) necessary to do so. It recognizes that software distributed only on ROM in an embedded device isn’t intended to be modified, which makes sense IMHO.
Maybe it still isn’t perfect, but it’s getting there. Not that his opinion is a gold seal of approval, but even Linus is warming up to the GPLv3. It provides clear benefits and protections to the free software community that are missing from the GPLv2. For a while, the GPLv2 was rather poorly understood by proprietary vendors. But now that free software is much more mainstream, they are really starting to pick at it and find the loopholes. We have to respond by solidifying our intent in boilerplate licensing language or we will watch our IP rights gradually erode under the pressure of market forces.
But first we need to agree on what our intent actually is, and we need to make sure that the license text reflects our will. I think the process is working, but I would like to see at least a 4th draft to make sure we get this right. The double-edge sword of copyleft is that you can end up propagating a license that doesn’t do what you really want it to do. There’s no question that the GPLv2 is beginning to show its age, but there’s no reason to rush GPLv3 out the door. If it takes several more months, so be it.
> Q: Well, what I’m getting at is, I hear lots of
> threats from Microsoft but I don’t hear any
> specificity about what infringes.
So can you *please*, and some others too, understand that MS might do this for a specific reason – several reasons, actually.
First, the legal situation may not be clear enough that a patent suit would result in victory. Showing strength that may or may not be true, is a lot better than admitting weakness that is certainly true.
Second, explicit patent claims would make the situation clear for all Linux users. Vague claims, on the other hand, create an uneasy feeling that may very well last longer than patents and extends to other F/OSS too, even if there was no claim about that software at all.
Third, these claims are a cheap attempt (cheap in the sense of not requiring a lot of money, yet very effective) of reaching the same goals as a successful patent suit: Prevent users from using Linux in critical situations at all.
Maybe this explanation helps too:
F is the fear of some unknown beast that lurks in an unknown room, so you’d better leave the whole city.
U is the uncertainty whether it would notice you at all, or whether it considers you worth the time, or how bad your punishment would be. You can be sure though that if you are too daring, then it will be devastating.
D is the doubt about your own position and skills – whether you are good enough to evade the beast. You’d better not take the risk.
The language change, from distributor/distribution to propagator/propagation might well shape the FOSS languagescape of the future..!
I was dam sure it was an anti DRM clause. Oh well, can’t always be winnin
All drafts of GPLv3 have contained some DRM-related language, but I think RMS’s point was that none addressed DRM as a whole. The only way to do that would be to prohibit distributing software that does DRM under the GPLv3. GPLv3 will not do that because that would restrict people’s freedom to write software for any purpose. Instead, GPLv3 says that no matter what, you have to give the recipient a way to run modified versions of the software.
This bursts DRM’s bubble because if people can modify the software, they will disable the DRM (if they want to). But this is a very substantial difference. RMS wants to make clear that GPL is not prohibiting people from writing a certain class of software, it is simply ensuring that all recipients have freedom.
GPLv3 contains two sections that ensure people have freedom in DRM situations. One nullifies the EUCD/DMCA, and the other nullifies tivoisation. But it contains no section about the functionality called DRM (even though previous drafts contained a badly named section titled “Digital Restrictions Management”)
Thanks for clearing that up. Pretty much everybody who has been watching the GPLv3 unfold has heard of the TiVO clause; but apart from that, I was not sure if I needed glasses or not, but I was sure there was, at some time, some reference to DRM in there.
Is it just me, or does the FUD seem to run both ways.
“Developing a non-free program is no contribution to society. It’s an attack on freedom and social solidarity.” -Stallman
I have this perception that society got better with the advent of the information age, which seems to have included much proprietary software. I don’t think the guys making Pacman were really attacking fredoom and social soidarity?
Maybe there should be a fifth freedom: The freedom to attempt to give you, or sell you whatever I choose to.
(that could include binaries encapsulated in an EULA)
Maybe there should be a fifth freedom: The freedom to attempt to give you, or sell you whatever I choose to.
(that could include binaries encapsulated in an EULA)
This freedom already exists, otherwise there would be no proprietary software.
As an aside: If you make use of the “fifth freedom”, I will use the “sixth”. No thank you, I don’t think your proprietary wares fit my needs.
“s an aside: If you make use of the “fifth freedom”, I will use the “sixth”. No thank you, I don’t think your proprietary wares fit my needs.”
Your “sixth freedom” already exists as well.
Now that that’s settled, can we move to the point where people can use either of the fifth or sixth freedoms without some proclaiming usage of either of those freedoms to be inherently evil to society?
Ha! Loved the groklaw interview. Thanks. Just goes to show, if you’re going to interview RMS, be sure to have all your facts straight and your wording clear, because he pays very close attention to the questions and will call you on them.
Very nice.
Society did get better because of the information age. It got better because people were free to exchange knowledge and improve upon existing knowledge. A characteristic of free society is the right to exchange information.
However, proprietary software is anti-ethical to a free society. Proprietary software takes away the user’s right to share the knowledge or improve upon the knowledge that is contained within the software.
So yes, you may have the right to sell propriety software to other users, but in doing so, you are harming society by forcing the user to remain subject to yourself because the user requires your permission before software is improved for their own purposes. You also harm society by forcing users to withold knowledge from each other by not allowing users to share the knowledge contained in software. When the user does share software, you brand such users as “Pirates”. I’m not referring to you specifically but to all vendors of proprietary software.
I completely agree with your first paragraph.
Is charging for education anti-ethical? Same for all publishers that charge more than the cost of the media?
If I spend 500 hours making a program, why should I be forced by ethics, to give it away for free? While someone uses my program to help fix someone’s car and get paid for it? Supporting most software is just exchange of knowledge, should Red Hat be able to charge for that… to put conditions on the transfer of knowledge? Is it for their time… what about my time?
No. There is nothing wrong with requesting payment for educational tutoring.
No. They are free to sell their software at any price.
I can’t give you a reason why you should be forced by ethics to give your software away. You don’t have to distribute copies of your software to others at no cost if you don’t wish to. However, when you sell your software, you should also give your users the right to learn from and improve the knowledge contained within the program. When you sell your software, you should also give your users the right to share the knowledge contained within the software.
I don’t know how to answer this question. I don’t understand what you are asking.
Yes. There is no problem with Red Hat wanting to charge money for the service of supporting software.
It depends on the conditions. If the recipient of the knowledge is free to further share the knowledge, then great. If the recipient of the knowledge is forced to keep the knowledge a secret, then no, it is not acceptable.