I was hoping to find a Pirate Party response to Richard Stallman's essay on how the Swedish Pirate Party's proposed short term of copyright creates a needlessly unequal opportunity between copylefted free software and proprietary software upon entry into the public domain. In the same essay Stallman proposes a fix that resolves the unequal opportunity.

It's the unequal results upon entering the PD that is unfair: Proprietors don't release source code so upon entry into the public domain their works would be redistributed as binaries without users being free to inspect or modify the work. By contrast users would be free to incorporate the formerly copyleft free software program. As Stallman points out, "the Pirate Party's proposal would give proprietary software developers the use of GPL-covered source code after 5 years, but it would not give free software developers the use of proprietary source code, not after 5 years or even 50 years". As he mentions, proprietary programs that timebomb themselves might remain useless even to users who merely want to run the program. Stallman wrote, "I could support a law that would make GPL-covered software's source code available in the public domain after 5 years, provided it has the same effect on proprietary software's source code. After all, copyleft is a means to an end (users' freedom), not an end in itself. And I'd rather not be an advocate for a stronger copyright.".

We should strive for equal opportunity for use upon entry into the PD but the Pirate Party's recommended copyright policy would allow proprietors to exempt themselves from the freeing effect of entry into the PD. Stallman's idea of requiring proprietary software escrow when the binaries are released seems eminently sensible to me. Then users would be on equal footing with formerly copylefted free software source and formerly proprietary software source entering the public domain.

If anyone can point me to a good response to Stallman's essay on this written by a Pirate Party representative I'd appreciate it. I've read the /. thread on Stallman's article and I didn't come across such a pointer.

There are very few Slashdot posters who distinguish freedom from skill, appreciate freedom for its own sake, and acknowledge that real life requires us all to depend on each other as you apparently do. I see many more posters who post arguments based on myths of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps, not being entitled to anything one isn't forced to need, and not seeing force outside of a loaded weapon aimed at someone.

I would rather have an eternity of software freedom at hand. The Linux kernel is obviously robust, portable, capable, scalable, and proven. But in some distributions Linux is not entirely free because Linus Torvalds' fork contains non-free binary-only software (see the linux-libre project for a fully free Linux kernel). Also I'd hope for software freedom and not a particular approach (this OS, that kernel, etc.) because there are other free software programs that shouldn't be forgotten just because they're not a part of a complete GNU/Linux system.

Somewhat similarly regarding the headline for this article on /.: I don't think the true hinge of this issue is nationality or incorporation. These aspects are the true hinge of trouble in other issues (wars and suppressing democracy, to name a couple issues more significant than free software), but here I think that software freedom needs to be the focus worldwide. As time goes on I think more people will realize that software freedom can have life and death implications for ordinary people, particularly where people wear medical devices inside their body without any control over that device's function or any ability to inspect what that device does.

IBM stands alone in the world of patents because IBM holds the most patents. This fact places IBM in a unique position: IBM can leverage the power of cross-licensing more than any other patent holder. This is a formidable power. For IBM the trouble of licensing patents is mostly hypothetical. In "Think" magazine, #5, 1990, IBM estimated the value of this cost. As the link above says:

The value IBM gets from cross-licensing measures the trouble that the patent system would cause IBM if IBM could not avoid it. IBM's estimate is that the trouble could easily be ten times the good one can expect from one's own patents--even for a company with 9,000 of them.

IBM doesn't pursue patent lawsuits because IBM can pressure virtually any patent holder into cross-licensing. IBM isn't failing to sue because they're choosing to take a defensive position (whether reluctantly or not). IBM's power here puts the lie to the 'lone inventor' myth the patent system sometime engenders just as it puts the lie to any "protection" a small software developer would gain should they discover IBM believes they're competing with IBM.

A transcript of Richard Stallman's talk on this problem (including mention of the above article) is online (1, 2), as are audio and video recordings of him giving this talk. I highly suggest reading and/or watching the entire talk because the talk is highly informative, and he is clear to separate his work on free software from the trouble with software patents. The danger of software patents "relates to the question of whether the programs are free or not, the dangers of the same for all software developers".

GCC consultants charge hundreds per hour for their work. Their "recipe" is skilled programmers doing hard work for paying clients.

It sounds like the answer to your question is to either write all of your own code or build on some non-copylefted FLOSS licensed code. There are people out there willing to treat your business like a charity and give code to you, but GPL hackers aren't. Maybe you should choose another line of work entirely.

I doubt that a lack of e-readers was the driving issue. I think it was King's attitude and that hardly anyone wants to invest in an incomplete story (you'll never know if the rest of the chapters will come until they're published).

As for how to address the public, I think Richard Stallman got it right back in 2001 when he was giving a talk at MIT and someone in the audience asked him a question about Stephen King's experiment:

So, with Louis C.K.'s recording, the illicit downloads didn't stop him from making a profit of $200,000 which is slightly less than he spent on the endeavor ("The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website."). I see no indication Louis C.K. is going after the infringers legally, another huge difference between dealing with him directly and buying through some media multinational. It's not even clear how many of the infringers paid anyway, nor is it clear how many of the infringers would not have paid no matter the price. Stephen King, on the other hand, browbeat the readers into attempted compliance and failed to convince enough people to keep King happy. The story ended quickly and I don't see King trying this again with a more reasonable attitude.

All proprietors have had this power since people ran proprietary software on networked computers, regardless of OS. All that's required is a networked computer (commonplace since Internet access became popular) and a program running with sufficient privilege to do something (easy to do with any installer, probably easy to gain this level of access post-install because most users run with admin logins and will type in their password when prompted). Thus all the insecurities and lack of exclusive control people are talking about in other subthreads have existed for a long time. As long as you ran software you had no permission to inspect, modify, and share, you may have never been the sole admin of your computer. And you'll never know the details of the controls the proprietors possess.

I don't believe it's good to lose one's software freedom and let unknown people determine what you make your computers do.

You are apparently confusing permission and ability. Freedom is about permission, not skill. You might not have time to read and understand complete corresponding source code, but the free software movement has proven that collectively this work can be done because it is being done. Very complex programs are being read, written, and maintained for our mutual benefit by collective action. People must be allowed to decide for themselves what level of programming they want to undertake.

You'd have us believe that a phone works radically differently from any other networked computer. You don't have full access to most servers you use now but you'd be a fool to think that software freedom does you no favors to make your computer more trustworthy. Installing spyware without my consent on my 100% trustworthy phone would not be possible because such a phone lets me disallow installation of whatever software I want to disallow. The conversation data could be copied and stored but that's no different than tapping into the line; this has to do with the trouble with relying on other computers to get work done, and to some degree this problem is mitigated. The situation we face is not perfection or nothing; FLOSS didn't get as far as it has come by giving up because perfection is unattainable.

As for guarantees, I never said anything was guaranteed. Speaking of guarantees is silly. Real life offers no guarantee you'll understand and modify computer program source code, the plumbing in a house, the inner workings of your own body, and other complex things. Many other fields benefit from studying available documentation and doing experiments to figure out how things work and improve collective understanding. Proprietary software is different because it is designed to prevent such documentation and experimentation, therefore proprietary software puts us in a position of dependency not freedom. People apparently need to increase the odds that they can run something trustworthy. That trust comes from software freedom for cell phone software just like free software for any other computer. Anyone should be allowed to learn to program and control their computer entirely. We all need software freedom for all of our programs.

As I'm sure you know: Without complete corresponding source code to all of the software running on a phone, you'll never know the answer to those questions.

RMS knew the solution to this problem before the problem became widespread (as he often does) and he got the solution right early on: this is a social problem, not a technological problem. The solution is software freedom for all computer users for all the software they run.

Sadly, the Carrier IQ debacle is unlikely to propel people to see this solution. The problem is too weak in its urgency because Carrier IQ's (or any other workalike) privacy violations are merely annoying or scary. Privacy violations usually don't kill or maim anyone. Also, the affected audience has low market value: the general public. When proprietary software used in internal medical devices fails and kills someone, there will be another opportunity to talk of software freedom as a social solution to be taken seriously. And, for a time, people will be more receptive to the idea that all computer users deserve software freedom. People seem to have no problem hiring professionals in other fields they don't understand (plumbers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, builders) so it's not far-fetched to expect the public to hire computer programmers to inspect and modify programs on their behalf.