Bulletin December 2010 Forwarding
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Copyright c 2010 Free Software Foundation How to Contribute 51 Franklin Street, 5th Floor Boston, MA 02110-1301 Associate Membership: (617)542-5942 Become an associate member of [email protected] the FSF. Members will receive http://www.fsf.org/ a bootable USB card and e-mail Issue 17 Bulletin December 2010 forwarding. To sign-up or get If you recently joined as a more information, visit member. member, your mailing includes fsf.org or write to membership@ a USB flash drive membership fsf.org. Contents card preloaded with a full live distribution of Trisquel 4.0. Online: Use your credit card or FSFat25 1 You can download source code PayPal account to make a dona- When Free Software 2 for the distribution at http: tion at donate.fsf.org or con- Sucks //fsf.org/associate/source/. tact [email protected] for more GNU Hackers Meeting: 5 If you would like us to send you information on supporting the Gothenburg, Sweden the source code on two DVDs FSF. Hardware Endorsement 7 for 5 dollars, please write to Jobs: List your job offers on our Program [email protected] or at the address jobs page. See fsf.org/jobs for The MusicBrainz 8 above. details. Project Solving The Lending 9 This bulletin was produced using United Way: As a 501(c)(3) Problem only free software. tax-exempt organization, the The Appleseed Project 11 Free software at CERN FSF is eligible to receive United GNU Contributors 12 The articles in this bulletin are Way funds. See fsf.org/uw for Around The World individually licensed under the our new free software adoption cam- more information. Free Software, Free 13 Creative Commons Attribu- paign, Why aren’t we using free Society: Second Edition tion No Derivative Works Free Software Directory: software for that? GNU Parallel: A Design 14 3.0 United States License. Browse and download from thou- We’ve learned that the key to help- For Life To view a copy of this license, sands of different free software ing institutions adopt free software is A View From The 14 visit http://creativecommons. projects! directory.fsf.org to educate and empower decision mak- Server Room org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ ers to question why free software isn’t Volunteer: To learn more, visit TheFreeGameLag 15 or send a letter to Creative Com- being considered or used. Our cam- fsf.org/volunteer. Free Software From An 17 mons, 171 Second Street, Suite paign will provide the inspiration to Artistic Perspective 300, San Francisco, California, ask these critical questions and the ma- Free Software Supporter: TheSagaofSunRPC 18 94105, USA. Make sure you’re getting all the terials to help make the case for free very latest news from the FSF at software. fsf.org/fss. “When you look at who’s using free FSF at 25 software and why, it begs the question, LibrePlanet: Find local groups why aren’t we using free software for in your area or start your own at by Peter Brown that?” libreplanet.org! Executive Director To help demonstrate that free soft- he FSF has turned 25! To help us ware is used even in the most mission- Tcelebrate you can join us in kick- critical situations, we’ve published a starting the new year with support for new resource featuring executives from 20 1 high-profile institutions talking about of organizations that have chosen to The funny thing about this license ers to pay attention and solve the prob- how and why they deploy free soft- adopt free software. is everyone knew it was Sun’s intention lem. Eventually, he left the FSF for ware. Some examples: Mark Schulz, “The free software community is to make it free software. The code is so other work, and others, including Brett the leader of the Grid Deployment a worldwide movement of people ded- old, it dates back to a time when the Smith (who took over Novalis’ FSF group at the European Organization icated to the goal of freedom in the use drafting of free software licenses wasn’t job), took up the cause—by the time for Nuclear Research (CERN), tells us of technology. Anyone can be part of well understood (old-schoolers will, for Brett came on, Spot was also paying how the scientific community at CERN this community and we can share in its example, remember the annoying ad- attention to this. Both Brett and Spot uses free software extensively and how benefits.” vertising clause in early BSD licenses). worked hard to get Simon Phipps’ at- the Large Hadron Collider depends In a world where media companies Thus, by our modern standards, the tention on it, which finally happened. on GNU/Linux; Daniel Risacher, of educate children not to share, the ideas Sun RPC license does appear on its But around then began that long wait- the US Department of Defense, shares presented by the free software commu- face as trivially non-Free, but in its his- ing period while Oracle was preparing how Free Software is critical to the nity can seem foreign and threatening. torical context, the intent was actually to buy Sun. It stopped almost any- armed forces’ ability to adapt to new What are these people’s motivations clear, in my opinion. thing anyone wanted to get done with challenges; Jimmy Wales, asserting for collaborating to produce and share Nevertheless, by 2002, we knew Sun, so everyone just waited (again). that “free knowledge requires free soft- valuable software? how to look at licenses objectively and It was around that time that I de- ware,” justifies his intransigence on Publicizing the motivations people critically, and it was clear to many cided I was pretty sure I never wanted Wikipedia’s use of free (and only free) have for participating in the free soft- people that the license had problems. to hear the phrase “Sun RPC license” software; and Steve Rubinow, the CIO ware community can go a long way Competing legal theories existed, but again in my life. of the New York Stock Exchange, ex- to reinforce the trust people should the concerns of Debian were enough to Meanwhile, Richard Fontana had plains how free software’s effectiveness put in its use. That’s why we’ve also get everyone moving toward a solution. gone to work for Red Hat, and his self- in handling the demands of the indus- published a new resource: Meet the For my part, I checked in regularly proclaimed pathological obsession with try and the fact that it is so well sup- Free Software Community, a series from 2002 to 2004 with Danese Cooper free software (which can only be rivaled ported make it a logical choice for the of profiles to inform and inspire. On (who was, effectively, Simon Phipps’ by my own) led him to begin discussing entire electronic exchange-and-trading the list:2 predecessor at Sun) until I was prac- the Sun RPC issue again. He and Spot industry. tically begging her to pay attention to were also doing their best negotiating These profiles provide a fascinating • Matt Mullenweg, cofounder and the issue. While I could frequently with Oracle to get it fixed. They took picture of the success of free software lead developer of WordPress, get verbal assurances from Danese and us the last miles of this marathon, and and reinforce that it is the freedom of highlights the benefit of freedom other Sun officials that it was their now the job is done. free software that inspires its use.1 in helping build a business: “As clear intention that glibc be permitted Thanks to everyone in this great “Free Software is software you can a businessman I love building on to include the code under the LGPL, I cast of characters who made this ulti- study, modify, and share without re- free software because you can be could never get something in writing. mately beneficial production of licens- striction. Around the world, schools, certain of your rights and free- I had a hundred other things to worry ing theater possible. I am honored to governments, businesses, and leading doms with regards to the soft- about and, eventually, I stopped wor- have shared the stage in the first few technology and research institutions ware.” rying about it. I remember thinking at acts, and am sorry that I hid backstage are adopting it. What’s our plan for the time, “Well, I’ve notes on all these for the last few. It was right to keep • Chris Blizzard, Firefox prod- moving to free software?” calls and discussions I’ve had with Sun working on it until the job was done. uct and platform manager at Free software is the better ethi- people about the license. Worst case As Fontana said, “Estoppel may be rel- Mozilla, talks about the expecta- cal choice, and publicizing success sto- scenario: I’ll have to testify to this evant but never enough; software free- tions he has when working with ries helps decision makers make a case when Sun sues some free software proj- dom principle[s] should matter as much free software: “My first operat- for their ethical push for free software ect, and there will be a good estoppel as legal risk. [the] standard for FaiF ing system relationship was built adoption. At fsf.org we will be high- defense”. can’t simply be good defense to copy- on free software. I grew up with lighting an ongoing series of interviews Meanwhile, around early 2004, my right infringement likely.” Thanks to radical transparency in my com- with executives from a diverse range friend and colleague at the FSF, David everyone; I’m so glad I no longer have 2 1 You can see all the profiles at http:// “Novalis” Turner took up the cause in to wait in fear of a subpoena from Or- Read them all at http:// www.fsf.org/working-together/profiles/ www.fsf.org/working-together/ earnest.