Free software pressure creates more software freedom

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Philip Langdale recently wrote about SD card readers and the Linux kernel. One of the conclusions he reaches seemed familiar to me (emphasis mine):

When it comes to hardware support, we often find ourselves confronted with statements that such-and-such a piece of hardware can’t be used to its full capability under linux or feature ”˜X’ isn’t supported yet. For a long time, the SD card reader in many recent laptops fell into that category but thanks to the efforts of Pierre Ossman, who managed to reverse engineer the SDHCI standard from trial-and-error and partial documentation, many of us are now able to use that reader. Although I can’t prove it, I feel that the subsequent publishing of the ‘simplified’ spec (without the DRM bits that we don’t care about) by the SD Association was provoked by his efforts (Why bother hiding it now?) Thanks to those specs, Pierre was able to polish the driver up even more and support a wider range of implementations (of course, there are some that are so out there that even having the SDHCI spec isn’t enough to get them working).

The claim reminded me of another similar example of free software pressuring non-free information to be published in such a way that it becomes useful for the free software community.

Consider the pressure of all the hackers working on free software Java implementationsThe Java logo. I’m convinced that Sun will free their Java software to stay relevant in a world where free software Java work (Apache Harmony, Kaffe, Classpath, and others) is becoming increasingly functional and available on more amenable terms than Sun’s implementation.

So of course Sun’s Simon Phipps is a big fan of GPLv3 so far—GPLv3 is the upcoming version of the GNU General Public License—from how things look so far, GPLv3 will help keep Java free in such a way that improvements to Sun’s Java software will pose no threat to Sun. Sure, the license change will simultaneously make the free software community happy (which will turn the community into advocating for the use of Java instead of seeing Java as a trap), but it wasn’t long ago that James Gosling at Sun defended the status quo by claiming any opposition to Sun’s extant licensing was unclear (“It’s often difficult to get a good picture from the open source community of what they actually object to in what we’re doing”). Gosling is also quoted there saying that Sun’s Java customers would object to an “open source” Java:

We’ve got several thousand man-years of engineering in [Java], and we hear very strongly that if this thing turned into an open source project””where just any old person could check in stuff””they’d all freak. They’d all go screaming into the hills.

and Gosling was described as being ambivalent about Apache Harmony.

Two new defenses against copyright infringement emerge

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In the past couple of weeks, two new defenses against copyright infringement have emerged:

  1. Get a stern talking to by Edgar Bronfman, parent of 7 and Warner Music Group CEO who just admitted that he’s fairly certain that at least one of his kids have engaged in illicit downloading. As of yet, somehow these children have avoided being sued by the RIAA. Their punishment?

    I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.

    Stealing isn’t the issue here, copyright infringement is.

    Maybe these kids learned about infringement from the Warner Brothers movie studio which got started when the Warner brothers fled west to illicitly make and commercially show movies out of the reach of Edison’s patent police. Or maybe the kids picked up the idea of selectively obeying copyright law in their history class by recalling that the US didn’t initially honor foreign copyright, thus allowing American publishers to reprint works under copyright in other countries (much to the chagrin of Charles Dickens, whose work was being distributed commercially without remuneration).

    Warning: Bronfman lectures are limited to first 7 applicants.

  2. Keep the infringing copy “safe in your vault” and you’ll be okay. Boing Boing has the scoop about a screening which took place on 2006-11-30:

    During the Q&A at last night’s screening of Kirby Dick’s “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” Dick recounted the story of how his film was unlawfully duplicated by the MPAA’s ratings board. He submitted one copy of his movie to the MPAA, extracting a promise that no more copies would be made — the MPAA’s own anti-piracy materials describe making a single unauthorized duplication as an act of piracy.

    Once it got out that the MPAA had made its “pirated” copy of Dick’s movie, one of the MPAA’s lawyers called Dick up to admit that the cartel had indeed made an infringing copy, but not to worry, “The copy is safe in my vault.”

    At this point, I raised my hand and asked if Dick thought anyone caught downloading movies from the Internet could get off the hook by saying, “Don’t worry, I keep my copies safe in my vault?”

    I still don’t think it’s wise, fair, or appropriate to use the term “piracy” in this context no matter how popular its use may be. Also, we have to consider the difficulty of avoiding infringement if the MPAA can’t manage to keep themselves inside their view of the law. But of course the larger issue remains how much deference we ought to give to any business model built on disallowing treating friends like friends.

Questions Please… episode #1 interview

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A new show called “Questions Please…” has distributed episode #1 in Ogg Vorbis format under a license that allows verbatim distribution (“Verbatim copying and distribution of these entire recordings are permitted worldwide without royalty provided this notice is preserved.”). Jonathan Roberts, the host, interviews Richard Stallman, Jeremy Allison and Jeff Waugh in this episode.

There is some exploration of the value of freedom and consideration of ethics in computing, including debunking a common myth about becoming more free by being free to discard your rights. During a discussion of what free software-related wishes the three interviewees had, Stallman noted that he wouldn’t oppose a law prohibiting proprietary software but he chose to take a different path working against proprietary software. Roberts followed up by asking:

Roberts: Do you not think though, Richard, that a law against it [proprietary software] is in many ways restricting those people’s freedoms to—

Stallman: No. That’s basically making a Russell paradox out of freedom. The freedom to give up your freedom, basically, conflicts with the idea of inalienable rights. There’s some rights that are threatened and important, and in order to make sure they continue to exist, they must be inalienable. When people’s right to sell themselves into slavery was abolished, that made society more free because it closed a path by which people became slaves.

Roberts: Okay, yeah, that’s a good point.

Link: Russell paradox.

Apparently two clicks away was two clicks too many.

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Ubuntu GNU/Linux’s Benjamin Mako Hill writes that he’s “perplexed by the recent fracas around the possibility of Ubuntu shipping non-free drivers by default as part of the feisty release goal to bring the bling“. “Feisty” is the codename for the next major release of Ubuntu GNU/Linux and “bring the bling” refers to splashy video effects like making windows shimmer when moved, or spinning the desktop image around. As of the time/date stamp on this post, the Ubuntu Wiki (linked above) says that the proprietary video driver software will be installed by default but won’t be enabled unless the user’s video hardware wouldn’t work without it. None of this discussion seems to get into the proprietary firmware (software uploaded to the computer running on some device) which will be employed as well.

So we’re presented with an opportunity to better understand what Richard Stallman is talking about when he describes the difference in reaction between a free software proponent and an open source proponent. I recommend reading the entire question-answer exchange so as to get proper context, but here’s a small quote:

So if I am offered a choice between a proprietary program which is powerful and reliable and a free program which is not, I choose the free program because that I can do in freedom. I’d rather make some practical sacrifices to reject oppression.

But suppose you want both? Suppose you want freedom and solidarity, and you want powerful reliable software? How can you get it? You can’t get that starting with the powerful, reliable, proprietary program because there is no way you can liberate that program. The only way you can get that, your ideal goal, is to start from the free program, technically inadequate as it may be, because you do have the option of improving it. That is the only path that can possibly ever get you to your ideal situation. Insist on freedom and make the program better.

Ubuntu’s choice is hardly surprising. Ubuntu’s unwillingness to abide by their own philosophy (“Every computer user should have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees”) is not new; Ubuntu’s fealty to the open source philosophy is clear (despite any language suggesting that software freedom ranks highly).

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6 new DMCA exemptions

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Three times a year the US Copyright Office reviews applications for exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This time, the office has granted 6 new exemptions, the largest number they’ve granted so far. EFF has the details on the new exemptions.

One new exemption I’d like to draw your attention to:

Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

This will help the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulation project which writes software so that you can play arcade games on a modern home computer if you have a copy of the arcade game software (for instance, playing the original Pac-Man program on your home computer with perfect sounds, graphics, and with all the interaction of an arcade machine). Unfortunately, MAME is non-free software because its license prohibits commercial distribution. MAME’s copyright holders fear that if it could be legally distributed commercially MAME would threaten the extant arcade market by allowing arcade owners to set up MAME machines which could play many arcade games; a single box that could replace many arcade units. I don’t see that as a threat but an improvement to the arcade market.

Furthermore, the free software movement is in favor of commercial distribution because commercial distributors can help grant software freedom to more people and make money in the process; money that can be put right back into making and distributing more free software. Arcade game copyright holders could distribute old game code under free software licenses rather than let old arcade machines fall into disrepair and vanish from the market.

Here’s hoping MAME’s copyright holders reconsider their license and distribute MAME as free software.

Health care based on need, not ability to pay, is what the US needs.

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Read this article on the myths Americans spread about the Canadian health care system.

One of these myths reminded me of a response I gave to Rep. Timothy V. Johnson (R-IL) a few years ago on a call-in TV talk show when I heard him spreading the lie that hospital waiting lists are so horrible they justify not having any kind of universal health care.

The waiting times for some procedures are longer in Canada than in the United States, but this problem is being actively tackled by the government in the wake of a Canada Supreme Court decision that “access to a waiting list is not access to health care.” However, the decision did not abolish the one-payer system — in fact, it reinforced it by giving the Quebec government, which was the chief object of the lawsuit, 12 months to remedy the situation.

As a result, Quebec is working hard to catch up with the rest of Canada. The average wait for a hip replacement has been reduced to four to five weeks, and knee replacements usually take six to seven weeks. This may still be too long, but if you happen to be one of the 40 million uninsured Americans, you might have to wait forever.

Java may be released under the GPL and more on Sun’s GPL Java promos

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Sun Microsystems says they’ll release their Java runtime software under the GPL. They haven’t done this yet, so there isn’t much to celebrate now. But in 2007, Sun’s Java ME, Java SE, and Java EE should be released under the most widely used free software license.

If this happens, many thanks are due to Sun. This will be a substantive contribution to software freedom everywhere and will help many people do lots of things we can’t do so easily right now (including playing multimedia on a webpage inline, right there on the page). I’ll look forward to seeing the source code licensed to me under the GPL.

Sun held a conference to announce this and the speaker misintroduced Richard Stallman as being

[…] first and foremost, the name associated with Open Source. He has been the strongest advocate, for many years, in driving the understanding of the value of the Open Source program. And in the past, in the context of licensing and distribution plan for Java, he has had some issues and has published a paper called “The Java Trap“, and, you know, we’ve taken a long hard look at that and respect the perspective there. But with today’s announcement, I think you’ll see a bit of a change.

Some of what he said is true: the Java trap will be significantly disarmed by GPLing Sun’s Java. But another part is not true: Richard Stallman does not promote Open Source. He takes great pains to tell people this every time he talks. You won’t see it in RMS’ segment promoting Sun’s soon-to-be freed Java because that is obviously edited. All of the Sun videos linked from this article are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Why would Sun do this if they’re making so much money and wielding so much persuasive power with a non-free Java?

The folks who write Apache Jakarta (a FLOSS Java replacement) say it’s because of Jakarta’s progress in replacing Sun’s Java, functionally speaking. There are other free software Java projects bearing down on Sun too: GNU Classpath and Kaffe, to name a couple more. In short, Sun saw the free competition on the horizon delivering a significant part of what Sun distributes under a non-free license and Sun knew they had to do something to retain an audience in the long term. This was a move to remain relevant.

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How “open source” became useless and GPLv3 became a hero?

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Prof. Eben Moglen says that GPLv3 will prevent a user’s loss of freedom in light of the details of the Novell-Microsoft deal.

Microsoft claims that the Linux kernel infringes on many of Microsoft’s patents. Microsoft would love to be a gatekeeper telling which Linux kernel users can continue to use Linux and which can’t by covering certain Linux users. Novell isn’t making as much money as they’d like to. Novell becomes a target for Microsoft’s millions—Novell recently agreed to take $348m of Microsoft’s money in exchange for signing a patent agreement which says that Microsoft won’t sue users of Novell’s GNU/Linux distribution for alleged patent infringement. This makes it look like Novell is agreeing to Microsoft’s claims that patents are being infringed and Novell is signing this deal for the benefit of Novell’s users.

In reality, no substantive proof of infringement has come from Microsoft, and Novell’s deal with Microsoft probably made enough big Linux kernel development corporations nervous enough to want to push hard for the Linux kernel to be distributed under GPLv3, the next improved version of the GNU General Public License; the license under which the Linux kernel is distributed.

So, it’s looking more likely that Novell did do the free software community a favor, even if they did it by making a huge mistake for themselves.

Also worthy of note, Moglen’s review of the “open source” language which led to this outcome:

“What’s happened is that “Open Source” has died as a useful phrase – Free Software, the GPL, the FSF – all have become major stakeholders in the industry in Microsoft’s verbiage.”

“Once you’re a major stakeholder you don’t go back to being a minor stakeholder unless you go bankrupt – and we can never go bankrupt because we have no business to lose.

“So if we’re major stakeholder. now we stay that way until the end of the chapter, and that’s a problem for Microsoft.”

Repetition is the key to learning.

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Alberto Milone is looking for a new video card. Why? Because the driver software he chose to run his current video card doesn’t work anymore.

My old ATI card is not supported any more by the ATI driver (fglrx) since version 8.28.8.

One wonders why treatment like this deserves the name “support”. If ATI really cared about their users they’d at least make the software free for hardware they no longer wish to deal with. Apple has the same problem, as any Apple Newton user or anyone trying to develop bootable CDs for so-called “old world” PowerMacs will attest to.

Milone asks for help picking a new ATI card (!) and lists the criteria he wants you to use to help him place more trust in his apparently untrustworthy master. One of those points is “it should be supported by the latest ATI driver”.

He also says what he’d rather buy—a card that runs with free software drivers? No: “I’d rather buy a card of the X series (e.g. X800) so as to be sure that the support for it won’t be dropped soon.”.