Showing posts with label gnu gpl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gnu gpl. Show all posts

01 April 2012

Open Standards Licensing: Apple's Key Evidence

As regular readers know, there is a struggle going on between the free software community that needs open standards to be RF (strictly speaking "restriction-free", but usually called "royalty-free") and traditional companies based on proprietary software that are pushing for FRAND - Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory - not least because it will allow licences like the GNU GPL to be excluded. The argument is that RF means that any claimed patents within a standard must be made available at zero cost - and that, the proponents of FRAND insist, is unworkable, since companies will not be prepared to "sacrifice" their patents in this way.

On Open Enterprise blog.

09 August 2011

In Praise of the World Wide Web, Openness and Sharing

As you may have gathered, the World Wide Web celebrated its 20th birthday recently, since it was publicly announced for the first time on 6 August 1991. I came to it relatively late, at the beginning of 1994, but it has nonetheless been a privilege to watch it grow from relatively humble beginnings as a tool for researchers, to its present central role in modern society.

On Open Enterprise blog.

20 June 2011

An Attack that Goes to the Heart of Free Software

The key hack that made free software possible was a legal one: using copyright to keep software free. It did that by demanding a quid pro quo: if you use software made available under the GNU GPL, modify it and distribute it, you too must make it available under the GNU GPL.

If it were possible to take software released under the GPL, modify it and release it, but without passing on the freedoms to users downstream, the entire edifice of free software would be in trouble. And that, alas, iseems to be precisely what is happening in a German court case:

On Open Enterprise blog.

13 June 2011

Do We Still Need the FSF, GNU and GPL?

It's easy to take things for granted – to assume that the world will always be as it is. And then sometimes you receive a mild jolt: some new information appears that makes you sit up and reconsider your preconceptions.

On The H Open.

17 December 2010

European Interoperability Framework v2 - the Great Defeat

Long-suffering readers of this blog will know that the European Interoperability Framework has occupied me for some time - I wrote about the first version back in 2008, and have been following the twists and turns of the revision process since.

These included the infamous leaked version that redefined “closed” as “nearly open”. Now we finally have the final version of EIF v2 - and it's not a pretty sight.

On Open Enterprise blog.

27 September 2010

Double Standards on Open Standards

Last week I went along to the grandly-named Westminster eForum Keynote Seminar on Open source software: in business, in government. The good news was that it offered one of the best line-ups of open source know-how in the UK I have come across. The bad news was that the seminar's venue was quite small and not even full: these people really deserved a much bigger audience. The poor turnout was a sad reflection of how far open source still has to go in this country in terms of mainstream recognition and interest.

On Open Enterprise blog.

06 September 2010

Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory...Ain't

One of the inescapable facts of free software is that it involves a lot of law - far more than innocent hackers might expect when they settle down for a light bit of coding.

That's in part because it is built on the foundation of licences like the GNU GPL, which depend upon copyright for their efficacy (although that doesn't mean that free software couldn't survive without copyright - see my earlier discussion of this point with Richard Stallman.)

On Open Enterprise blog.

02 September 2010

Could this Lawsuit Undermine the GNU GPL?

As I've noted before, it's pretty well established that the GNU GPL stands up in the courts: gone are the days when detractors of copyleft could claim it would “never work”. But the GPL is still under attack, only in more subtle ways, so the open source world can't just sit back and relax.

On Open Enterprise blog.

11 August 2010

Linux Foundation Makes Enterprise Open Source Boring

In the early days of free software, the struggle was just to get companies to try this new and rather unconventional approach, without worrying too much about how that happened. That typically meant programs entering by the back door, surreptitiously installed by in-house engineers who understood the virtues of the stuff - and that it was easier to ask for forgiveness after the event than for permission before.

On Open Enterprise blog.

27 July 2010

If Oracle Bought Every Open Source Company...

Recently, there was an interesting rumour circulating that Oracle had a war chest of some $70 billion, and was going on an acquisition spree. Despite the huge figure, it had a certain plausibility, because Oracle is a highly successful company with deep pockets and an aggressive management. The rumour was soon denied, but it got me wondering: supposing Oracle decided to spend, if not $70 billion, say $10 billion in an efficient way: how might it do that? And it occurred to me that one rather dramatic use of that money would be to buy up the leading open source companies – all of them.

On Open Enterprise blog.

23 July 2010

Move Commons: Moving Beyond Creative Commons

Talking of commons, I was reading David Bollier's Viral Spiral recently, probably the best book about the rise of the commons as a new force (and I want to emphasise that I am not at all bitter about the fact that he didn't mention Rebel Code once in his description of the early days of free software - nope, not bitter in the slightest.)

I bought a dead tree version, but it's freely available online under a CC licence (sadly not an option when Rebel Code came out...for the simple reason Creative Commons was being formulated at the same time I was writing it.) That's appropriate, since the book is largely about the evolution of the CC licences - and a fascinating tale it is, too.

One particularity of those licences is the way that they try to give users different flavours (in fact there were originally more than there are now - some were later dropped). In many ways the ability to specify exactly which freedoms you are passing on is the most revolutionary - and contentious - part of the CC project.

Against that background, I was therefore delighted to come across Move Commons (MC), "a simple tool for initiatives, collectives and NGOs to declare the core principles they are committed to." It works in almost the same way as the CC licences, allowing you to specify exactly what your "core principles" are:


MC helps these initiatives to declare the core principles they are committed to, allowing others to understand the initiative’s insight with the first glance. The idea is to choose the MC that fits your initiative, and place the generated logo (a combination of four icons) in your webpage.

Once done that, when the next websurfer reaches the initiative’s webpage, it’ll be very easy to understand your initiative’s approach and immediatly answer several questions (Is this a Non-Profit? Are they transparent? Can I use part of their content for my blog? How are they organized internally? Do they expand the Commons with their actions?), before even clicking here and there.

But not only that. By choosing your MC you are connecting with other collectives using MC. Thus, anyone can come to movecommons.org and search for “non-profits that are sharing their contents, and are interested in environmentalism and education“, and if your initative fits that description, it’d appear there. You can thus link with other similar initiatives, regardless of their geographical location. Besides, volunteers could easily find you when they are searching with initiatives like yours… independently of how much you have invested in marketing

The page of options gives an idea of how this works, complete with dinky little logos representing things like profit/non-profit and hierarchical/non-hierarchical.

It's a clever idea, although I'm not sure they've got the key categories worked out yet - for example, it's not clear what the "Reproducible" option really means in terms of content licensing. Still, it's great to see people building on the CC ideas, just as Creative Commons built on the GNU GPL's original breakthrough.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

09 July 2010

Could Free Software Exist Without Copyright?

A couple of days ago, I was writing about how Richard Stallman's GNU GPL uses copyright as a way of ensuring that licensees share code that they distribute – because if they don't, they are breaching the GPL, and therefore lose their protection against claims of copyright infringement.

On Open Enterprise blog.

07 July 2010

Are the Creative Commons Licences Valid?

As readers of this blog will doubtless know, Richard Stallman's great stroke of genius at the founding of the GNU project was to use copyright when crafting the GNU GPL licence, but in such a way that it undermined the restrictive monopoly copyright usually imposes on users, and required people to share instead.

On Open Enterprise blog.

06 May 2010

Diaspora: Freedom in the Cloud?

One of the key thinkers in the free software world is Eben Moglen. He's been the legal brains behind the most recent iterations of the GNU GPL, but more than that, he's somebody who has consistently been able to pinpoint and articulate the key issues facing free software for two decades. Recently, he did it again, noting that cloud computing is a huge threat to freedom.

On Open Enterprise blog.

15 April 2010

Is That Embedded Software GPL-Compliant?

Open source software is everywhere these days. In particular, Linux is being used increasingly to power embedded systems of all kinds. That's good, but it's also a challenge, because the free software used in such products may not always be compliant with all the licences it is released under – notably the GNU GPL. For companies that sell such embedded systems using open source, it can be hard even finding out what exactly is inside, let alone whether it is compliant. Enter the new Binary Analysis Tool:

On Open Enterprise blog.

02 April 2010

RMS and Tim Berners-Lee: Separated at Birth?

We all knew that Sir Tim was a total star, choosing to give away the Web rather than try to make oodles of billions from it. Some of us even knew that he contemplated using the GNU GPL for its licence, before being persuaded that placing it in the public domain would help it spread faster. But even I did not know this:

Much government work is done by civil servants emailing Word documents back and forth. Yet Berners-Lee refuses, on principle, to use Word, which is a proprietary rather than an open source format. On one occasion, one official recalled, Berners-Lee received an urgent document in Word from one of the most senior civil servants—and refused to look at it until a junior official had rushed to translate it into an acceptable format.

Seems RMS has some competition in the uncompromising integrity stakes....(Via @timjph.)

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

01 March 2010

Which Licence for Open Source Digital Voting?

Here's a provocative thought:


We’ve dared to suggest that the GPL as it stands today, or for that manner any other common open source license, will probably not work to adequately provide a license to the software sources for elections and voting systems technology under development by the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation.

It's an important issue, since applying open source software to digital voting is something that you really want to get right - for the sake of open source and democracy.

Here are just some of the key issues that the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation faces:

1. Open source licenses rarely have “law selection” clauses. Fact: Most government procurement regulations require the application of local state law or federal contracting law to the material terms and conditions of any contract (including software “right to use” licenses).

2. Open source licenses rarely have venue selection clauses (i.e., site and means for dispute resolution). Fact: Many state and federal procurement regulations require that disputes be resolved in particular venues.

3. There are rights assignment issues to grapple with. Fact: Open source licenses do not have “government rights” provisions, which clarify that the software is “commercial software” and thus not subject to the draconian rules of federal procurement that may require an assignment of rights to the software when the government funds development. (There may be state equivalents, we’re not certain.) On the one hand, voting software is a State or county technology procurement and not a federal activity. But we’ve been made aware of some potential parallelism in State procurement regulations.

4. Another reality check is that our technology will be complex mix of components some of which may actually rise to the level of patentability, which we intend to pursue with a “public assignment” of resulting IP rights. Fact: Open source licenses do not contain “march-in rights” or other similar provisions that may be required by (at least) federal procurement regulations for software development. Since some portion of our R&D work may be subject to funding derived from federal-government grants, we’ll need to address this potential issue.

5. There is a potential enforceability issue. Fact: Contracting with states often requires waiver of sovereign immunity to make licenses meaningfully enforceable.

6. In order to make our voting systems framework deployable for legal use in public elections, we will seek Federal and State(s) certifications where applicable. Doing so will confer a certain qualification for use in public elections on which will be predicated a level of stability in the code and a rigid version control process. It may be necessary to incorporate additional terms into “deployment” licenses (verses “development” licenses) specific to certification assurances and therefore, stipulations on “out-of-band” modifications, extensions, or enhancements. Let’s be clear: this will not incorporate any restrictions that would otherwise be vexatious to the principles of open source licensing, but it may well require some procedural adherence.

Interesting stuff. At the moment:

At this juncture, its looking like we may end up crafting a license somewhat similar in nature to the Mozilla MPL.

Views, anyone?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

11 January 2010

Is Richard Stallman Mellowing?

Richard Stallman is sometimes presented as a kind of Old Testament prophet, hurling anathemas hither and thither (indeed, I've been guilty of this characterisation myself - well, he does *look* like one.) But just recently we've had a fascinating document that suggests that this is wrong – or that RMS is mellowing....

On Open Enterprise blog.

15 December 2009

SFLC Gets Busy Around BusyBox

Contrary to some public perceptions, the Free Software Foundation is not keen on litigating against those who fail to respect the terms of the GNU GPL. Here's what Eben Moglen, very much the legal brains behind the organisation, told me a decade ago....

On Open Enterprise blog.

23 September 2009

Big Win for GNU GPL in France

One of the fallback positions for purveyors of FUD is that the GNU GPL may not be valid, because it hasn't been properly tested in court. That's getting increasingly implausible as a stance. After being upheld in Germany a few times, here's a big decision in its favour in France:

In a landmark ruling that will set legal precedent, the Paris Court of Appeals decided last week that the company Edu4 violated the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) when it distributed binary copies of the remote desktop access software VNC but denied users access to its corresponding source code. The suit was filed by Association pour la formation professionnelle des adultes (AFPA), a French education organization.

...

The events of the case go back to early 2000, when Edu4 was hired to provide new computer equipment in AFPA's classrooms. Shortly thereafter, AFPA discovered that VNC was distributed with this equipment. Despite repeated requests, with mediation from the Free Software Foundation France, Edu4 refused to provide AFPA with the source code to this version of VNC. Furthermore, FSF France later discovered that Edu4 had removed copyright and license notices in the software. All of these activities violate the terms of the GNU GPL. AFPA filed suit in 2002 to protect its rights and obtain the source code.

There are a couple of important points about this decision. The first is noted in the post quoted above:

"what makes this ruling unique is the fact that the suit was filed by a user of the software, instead of a copyright holder. It's a commonly held belief that only the copyright holder of a work can enforce the license's terms - but that's not true in France. People who received software under the GNU GPL can also request compliance, since the license grants them rights from the authors."

The other point flows from this. The French legal system has many novel aspects, so it's important that the GNU GPL was upheld here, just as it was in Germany. It means that not only is the approach that the GPL takes being upheld by courts, it is being upheld in courts that look at things from different legal perspectives. That augurs well for future rulings in other jurisdictions.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.