Richard Stallman is responsible for the shrinking economy -- PART 2

Hi All,

As you may know I started a topic on Richard Stallman, thank you for your discussions =96 was most interesting.

I have restarted this thread with a new title as in I want to retrain this back on to topic.

There was a lot of different arguments from people and there opinions. One or two of the interesting was =93Yes, I like GPL but my boss doesn=92t=94

Over the discussion online and I have watched these two videos -- links:

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The fist two is most interesting talk and question session with Richard Stallman in the UK and the second is his views on DRM.

One thing that was not clear in the last discussion was Richards definitions of what makes software =91Free=92 as opposed to =91proprietary= =92 in the terms and eyes of the FSF. Here they are:

Freedom level 0 =3D Run the program as you wish Freedom level 1 =3D Study the source code and change it Freedom level 2 =3D Freedom to help your neighbour (ability to distribute as is) Freedom level 3 =3D Help your community (ability to distribute your modification).

He sees there four freedoms are as he says essential on moral grounds, and if you do not have these he hopes your software fails and dies.

He also sees software with DRM restricts users (your friends) freedom and therefore is immoral. Suggesting that people who say that sharing of copyright media is called =91Piracy=92 and that is a false analogy. Additionally he states that software with DRM violates freedom level

0, since the software does not do what you want, in fact it he calls it =91Defective by Design=92 with Windows Vista at the pinnacle of this.

The way that Richard sees software developers getting paid is through a number of people or organisations requiring modification of software going to a development house and asking to share the cost of getting development done.

My points I want to make is this:

  1. Software with freedom levels 0, 1, 2 (and usually under a variety of GPL) is often popular in the general developer=92s community as they are seen to be flexible.

However Freedom level 2 and 3 often can be seen as a way of cannibalising any routes to make the software attractive for an organisation to accept. Additionally it is very hard for an organisation to fully support and state freedom level 0 without risk. Freedom level 1 is very common in =91proprietary=92 software. For example many RTOS vendors allow you to have the source code (level 1) and you can use it however you like as long as it on a single product (partial level 0), freedom level 2 and 3 is possible with OEM license deals.

This gives rise to a number of developers on these forums saying =93yes I like the GPL but my boss does not accept it=94

  1. Richard S skirts around the issue of software on devices often and I think here is where the GPL really does not fit, as embedded systems often have a very common components but what really makes it into a functioning device is the software. This gives rise to the popularity of GPL on general computing applications but use of GPL in embedded is much lower and the abuse of GPL is pretty high.

  1. Richard S assumes that most software with GPL is on a PC and therefore will not do bodily harm, when it comes to (say avionics) he is happy to say his assumptions are not valid and therefore its up to the user to be careful. These kinds of safety systems are not dealt with by GPL.

  2. Richard S =91development scheme=92 is fine and dandy and it is called a pyramid. What he is suggesting is that the pyramid develops from the bottom up (from users requests to developer). What he assumes that all users of software have some knowledge that they can instruct some developers and not get overcharged by finding the best group. Of cause when you find the best developers to do it you will find they have created a business out of software manufacture, and they might have even already done a modification which they are happy to sell off- the-shelf at a cheaper cost. This makes the developers a =91vendor=92 and as they are running a business feels the need to start protecting its off-the-shelf software leading to =91proprietary=92. I think he underestimates the fact that these =91proprietary=92 software houses are the outcomes of the schemes he presented in the first place.

  1. The development schemes that he suggests lead to diversification in software and this leads to different versions and revisions each very good at particular functions, but very much separate with each other. Diversification rather than unification (simplification) which again goes against the principle idea of FSF is to make software tools accessible for all.

On a personal level I have been involved recently in case where I was made aware of a consultant (one man band type) who put un-licensed =91proprietary=92 software in to a vendors product which is designed for very high volume production. I am still unsure to flag this fact with the product vendor as it would put a very poor light on the consultant however I do have the evidence to case the recall of 100s thousands of devices.

Anyhow it made me think how often this happens with GPL products, by development firms who have made choices or not explained fully to clients (TomTom?)

That=92s enough typing for one day.....

Reply to
bigbrownbeastiebigbrownface
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I've already spent too much time on the first thread, so I'm restricting myself to comments here.

When considering the topics of licenses models and source licenses, it is very important to make it clear whether we are talking about embedded software or PC software, or the grey overlapped areas. The pros and cons to the developers, users, competitors, and anyone else are very different for the different sorts of software development. RMS is very heavily biased towards the PC world (also including servers and HPC), and has little to say in the embedded world.

A second distinction that is important is are we talking about development tools (such as compilers), utility programs (such as editors, or device programmers), libraries (of code to run on a target, including things like RTOS's), or application code for the target. For example, look at your statement "Freedom level 1 (Study the source code and change it)is very common in 'proprietary' software". In any other context, where "PC software" would be assumed, this would be considered so laughable that no one would bother reading anything else you wrote. But in the context of RTOS's for embedded systems, it is perfectly true.

Much of the disagreements in the first thread were, I think, due to intentional and unintentional ambiguities and misunderstandings regarding the type of target, the type of host, and the type of software in question. The very title of the thread is ambiguous in this way - do you mean the "economy of commercial embedded development tools", or the economy in general?

Reply to
David Brown

Pirates raided ships, killed people, and stole their cargo. People who share a song are in a different category, that's all. Comparing them to murderers is simply unfair.

I agree. If I buy a song, I want to be able to listen to it whenever I want, not whenever Microsoft wants.

That's one way. Another is for one organization to pay for it on their schedule, and others get it on the developer's schedule.

#3 is critical also - without it, developers can't develop in a community.

In companies I've dealt with, it's the exact opposite. Lack of redistribution costs and licenses is a big incentive, especially for internal deployment across the enterprise.

Why? The organization can deploy the software however they wish. What you're confusing the issue with, is members of the organization running the software *within the organization* in ways contrary to the organization's desires. The GPL does not require they allow this, since the members are supposed to be acting on behalf of the organization, not as separate entities.

I'd like the source to Microsoft Windows, please. Also send Photoshop and Mac OS/X sources.

With GPL, levels 2 and 3 are possible without license deals.

I don't follow.

Partly because it's often difficult or impossible to reprogram the device, even if you have all the sources. Partly because of safetly concerns - nobody wants you reprogramming a pacemaker, for example.

Agreed.

This is one opinion, which doesn't always work out in reality.

This seems to be true in my opinion.

True.

This doesn't follow. Free software developers choose to be so because they understand the business value of sharing - hoarding would only hurt them. Just because you don't understand the business model doesn't mean nobody else does.

This doesn't follow either. In general, changes are fed back to the common pool so that the product as a whole grows faster, which grows market share and potential customer base. The exceptions are cases where the common product doesn't want, or should not have, a patch, and the community decides to keep that one separate - at a cost to the customer if they want it maintained separately.

If you have knowledge of such illegal activities and withhold it, you are an accessory to the crime. Report it before someone else reports you. There certainly are options other than a recall.

No difference, a license is a license.

Reply to
DJ Delorie

Not true at all, it is a very small job to copy a PCB layout and there are tools for this (sandpaper and a scanner ;) Once you have the source you are in business to create an improved copy and possibly take market share of the original manufacture.

Reply to
bigbrownbeastiebigbrownface

You are right, I just don=92t get it.

Say you make building control systems, the CPU card has an ARM and deals with a lot of communication: loop drives, local UI, local UARTs, remote panel commands and so on. You are under pressure to make the unit with a low BOM and after choosing a micro with everything internal the software guys find a provider for a BSP for RTLinux. The BSP is 3kEUR to get in place but then no license fees.

=93But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL.=94

If the company lawyers find this kind of license they will through it out straight away.

Anyhow they skip the lawyers and continue in to production. The device is designed for a 10 to 15 year product life and ends up with

25k hours of software development.

Over the years the product gains a lot of design in to new buildings and a main money maker is the installation team for the device. However there is someone who as noticed this runs on a linux kernel and has requested the source, he also studies the hardware layout and shims the PCBs to copy and after a few medications manufacture overseas.

A few small modifications to the hardware and software would make this a separate product and then allows many distributors worldwide to install the same building control system with fractionally smaller development (and therefore unit) costs. Why would you ????

Reply to
bigbrownbeastiebigbrownface

Sounds like a good plan so far...

Yes. If you modify the RTLinux kernel or GPL libraries themselves, you'll have to release those changes.

If a company lawyer doesn't like GPL, then yes... I'm sure he will.

Keep the business software out of the kernel and away from GPL libraries (LGPL may be ok (depending on v2 vs v3) - know the difference). Put all your building control software in user land processes, and use shared libraries rather than static linking to LGPL components. Use GPIOs, etc via /dev interfaces and your code isn't tainted at all. It's yours. Private, proprietary, secret.

They can only request the sources of GPL components. RTLinux in this case. Not your 25k hours of work, trade secrets, proprietary algorithms, etc.

On DRM: It's an attempt to solve an unsolvable problem. If your product is data (e.g. music) then someone will find a way to copy it and then they can trivially distribute it around the world.

Music costs money to produce, promote and deliver. Whether you like the music corporations or not. Whether you think they hoard profits and screw artists, or not. It's a business... and without money there would be no music, no albums, no concerts. Just crappy garage bands.

Give a friend a CD. That's fair. You've paid for a copy and given it away (and lost simultaneous access to it) - your choice... Like giving them a lawnmower. Copy a CD and give it away - that's theft. Just because you didn't break a store window and steal a 10c metal disk doesn't make it not theft. It's the data, not the medium that is the commodity.

In the 70s, you might buy a vinyl record, copy it to tape and give it to a friend. That's theft. But your friend gets a lower quality recording and may be encouraged to buy the original. In the 80s it's the same, only with CDs. Now the quality difference between the original and taped copy is higher, so the friend is even more incentivized.

Nowadays the copy is perfect. There's no reason for your friend (or 1000s of facebook friends) to pay for the original. It's theft. Just because it's a few clicks of the mouse doesn't make it not so.

Fair use - that's a different matter entirely. If buy an album I should be able to play it anywhere and anytime. But not distribute.

If only we were all honest... but we're not. And we know it. Don't condemn the corporations for trying to protect their business. They're not evil. It's real money. I personally detest DRM, and it's good that digital music stores are moving away from it. I don't like it, but I understand it.

Reply to
Paul

In message , snipped-for-privacy@googlemail.com writes

Hi BBBBBF

You like stirring up the hornets nest:-) Problem is neither of us can name names in many of the cases we cite.

Just watched the film "Antitrust"

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quite funny also unreal.

--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Chris H

Then they're idiots.

And you should give it to him.

That problem is independent of Free Software.

Reply to
DJ Delorie

as an unusual and boring waste of bandwidth, maybe.

yeah, stop whining and bitching : code, now. under whatever license you want, but don't be a (ante-)Stallman yourself.

yg

--=20

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Reply to
whygee

what an understatement. I would write "unleashing the hugriest trolls of Usenet"...

it's a plain stupid, mistaken, bad parody... Even Ed Wood did better (with much less budget).

--
http://ygdes.com / http://yasep.org
Reply to
whygee

Almost every form of the publishing business has the same model. They all range from the garage band who sells a 100 copies in two years to the well produced, well promoted backed by supporting fans who have a 50:50 chance of either losing money or making a fortune. Like the software publishing all the production work needs to be done before there is a revenue stream.

Most publishers started out as a garage band who sold a 1000 instead of a 100 copies. The model is scalable and so is the risk.

This was essentially the Borland, "like a book" license.

Regards,

-- Walter Banks Byte Craft Limited

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Reply to
Walter Banks

I think it is too late=85. I was interested in the FSF that he has started, but now I have watched the videos of him presenting and discussing.

I would not ever want to make any of my work marked with GPL in the responsibility of FSF (Richard at the helm. He is just too presumptuous/arrogant,/rightful to ever be trusted.

Quite often I(our company) write software to give away or for a nominal engineering charge usually it includes no license of use other than (sometimes) a warranty disclaimer.. No malware like requirement for them to give source away not need for lawyers to check it, feel free to modify in any way they can imagine. Genuinely free

Reply to
bigbrownbeastiebigbrownface

But if you pretend that RTLinux is just another closed source operating system that you don't have sources for, then you do not have anything to worry about, do you?

This conflation of OS and applications running on the OS is probably one of the most persistent pieces of FUD on open source.

-- Pertti

Reply to
Pertti Kellomaki

Here you go:

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Although, granted, Mac OS/X kernel is not proprietary. It's BSD licensed. On the other hand, BSD license does not require Apple to publish their source code.

Reply to
slebetman

e

then you end up being sued and in a expensive world of legal action, just like CISCO:

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snipped-for-privacy@gnu.org/msg00052.html

Certainly not FUD, real.

Reply to
bigbrownbeastiebigbrownface

Real certainly, but at least judging from the FSF press release, nothing to do with running proprietary applications on open source OS:

"The FSF's complaint alleges that in the course of distributing various products under the Linksys brand Cisco has violated the licenses of many programs on which the FSF holds copyright, including GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library."

Can you explain the legal risk a company takes on by taking the following steps?

1) Obtaining an operating system placed under GPL (e.g. Linux). 2) Developing a closed source product consisting of programs running in user space under the operating system. 3) Shipping the product accompanied with a medium containing the operating system sources, or providing the OS sources on a web server.

As has been stated many times before, GPL requires you to publish modifications to GPL'd code. If you do not modify GPL'd code, then you are under no obligation to release your code.

--
Pertti
Reply to
Pertti Kellomaki

One thing to remember here is that for many RTOS's (commercial or open source), your application links statically with the operating system. The OS is effectively a library. Linux is, of course, different - the kernel is separately linked, and applications are independent - it's a "big" OS rather than a "small" OS. If you are used to thinking in terms of commercial RTOS's, it's easy get these things mixed up, and think that the GPL of the Linux kernel will affect the licensing of your code.

Companies who have been sued for GPL violations in embedded systems have mostly been sued for one of two things - using a modified Linux kernel without releasing the sources, or using modified GNU utilities (such as "busybox") without releasing the sources. No one has been, or could be, legally challenged regarding application code.

This is no different from any other software supplier imposing conditions on their software. If I use your commercial RTOS, you impose conditions such as "pay me royalties" or "keep the RTOS code secret", and you sue me if I break them. If I use a GPL'ed OS, the condition is "make the source of the OS, including modifications, available".

In particular, if you are not modifying your Linux sources (or other sources, such as for busybox), you don't have to do anything except pass on to others the same source code you downloaded for free yourself. That's hardly an arduous requirement - if you are not willing to do that, then you are fair game for legal action, just as any other copyright and license abuser is.

Reply to
David Brown

It depends which compiler library you use GPL or GPLL?

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\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
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Reply to
Chris H

Um, the GPL is a license, not a "compiler library". I don't know what the "GPLL" is - do you mean the "LGPL"?

If you are trying to say that "something" (you don't specify what) depends on whether a library is LGPL or GPL licensed, then you are partly correct.

If you link (statically or dynamically) to a GPL'ed library, your code must be GPL compatible (readline is an example of such a library, as was free QT before they released LGPL versions).

If you link statically to a LGPL'ed library, your application must also be LGPL-compatible (unless you want to play complicated games with linkable object files).

If you link dynamically to an LGPL'ed library (such as QT 4.5), your application can be under any license.

The great majority libraries on Linux systems have a license that allows at dynamic linking with application code of any license.

Many libraries have a license (such as the LGPL) that requires you to release your changes to the library code, just like when you use the Linux kernel. And like the license for the Linux kernel, it is not an unreasonable request nor a difficult one, since the huge majority of most developments is in the application code, not in the modification of other code you freely downloaded.

Reply to
David Brown

As has been stated *incorrectly* many times before, you mean.

That's not what it requires! Read the GPL before misquoting it again!

Yes, you are. ANY distribution of GPL'd binaries requires likewise distribution of those binaries' complete sources, modified or not.

If you do not distribute the binaries, you have no obiligation to distribute any sources, modified or not.

Example: If a product uses the Linux kernel, the exact same sources as are available on

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unmodified, that product must be distributed with those exact sources (or offer them under 3b).

Example: If a company uses a highly modified Linux kernel for their internal process control servers, they need not release any sources for it (or even tell anyone they're using it).

Reply to
DJ Delorie

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