I made a chart of the public data available by the WHO. Both the cases and the deaths are matching a lot with the exponential curves onto them. I've put it online here: https://plus.google.com/+Jaspe...

They could.

But the weapon manufacturers would have to look elsewhere for their software.

And the implications for such a law would go much further than OpenSource software.

It would be valid for any commercially developed software too.

I would be very surprised if the US government would pass a law to contradict the software industry to such an extend!

Would you agree with such a law?
How are they going to define a 'OSS' license?
Don't you think we will find a way around that to create another license not fitting that description and rendering that executive order useless.
No president would issue an executive order if it also hurts the software industry in the same way.

But I guess it's a valid point and something to be taken into consideration when drafting such a GPLv4.
Also don't forget that the GPLv4 goes a lot further than only the US...

We make software for a reason. Not to just give it away for free as in beer. But to provide freedom.

For that reason we ask people to release the changes to the code back to our collection of software which provides more freedom.

While certain companies are concerned about competitors getting to see their code, the disadvantages are much less important than the advantages of being able to stand on the shoulders of the giants in the opensource community.

We limit the freedom of people who want to use our code without giving back, so we can ensure a future in which we can access data without having to depend on one company. Together we are building that future.

Yet we see that our code is being used for mass surveillance.
To snoop upon all our communications.
To invade our privacy.
To datamine our meta-data and to possibly make far-reaching conclusions.
And to build weapons of mass destruction.
I don't want to contribute to such a future.

Developers have the choice to license their software under licenses as they choose appropriately.
Certainly the BSD license can still be used for such applications, even GPLv3 and GPLv2 licensed programs - in the far fetched assumption that the GPLv4 would become the 'good public license'.
And changing the law to remove clauses out of a software license,... well I think it's highly improbable and very difficult to implement in a law. Yet nothing is impossible. And it would probably lead again to a new software license (and a lot of relicensing work).

As we currently limit the freedom of those who want to create DRM-protected GPLv3 linux appliances. Or as we limit the freedom of people who would like to redistribute a Linux derivative in a proprietary format.

Certain freedoms have to be limited to protect our interests and preserve our own freedoms and even our privacy.

I can't speak for Russia, but Germany is very strict about copyright regulations.

Just as the current license is very good respected, and for certain embedded applications the GPLv3 is avoided, they would certainly not want to risk any software license violation.

While an arms race might have been important in the past, it isn't what drives current civilisation.

And I hope it will stay that way.

At least in my country most of the intelligent Linux developers don't want to work for the weapons manufacturer. So they build less good soft/hardware as they could have otherwise.

Just like good developers don't want to work for Microsoft, because who wants to be associated with that?

The key thing is that I don't want to personally decide what is 'evil' and what is not.

But we are doing that right now with the GPLv3 already.

I believe that the EFF has a wonderful opportunity there to form a committee to make that definition and implement it legally.

Don't you think someone would leak it?

And if they would use it, at least we could sue them...

My bet is they would not. And that they would have to rely upon outdated crappy software. Or pay a lot more for their software development.

Or just use software with older versions of the GPL only.

One could limit the scope of 'evil' to weapons of mass destruction.

I guess that's a valid debate.

And it will still be possible to make them without our software... I just don't want to have helped them!
We make software because of that warm fuzzy feeling. Not to know that it contributes to killing people (from whatever country).

Again I call for the GPLv4 to become the 'good public license'.
Cannot be used for weapon manufacturing or mass surveillance... or anything defined as 'evil' by a FSF committee.

I don't want to be part of the evil masterplans of those basards.
Currently 'patent protection' is defined as evil. But I think most of us agree there are more fundamental evil for which our software can be used...

Wake up RMS!

The should not be allowed to have it both ways: protect the source code because it's "valuable" but not support is any more because it has become worthless crap - and hell yes - why not make it a more general law: If you drop support for old software; your company should be enforced to open the source. This has several advantages:
1) Old hardware can still be supported, so there is less e-waste
2) Customers are not forced into anything
3) Even more world domination for Open Source software!

Whatever license, as long as it's OSI approved.

And I can't resist to post a link to our press release done today.

Correctly assessed!
And the numbers of failure for Tesla are even much worse than Ford: "There have been 12 reported fires but no injuries in the bigger recall of 139,917 Ford Escape vehicles." - so one in 11659 cars.
Tesla has sold an estimated 18,200 units through September 2013 (according to wikipedia) with 3 fires - so one in 6066 cars.
Neglecting or minimising this problem is a bad thing for everybody.

It is sad that they didn't go for the Ubuntu phone - I was one of the (many) people who contributed to the kickstarter.
Having raised more than 10M usd and then not releasing it... WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT.

Maybe Marc is burning through his cash too quickly. Who knows.

But I still think he helped OpenSource and Free Software a lot, whatever direction it turns out to go into.
It looks like there will not be an Ubuntu phone ready for the Xmas shopping season this year, and that's sad, very sad!
Even Apple launched a new phone without having any real new features...