Lord Crc,

We've just about completed our backlog and have started taking new projects. You should expect an invitation by the end of the year. Conservancy has been very careful not to accept new projects until we're absolutely sure we have the resources to take care of them.

I asked the Slashdot folks to make the video available in a format viewable with Free Software. I've sent an email to ask to make sure that happens. Unlike RMS, I don't necessarily object to videos of me being available in proprietary formats, as long as they are *also* available in a format viewable with Free Software.

I suspect this was just a communication problem between me and the interviewer. It should get resolved.

I agree the victory is not "major", but "important". As for Samsung, they already settled their part of this case and are (to my knowledge) in compliance on their TV products.

— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy

Slashdot readers might be interested to read the actual judgment as issued by the Court, which is available Conservancy's announcement of the decision. I also wrote a blog post about the decision that may be of interest.

— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy

I cannot figure out why the headline says that the EFF won this case. This case was brought by the Software Freedom Conservancy, with the Software Freedom Law Center acting as the Conservancy's legal counsel. The EFF was not, nor has ever been to my knowledge, involved in anything to do with the GPL.

Also, winning the whole case is probably inaccurate. What's been achieved here is a permanent injunction and judgment against one of the violators. Thus, the case against Westinghouse has been won, but there are other defendants in the case as well.

— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy

It was reported that the paper is to be presented at a peer reviewed conference. Anyway, even if the findings are accurate, it doesn't really impact the security of any productions systems. I've written a more extensive discussion of this issue, and how people jump to bad conclusions about academic articles like this one.

I'm heavily involved in the FLOSS non-profit world. I have a Master's Degree in Computer Science that has not done all that much for me. I regret getting it.

If you don't plan to teach high school or college, then you would be better served getting a degree in another field. For example, getting an MBA or a law degree might make it possible for you to broaden the range of things you can do. (I'm against getting a law degree, but for other reasons.)

If you want to go into not-for-profit or governmental policy work in computing, getting an MPA (Master's in Public Administration) would be good.

In short, your professors want you to do what they did. Given that B.S. degrees are not as valuable as they once were, it's worthwhile to have some sort of graduate degree, but getting it in another field will expand your horizons and opportunities and also give you more perspective as a computer scientist/engineer.

Even after years of conversations with us in the FLOSS community, Matt still doesn't get it. He's completely focused on “businesses with a codebase that release it under some license”. He doesn't understand community-driven software that isn't tied to on specific corporate entity.

The GPL is specifically designed for community-driven software that is not tied to one company. Matt could very well be right about the limited, pro-corporate world he occupies; it could very well be better for them to use the Apache license.

However, individuals and very small contracting agencies benefit best when they can be put on equal footing with the big guys. The only types of licenses that do this are copyleft licenses.

Finally, declaring that people's life's work trying to make the world a better place — even if you disagree with their politics — is disingenuous at best. I've spent most of my adult life working to make the GPL and the codebases around it better. I'm sorry to hear that Matt thinks I've been busy dumping radioactive waste on his world.

I think the fundamental problem is that FLOSS community needs diversity and cannot be tied to a single for-profit entity. For a project to succeed with a healthy community, it needs individual developers or a non-profit entity (run by developers) to control it. I've written a blog post about this specific issue in response to Monty's linked in the main article.