Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:33:16 -0800
From: tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
Subject: What's up with the GFDL?
To: gnu-prog-discuss@gnu.org
X-Spam-Level:

Richard Stallman is pushing an anti-free license for documentation.
By that, I mean, a license for documentation which, if it were used
for software, would unquestionably be understood as unfree.

There are many negative consequences of this action:

1) The Debian Project, which is committed to free software, cannot
      distribute GFDL'd manuals as part of the Debian system. This is
      ironic in the extreme, because RMS used to complain that Debian was
      too loose about distributing non-free things. Now Debian is too
      tight for him.

2) It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and
      incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever. This is
      not a mere license incompatibility. It's not just that the GFDL is
      incompatible with this or that free software license: it's that it
      is fundamentally incompatible with *any* free software license
      whatsoever. So if you write a new program, and you have no
      commitments at all about what license you want to use, saving only
      that it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text.

3) The FSF solicited public comment on the GFDL, but this seems to
      have been a deceptive enterprise. The goal seems to have been to
      garner public support for it, and that simply failed. So the FSF
      does not trumpet that little public comment, and has issued no
      explanation of why such a widely unpopular documentation license
      should be used.

4) RMS has now "dismissed" me as Hurd maintainer because I have
      publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU maintainer must
      support and speak in favor of GNU policies. If this is really
      RMS's reason, then it means that he demands the right to control
      the speech of every GNU volunteer when it comes to GNU project
      policies. He wants not merely to set the direction, but also to
      require that each and every one of us publicly support a GNU policy
      when asked to.

I do not know what the right response is. I believe perhaps the best
thing to do is to create structures for GNU project volunteers to
express their opinions so that we can even find out what the GNU
project thinks. Heretofore, RMS has been an able spokesman, but when
he disregards the comments of volunteers (even when explicitly
solicited), works against free software, and attempts to control the
speech of GNU volunteers in talking about such issues, something has
gone very wrong.

I suspect that nothing will happen, and the sad result will be that
while free software will continue to thrive, the GNU project will
die. I do not know what would prevent that.

Thomas

Technical Addendum
- ------------------

The incompatibilities of the GFDL with free software are not
controversial. There are two central problems.

First, GFDL'd manuals can contain "invariant sections" which cannot be
changed or removed. This is a restriction on modification which isn't
permitted for free software licenses. Moreover, it is not a trivial
restriction or one that imposes minimal costs. Invariant sections can
be very large, and the pieces of a GFDL'd manual that one wants to
copy might be small. (For example, a description of how to use a
single function, if copied from the Emacs manual, requires the
inclusion of many kilobytes of extraneous text from invariant
sections.) Such restrictions are not allowed in free software
licenses.

Second, there are restrictions on what formats a GFDL'd manual can be
distributed in, which work to prohibit encryption and the like. No
such restriction exists for free software licenses.

PA Hatred

Just a sample of what is in the article.

"The PA Ministries of Education and Sport have turned the most abhorrent murderers of Jews into role models and heroes for Palestinian youth. [For instance, a] tournament for 11-year-old boys was named for Abd Al-Baset Odeh - the terrorist who murdered 30 in the Passover Seder suicide bombing. This past summer, during the period of the US-sponsored Road Map, numerous summer camps were named for suicide bombers... As recently as September this year, PA Chairman Arafat and 13 PA leaders jointly sponsored a soccer tournament honoring arch terrorists... Each of the 24 soccer teams was named for a terrorist or other Shahids [Martyrs], including some of the most infamous murderers like Yichye Ayash, the first Hamas bomb engineer, who initiated the suicide bombings...

"While music videos around the world are used to entertain children, in the PA they are used to indoctrinate children to hatred, violence, and Shahada. Regularly-broadcast PA music videos have actors depicting Israelis carrying out execution-style murders of old men, women and children, or blowing up mothers with their babies. In one music video broadcast continuously in 2003, actors portray a woman being murdered in cold blood in front of her daughter. In another, broadcast tens of times in 2003, the image of a young girl on a swing turns into a flaming inferno, and a football blows up after being kicked by a child. Children are taught through these videos not only to hate and to be violent, but are openly encouraged to aspire to death through Shahada [Martyrdom]. Clips designed to offset a child's natural fear of death, portraying child Shahada as both heroic and tranquil, have appeared on PA TV thousands of times over three years. One clip for children ends with the words: 'Ask for Death - the Life will be Given to you.' In another, a child writes a farewell letter and goes off to die. Children who have achieved death through suicide missions have been turned into PA heroes and role models by the PA leaders.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2169472

WASHINGTON -- As U.S. companies send more high-tech work overseas, they are creating a "downward pressure on salaries" that may help slow American job losses, a technology industry leader told Congress on Monday.

Indeed, U.S. workers may have to get used to lower wages, said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. Unlike the late 1990s when the tech sector was booming, U.S. workers no longer can expect employers to offer "six-figure incomes to technical people with little or no actual on-the-job training," Miller told the House Committee on Small Business.

Americans must face the "hard truth" that offshore companies not only offer information technology services for "a fraction of the cost," but they can "compete for increasingly more sophisticated and complex IT work," he said.

The silver lining of this wage pressure, Miller said, is that "a more competitive payroll picture may undercut" the push to move U.S. jobs offshore.

Miller said cutting wages is not the only strategy for staying competitive. He said a key step is to provide greater value, which means raising the skills of U.S. workers and the creativity of U.S. companies.

"The U.S. cannot legislate or regulate its way out of this perplexing situation," Miller said. "At the same time, however, to do nothing -- as Bobby McFerrin sang, Don't Worry, Be Happy -- is to risk an ever-increasing number of knowledge worker jobs disappearing overseas."

Miller called on Congress to boost funding for tech education, approve trade agreements to open more markets to U.S. goods and services, and make the tax credit for research and development permanent.

At the same time, "companies must do their part by providing internships, mentorships and other mechanisms" to draw young people to the field.

He also called for the creation of a National Center for IT Work Force Competitiveness to study industry trends and analyze work force skills.

But another witness, Natasha Humphries of Santa Clara, Calif., said that despite her efforts to boost her value through greater education, she still lost her job this year.

Humphries, a 1996 Stanford graduate, focused on acquiring "new skills through classes, seminars and self study" to become a senior software quality assurance engineer at Palm.

She said Palm began a campaign to outsource all testing assignments to India and China, which accepted contracts paying $2 to $5 an hour, compared with wages of $30 to $60 an hour in California.

Humphries said she tried to upgrade her qualifications. But she said Palm management discouraged her from enhancing her skills. In August she was fired. The reason was her paycheck, not her lack of skills, she said.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6980376.htm

        Posted on Fri, Oct. 10, 2003
Grove warns of software downfall
U.S. COULD LOSE JOBS, MARKET SHARE, HE SAYS
By Heather Fleming Phillips
Mercury News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Intel Chairman and tech visionary Andy Grove sent a warning shot across the bow of the federal government Thursday.

The U.S. software industry is about to lose jobs and market share to foreign competitors unless the government acts quickly to fight protectionist trade policies and double U.S. productivity, he said.

``I'm here to be the skunk at your garden party,'' Grove began in his afternoon speech beamed via satellite to an otherwise rosy gathering of software executives in Washington.

He predicted that the software and services industry is about to travel the well-worn path of the steel and semiconductor industries. Steel's market share dropped from about 50 percent to 10 percent in a few decades. U.S. chip companies saw theirs shrink from 90 percent to about 50 percent today. Now the writing is on the wall that software could suffer the same fate, said Grove, whose 1996 bestseller was titled ``Only the Paranoid Survive.''

``It would be a miracle if it didn't happen in the software and services industry,'' said Grove, noting that he was speaking on National Depression Day.

Political ramifications

Grove's speech comes at a sensitive time for the industry and the Bush administration. The industry still is struggling to get out of a three-year slump. And a year before the presidential election, the administration is looking for signs that its economic stimulus programs are benefiting industry and turning the economy around.

``This administration has very high productivity growth but also job losses and they're rightfully nervous about that heading into a presidential election,'' said Bill Whyman, an analyst with independent Washington research firm, Precursor.

Why are things looking so grim for software? Grove attributes it to fewer people getting advanced degrees in the United States in science and engineering, the high cost of U.S. labor in comparison to some foreign countries, and the fact that high-bandwidth connections are prevalent and cheaper, making it much easier for U.S. companies to work with developers in countries such as India.

The phenomenon is not only affecting software, he noted, but is trickling over into other important sectors such as health care.

Grove's speech was viewed at the Global Tech Summit, sponsored by the Business Software Alliance.

``Dr. Grove gave a provocative talk with a frank assessment of what the future might hold if governments and industry aren't aggressive about facing some of our biggest challenges head on,'' said Robert Holleyman, president of the Business Software Alliance. ``But that doesn't mean the future is grim,'' he said, noting that a study the trade association released Thursday shows the industry is set to create more than 1.5 million new high-paying jobs worldwide.

He added that software CEOs agree that the United States needs a solid plan for confronting their issues. A group of about 20 executives, including Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, traveled to Washington this week to lobby administration officials and Congress.

Grove said he was hard-pressed to find a comprehensive statement on what the government is doing to address the issue. ``We haven't even articulated the problem,'' he said.

The Bush administration rebutted Grove's claim that it hasn't worked to battle the problems facing the industry.

``We certainly understand the challenges there,'' said Phil Bond, undersecretary of technology at the Commerce Department. He noted that the government has a policy to make sure that all children are ``technologically literate'' by the eighth grade. Funding for science and math education was also recently boosted by $1 billion.

``In trade, I don't think anybody questions the free trade credentials of this administration,'' he added.

All hope not lost

But Grove said all hope wasn't lost. The industry in partnership with the U.S. government still could turn things around if it acts quickly. His recommendations: boost funding for research and development at universities; adopt policies that attract the best workers from around the world; better collaboration between companies on pre-competitive technology; and raise the hurdle for intellectual property litigation.

``Time is our enemy,'' he said.

After the speech, Grove was questioned on his desire to preserve jobs domestically, while at the same time Intel and the industry as a whole are moving jobs offshore. Grove responded that the industry is facing conflicting goals of serving shareholders and doing ``the right thing for the country.''

In the absence of public policy to help guide us, we have no choice but to export jobs, he said.