As if you didn’t already have enough reasons to avoid doing business with Apple, here’s one more—read The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (versions 20100127 and 20100302).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties organization based in San Francisco, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the secretive license agreement Apple offers as the only way to distribute applications through their “app store”. According to this license agreement the Apple app store is the only means by which compliant iPhone OS application developers may distribute their iPhone OS applications once the developer agrees to Apple’s onerous terms. How onerous? Take a look at EFF’s highlights from the license agreement:

Ban on Public Statements: As mentioned above, Section 10.4 prohibits developers, including government agencies such as NASA, from making any “public statements” about the terms of the Agreement. This is particularly strange, since the Agreement itself is not “Apple Confidential Information” as defined in Section 10.1. So the terms are not confidential, but developers are contractually forbidden from speaking “publicly” about them.

App Store Only: Section 7.2 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple’s SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store, and that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements disclosed by Apple. So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you’re prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like Cydia or Rock Your Phone.

Ban on Reverse Engineering: Section 2.6 prohibits any reverse engineering (including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law), as well as anything that would “enable others” to reverse engineer, the SDK or iPhone OS.

No Tinkering with Any Apple Products: Section 3.2(e) is the “ban on jailbreaking” provision that received some attention when it was introduced last year. Surprisingly, however, it appears to prohibit developers from tinkering with any Apple software or technology, not just the iPhone, or “enabling others to do so.” For example, this could mean that iPhone app developers are forbidden from making iPods interoperate with open source software, for example.

You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise create any Application or other program that would disable, hack, or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod Touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so

Kill Your App Any Time: Section 8 makes it clear that Apple can “revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time.” Steve Jobs has confirmed that Apple can remotely disable apps, even after they have been installed by users. This contract provision would appear to allow that.

We Never Owe You More than Fifty Bucks: Section 14 states that, no matter what, Apple will never be liable to any developer for more than $50 in damages. That’s pretty remarkable, considering that Apple holds a developer’s reputational and commercial value in its hands””it’s not as though the developer can reach its existing customers anywhere else. So if Apple botches an update, accidentally kills your app, or leaks your entire customer list to a competitor, the Agreement tries to cap you at the cost of a nice dinner for one in Cupertino.
EFF

How long will it be before Apple tries more restrictive terms with their other operating system, MacOS? You should declare your software freedom, refuse to buy Apple’s devices, and do not agree to these terms.

Update 2010-04-15: New version of the license terms posted by EFF, copied locally.

Introduction

BitTorrent is the most popular filesharing protocol on the Internet today. BitTorrent users typically obtain pieces of the data they want and share pieces of the same data with others. By cooperating in this fashion, almost everyone who wants a copy of the data gets what they want.

There are many programs one can use to share data using the BitTorrent protocol. Many are free software—one can inspect, share, and modify the program to suit one’s needs. uTorrent is a popular non-free (or proprietary) BitTorrent client. Like any proprietary program, exactly what the uTorrent program does when it runs is not clearly known to anyone except its developers. uTorrent became popular because it is a zero-cost, small, and quick program which requires little computing power. Many BitTorrent clients allow web-based control: one can set up Transmission (a free software BitTorrent client) to host a web-based control panel that lets users remotely control Transmission. With some savvy, one could set up one’s computer at home to run Transmission all the time and use this web-based remote control to keep track of and control Transmission from anywhere on the Internet.

The next version of uTorrent is due out soon; codenamed “Falcon”, an article on torrentfreak.com glowingly describes this version because this version of uTorrent offers a different kind of web-based control panel: users can control their copy of uTorrent by logging into the Falcon website and controlling their copy of uTorrent from this website.

Freedom and privacy

What’s the difference? The difference is who has access to your computer and who has access to data on what you’re sharing.
Continue reading →

linux.conf.au describes itself as a “conference about Open Source Software, including Linux that brings together the world’s community of Linux enthusiasts who contribute to the Linux operating system“. The description is apt because it clearly states how focused on the “open source” philosophy that conference is. Their views and conclusions would differ if they focused more on software freedom instead. “Free software” and “open source” are terms expressing different values and different values give rise to different conclusions.

The free software movement is primarily concerned with building and defending software freedom—the freedom to run, share, and modify published computer software. This is an ethical consideration borne out of considering how we ought to treat one another using computers and software. The open source movement pushes aside software freedom and pursues attracting business to the open source development methodology. To that end they concern themselves primarily with speaking to programmers who can help business develop its software. These concerns share some common ground but they can reach polar opposite responses to practical questions as the aforementioned essay illustrates:

It is remarkable that such different philosophical views can so often motivate different people to participate in the same projects. Nonetheless, there are situations where these fundamentally different views lead to very different actions.

The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program that is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users’ freedom. Free software activists and open source enthusiasts will react very differently to that.

A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, “I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?” This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.

The free software activist will say, “Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. Instead I will support a project to develop a free replacement.” If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.

If linux.conf.au were more concerned with teaching people about software freedom they’d recognize that the Linux kernel is a part of an operating system, not the whole thing. If you have only the Linux kernel on your computer you don’t have all the software you need to do things people expect a modern computer to do such as browse the web, compute in spreadsheets, and play movies. The Linux kernel allows an operating system to share computer hardware resources harmoniously so Linux is an important part of an operating system (for instance, a GNU/Linux system or a Busybox/Linux system as one might use on their home computer or Internet router) but we should give credit where credit is due. Calling attention to the name “GNU” helps draw attention to the cause of freedom and cooperation.

linux.conf.au hosts many talks and broadcasts them online in live streams. Apparently the live streaming is an opportunity for the online audience to install some non-free software, Microsoft’s Silverlight, via the conference’s live stream webpages. This year, linux.conf.au is hosting a talk by Robert O’Callahan, a hacker for Mozilla (makers of Firefox) who is giving a talk on “why open video is important for free software“; an important topic for free software activists everywhere. Viewers are given a mixed message when talks like these are streamed via patent-encumbered protocols over a proprietary program instead of the protocols and software O’Callahan will likely cover. A message rooted in freedom is subtly undermined when free and proprietary are presented as equals. Other conferences around the world have no problem streaming their talks in formats one can play with unencumbered free software (Debian’s conference, a very large Brazilian conference). The technology O’Callahan describes is viable today but if “unencumbered baseline codecs are critical for the Web and for the free software community” one wonders why this approach is not used exclusively to publish these live streams. Viewers/listeners to the online stream should be directed to install a free software browser which supports playing Ogg Vorbis+Theora not directed to install proprietary software.

Happy Software Freedom Day! Today is a great day to share free software with everyone: chat it up with your friends and help them understand that software freedom is important in its own right. The freedom to share, improve, and run software is critical for a democratic Internet built on making your computer do what you want it to do, not what some proprietor wants you to do.

Congratulations to the gNewSense GNU/Linux hackers for putting out another release!

If you’re looking for a fully-free software GNU/Linux distribution for your Intel-compatible personal computer (most are such computers), download this disc image and give gNewSense a try. gNewSense is a complete operating system based on the GNU OS and the Linux kernel. gNewSense most closely resembles the Ubuntu GNU/Linux system but gNewSense is fully free software out of the box, no special install needed so you are free to inspect, run, share, and modify the software should you wish to.

You can download the software here or from the gNewSense website. The complete source code is available as well (locally or from the gNewSense website).

First time burning a CD? No problem, here’s some help on how to do it and verify the results.

If you wish to verify your download, here’s the relevant MD5SUM data:

897d81b3c2493b4779dea45d6b7f041c gnewsense-livecd-deltah-i386-2.3.iso
5b031d62952de343666ffd40d4ceda05 gnewsense-cdsource-deltah-i386-2.3.tar


If you’ve already got gNewSense and you want to update to this release, you should be able to use the normal update mechanism.

I’m glad to be a financial contributor to a number of these projects precisely for the reason Webber mentions. If you have the means, I too urge you to help free software projects financially.

Summary

Recently Amazon Kindle users who purchased copies of George Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm lost those novels when the publisher changed their mind about publishing electronic copies via Amazon’s portable reading device known as the “Kindle” (more deservedly known as the Amazon Swindle). These works are in the public domain in Australia but that doesn’t address the real issue at hand—the power DRM gives publishers and what that means in your life.

The publishers and DRM controllers inadvertently did us all a great favor: they gave us a low-cost wake-up call to the reality of DRM. Some of us were wise enough to never get involved with DRM in the first place, so we get an opportunity to educate others about what DRM really means. If you were raised on valuing technical glitz over valuing freedom and community, you may have acquired some DRM-encumbered media or device. You get a chance to think about issues of freedom and power. You can learn what the shift from traditional media really means and how digital media doesn’t have to deny users their freedom.

The underlying theme

What made this possible? How could one’s purchases simply vanish? This never happens with books, so why should it happen with e-Books?

DRM (more appropriately known as “Digital Restrictions Management”) is the key to understanding the loss of freedom and transfer of power. DRM is the technical means whereby a publisher can control what media a computing device has on it, or when a user is permitted to view/read/hear (experience, for short) that media.

This control is permanent for the lifetime of the device. So even after the device and the media are sold to the user, even if the device and media are sold again to another user (at a garage sale, for example), the publisher remains in control. Whatever the computing device is capable of doing, DRM can curtail the reader’s freedom to do that activity.

Continue reading →

gNewSense GNU/Linux, a free software operating system based on a variant of the GNU operating system with the Linux kernel, is out with a new CD which contains all security updates made to the system through April 14, 2009.

Why would I want a free operating system?

You deserve software freedom, the freedom to share and modify your computer software. Even if you never alter any of the software’s source code it’s good to know that others improve the software and inspect it for problems. It’s good to know that you can distribute copies of free software to anyone you want without fear of being called a “pirate” or sneaking around. You can help your community by sharing software. If you’re more technical, you can help yourself by more fully understanding the software you depend on.

What kind of computer do I need to try this?

You need an Intel or AMD compatible system. Most typical home computers should work with this.

Where can I get gNewSense GNU/Linux

You can download it

• from the official gNewSense mirrors
• or you can download the install disc directly from this blog
• and the complete source code archive, if you wish
• and finally, the MD5SUMS file will help you verify that the file you downloaded is complete and accurate

You can download the ISO file, burn it to a CD, and try it on your computer (reboot your computer with the burned disc in the drive) to see if it works with your hardware. Running the system from CD will make the system run slower than it would installed but you’ll get to see what works using your computer without losing any of the data installed on your computer.

In case you’re unfamiliar with ISO files and burning bootable discs read some CD/DVD burning instructions.ref=