Eben Moglen Leaving the FSF 75
An anonymous reader writes "Eben Moglen, general counsel and board member of the FSF and chairman of the SFLC, has announced on his blog that he will be resigning from his leadership position with the FSF now that GPLv3 draft 3 is out the door. "
Surprising. (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks Eben (Score:5, Insightful)
See you in a decade for GPLv4!!
Thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Makes you wonder... (Score:3, Funny)
So does that mean Theo de Raadt is the Aaron Burr?
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
What does that make RMS then, Thomas Paine?
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What does that make RMS then, Thomas Paine?
Sounds about right, actually.
Re:Surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)
> "Now if you leave them alone to buy more congressmen, in this very corrupt time of ours, they will survive for a little while longer but all of this talk is about the technicalities of the adjustment of the terms of their demise. When we want to start talking about something that matters, we would do better to begin from some basic social propositions. Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."
Given his accent, this makes for a very interesting voice-over when combined with electronic music.
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"[..]all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."
It makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course, I don't know how he started out, since I wasn't there, and I don't know what he's like now, since I haven't met him.
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If he's seen that way it's inaccurate. rms is as cogent as he's ever been, and still tackles large, complicated issues.
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Like, for example? Perhaps he just doesn't get any coverage when he's acting in a socially tolerable manner, but I really, truly haven't heard of anything important that RMS has actually accomplished in over a decade. I know that he (like so many others) has made some wholly ineffective forays against
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
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If you're not what I suspect -- just another witless troll -- could you at least explain how the president of the FSF should better advocate its mission?
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The mission of the FSF is to promote free software to the exclusion of nonfree software. "Linux" is rarely used properly to refer to just the kernel, instead referring to an entire OS that often includes nonfree software. "GNU", OTOH, refers an entire OS of just free software, the kernel of which could be any one of several, including Linux.
Thus we have a chasm. On the one hand, RMS is trying to advocate for having *only* free software, a position not at all suggested
Amen (Score:2)
RMS seems to be going down this path. Trying to fight closed hardware, DRM, MS/Novell, allow exceptions, try to be compatible with other licenses? I fear GPL3 is trying for too much.
Can someone please explain what it means for licenses to be "compatible"? If I've got code under Apache license and code under the GPLv3, I assume those can n
Compatible licenses (Score:4, Informative)
Depends. If the copyright holder of one of those codes gives you permission to move their code under the other license (or if they do it themselves, say by you paying them to do so), then there is no problem.
If you are not a copyright holder or if the body of code you want to move over is the culmination of many copyright holders, then with both Apache and GPL there is no problem you merging the codes as long as it is for your own use.
You cannot merge the two codes and release the resultant as you have no right unless the way that you do it adheres to both licenses. Compatible licenses would allow you to merge code from two differently licensed projects without violating the terms of either.
RMS, license compatibility, toolchains (Score:5, Interesting)
A license is compatible with another if the terms of both licenses are not mutually exclusive. The BSD/MIT licenses, at least the later ones without the advertising restriction, are GPL compatible because they don't restrict anything that the GPL would permit.
Having the ability to convert one license to another, or having the software available under multiple licenses, is a short-cut to compatibility with those licenses.
We have our own tool-chain, and one that is very portable to new architectures. I think that GPL3 draft 3 would require the disclosure of some data regarding how the toolchain would interface to the hardware of a consumer device in which GPL3 software was embedded, including the instruction set, if that was not already public knowledge.
Bruce
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Re:RMS, license compatibility, toolchains (Score:5, Insightful)
You're welcome! My son is 7 years old now, and of course it's important to spend time with him - you can't go back and fix mistakes you made with your kid. This is the major limit on how much I travel, why I haven't ever succeeded in getting time to go to Debconf or some of the other community conferences, etc. - I've got to be there for my kid. My wife wants some of my time too. And I have a job, so that I can put a roof over their heads. This is what Richard sacrifices, that I won't.
Bruce
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Re:Amen (Score:5, Informative)
Two licenses are compatible if a licensee can fulfil the conditions of both licenses simultaneously. Another way of saying this is that two licenses are compatible if the requirements of one are a subset of the other. For example the BSD is compatible with the GPL, because it is possible to fulfill the conditions of both simultaneously, since all the BSD requires is a subset of the requirements of the GPL. So it is possible to legally use BSD code and GPL code in the same work.
That depends on how much work would be involved and what requirements the other license makes.
There's no point to reïmplementing something already available under the (modern) BSD license, for instance. This should be fairly obvious.
On the other hand, code available only under the old BSD license should probably all be reïmplemented entirely. The advertising clause may not look like much at first glance, but when you consider how many thousands of different copyrights might apply to a single commercial distribution, you can see what a nightmare that clause could become in time.
On the third hand, consider the Sun license. It's not compatible with the GPL v2, because the GPL has a requirement that no further conditions may be added, and the Sun license has patent provisions that the GPL doesn't. This makes it legally impossible to use code under these two licenses together - they are incompatible. BUT, aside from the fact of incompatibility, there's nothing wrong with Suns license. The FSF had already stated they wanted to add similar patent provisions in the future, and a similar clause would probably have been in the GPL v2 had software patents been an issue when it was written. So in this case, making the GPL v3 compatible with Suns license might not be a bad idea at all - the details of wording may be a pain to work out, but the patent requirement itself is not onerous, to the contrary, it or something very much like it is a desirable addition anyway.
No, of course not. Your paraphrase is not what the license says. The actual wording has been reviewed and revised very carefully. The DRM section doesn't say anything resembling what you wrote.
To paraphrase, you can't use Free Software to build a system and then use the DMCA to forbid modification of that system. That's it.
There are no sections of the license that say anything more than vaguely resembling what you wrote. The definition of "Corresponding Source" for instance says:
Nice summary; thanks. (Score:1)
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BSDL, old or new, is nothing whatsoever like public domain. Both require copyright notices be preserved, and neither permits relicensing. This is a common misunderstanding - using code under compatible, but different, licenses does not involve relicensing. For instance using BSDL or X11/MIT code in a GPL project does NOT result in that code somehow being converted to GPL. It's still under the original license. It's simply being used in accordance with that original license, which is possible because the ter
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You're right; that's the correct definition.
If the requirements of one licence are a subset of the other, then the licenses are compatible. However, this sufficient condition is not a necessary condition. As long as the requirements are
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It would work by the very definition of "compatible." If you can license the whole codebase under both licenses simultaneously without conflicting, then you distribute under both licenses. You can take BSD code, modify and re-release under the GPL if you w
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I'm not sure I can even imagine something like that.
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Sometimes you can also be more effective as a heckler rather than the guy behind the wheel. I don't think this is any kind of farewell. GPL3 will be done far before he's done with it.
New job (Score:1, Funny)
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No, it seems that Linus Torvalds took a job with Microsoft according to EM.
Out of FSF but not Open Source in general (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Out of FSF but not Open Source in general (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Out of FSF but not Open Source in general (Score:4, Informative)
Eben Moglen has been the highlight of the FSF member meetings. As much I respect Richard Stallman's accomplishments, he's just not that much fun to listen to, especially in discussion. For example, Lawrence Lessig gave a great presentation on the Creative Commons his first year on the board. (He gave one striking example of a home movie that someone made over the course of several years for the cost of a camera and a bunch of tapes; when it got picked up by a studio at a film festival, it cost $400,000 dollars to license the music and TV shows that happened to be playing in the background.) All Richard wanted to talk about was how evil Flash is.
Eben tells you about some dire threat (usually from Microsoft), and how he and the little old FSF have a plan for it. I passed on the meeting this year, because I'm not that interested in GPL v3. I do hope Eben will continue to attend.
A brilliant guy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm convinced he's working with a larger percentage of his brain than the rest of us.
Creating the SFLC was a brilliant move, as was the drafting of the GPLv3.
Best of luck, Eben!
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Resist the impulse!
So long and thanks for all the fish (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So long and thanks for all the fish (Score:5, Funny)
Damn I love taking statements out of context...
You mean .. (Score:3, Funny)
No {bash} I was only kidding {OW}, it was a {UGH} joke! Stop hitting me!
:-)
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On Eben Moglen (Score:3, Informative)
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I want to hear about... (Score:2, Funny)
Thank You, And Best Wishes! (Score:2)
Eben Moglen (Score:1)
Videos (Score:3, Informative)
Confused (Score:3, Interesting)
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Better headline: Eben Moglen Leaving the FSF board (Score:5, Informative)
So here's to the true believers (Score:1, Troll)
Mod me down, I have karma burps.