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www/philosophy copyright-and-globalization.html...
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From: |
Pavel Kharitonov |
|
Subject: |
www/philosophy copyright-and-globalization.html... |
|
Date: |
Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:40:19 +0000 |
CVSROOT: /web/www
Module name: www
Changes by: Pavel Kharitonov <ineiev> 12/10/01 17:40:19
Modified files:
philosophy : copyright-and-globalization.html
copyright-versus-community-2000.html
google-engineering-talk.html
moglen-harvard-speech-2004.html
ms-doj-tunney.html nit-india.html
patent-practice-panel.html
rms-interview-edinburgh.html
rms-on-radio-nz.html software-patents.html
stallman-mec-india.html
Log message:
Split long paragraphs; patch by Therese Godefroy.
CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.30&r2=1.31
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/copyright-versus-community-2000.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.6&r2=1.7
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/google-engineering-talk.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.9&r2=1.10
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/moglen-harvard-speech-2004.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.11&r2=1.12
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/ms-doj-tunney.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.15&r2=1.16
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/nit-india.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.10&r2=1.11
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/patent-practice-panel.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.10&r2=1.11
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/rms-interview-edinburgh.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.7&r2=1.8
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/rms-on-radio-nz.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.10&r2=1.11
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/software-patents.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.12&r2=1.13
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/stallman-mec-india.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.23&r2=1.24
Patches:
Index: copyright-and-globalization.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html,v
retrieving revision 1.30
retrieving revision 1.31
diff -u -b -r1.30 -r1.31
--- copyright-and-globalization.html 10 Jun 2012 11:01:49 -0000 1.30
+++ copyright-and-globalization.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:17 -0000 1.31
@@ -240,7 +240,8 @@
you and you were in the habit of trading it away and then, all of a
sudden, you discover a use for it? You can actually consume it, use
it. What do you do? You don't trade at all; you keep some. And
-that's what the public would naturally want to do. That's what the
+that's what the public would naturally want to do.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>That's what the
public does whenever it's given a chance to voice its preference; it
keeps some of this freedom and exercises it. Napster is a big example
of that, the public deciding to exercise the freedom to copy instead
@@ -458,7 +459,8 @@
looks like it's good. However, this example really shows that the
total is the wrong way to judge because Bill Gates really doesn't need
another $2 billion, but the loss of the $1 billion by other people who
-don't have as much to start with might be painful. Well, in a
+don't have as much to start with might be painful.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Well, in a
discussion about any of these trade treaties, when you hear people
talk about the interests of this country or that country, what they're
doing, within each country, is adding up everybody's income. The rich
@@ -480,7 +482,8 @@
certain domain of freedom where they can make use of the benefits of
digital technology, make use of their computer networks. But how far
should that go? That's an interesting question because I don't think
-we should necessarily abolish copyright totally. The idea of trading
+we should necessarily abolish copyright totally.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The idea of trading
some freedoms for more progress might still be an advantageous trade
at a certain level, even if traditional copyright gives up too much
freedom. But in order to think about this intelligently, the first
@@ -517,7 +520,8 @@
useful to modify functional works. People's needs are not all the
same. If I wrote this work to do the job I think needs doing, your
idea as a job you want to do may be somewhat different. So you want
-to modify this work to do what's good for you. At that point, there
+to modify this work to do what's good for you.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>At that point, there
may be other people who have similar needs to yours, and your modified
version might be good for them. Everybody who cooks knows this and
has known this for hundreds of years. It's normal to make copies of
@@ -569,7 +573,8 @@
artists' producing the works, borrowing from previous works is often
very useful. Some of Shakespeare's plays used a story that was taken
from some other play. If today's copyright laws had been in effect
-back then, those plays would have been illegal. So it's a hard
+back then, those plays would have been illegal.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So it's a hard
question what we should do about publishing modified versions of an
aesthetic or an artistic work, and we might have to look for further
subdivisions of the category in order to solve this problem. For
@@ -590,7 +595,8 @@
will have fully begun, when we're past this transitional stage, we can
envision another way for the authors to get money for their work.
Imagine that we have a digital cash system that enables you to get
-money for your work. Imagine that we have a digital cash system that
+money for your work.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Imagine that we have a digital cash system that
enables you to send somebody else money through the Internet; this can
be done in various ways using encryption, for instance. And imagine
that verbatim copying of all these aesthetic works is permitted. But
@@ -680,7 +686,7 @@
countries, and a big protest is being planned for Quebec. We've seen
extreme methods being used to smash this protest. A lot of Americans
are being blocked from entering Canada through the border that they're
-supposed to be allowed to enter through at any time. On the flimsiest
+supposed to be allowed to enter through at any time. <span
class="gnun-split"></span>On the flimsiest
of excuses, a wall has been built around the center of Quebec to be
used as a fortress to keep protesters out. We've seen a large number
of different dirty tricks used against public protest against these
@@ -899,7 +905,8 @@
publishers because they won't tell anyone else how to do it. So
they're hoping for a world where the players will play these formats,
and in order to get anything that you can play on those players, it'll
-have to come through the publishers. So, in fact, while there's no
+have to come through the publishers.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So, in fact, while there's no
law against an author or a musician publishing directly, it won't be
feasible. There's also the lure of maybe hitting it rich. They say,
“We'll publicize you and maybe you'll hit it as rich as the
@@ -945,7 +952,8 @@
supposing. Look at the free software movement where we have over
100,000 part-time volunteers developing free software. We also see
that there are other ways to raise money for this which are not based
-on stopping the public from copying and modifying these works. That's
+on stopping the public from copying and modifying these works.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>That's
the interesting lesson of the free software movement. Aside from the
fact that it gives you a way you can use a computer and keep your
freedom to share and cooperate with other people, it also shows us
@@ -954,7 +962,8 @@
simply wrong. A lot of people will do these things. Then if you look
at, say, the writing of monographs which serve as textbooks in many
fields of science except for the ones that are very basic, the authors
-are not making money out of that. We now have a free encyclopedia
+are not making money out of that.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>We now have a free encyclopedia
project which is, in fact, a commercial-free encyclopedia project, and
it's making progress. We had a project for a GNU encyclopedia but we
merged it into the commercial project when they adopted our license.
@@ -1020,7 +1029,8 @@
this angle, there may not be a reason for despair, or even pessimism,
about what may occur in the longer run. But, in the shorter term,
struggles over the control of text and images, over all forms of
-information are likely to be painful and extensive. For example, as a
+information are likely to be painful and extensive.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>For example, as a
teacher of media, my access to images has been restricted in recent
years in a way that had never been in place before. If I write an
essay in which I want to use still images, even from films, they are
@@ -1302,7 +1312,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 11:01:49 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:17 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: copyright-versus-community-2000.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/copyright-versus-community-2000.html,v
retrieving revision 1.6
retrieving revision 1.7
diff -u -b -r1.6 -r1.7
--- copyright-versus-community-2000.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:06 -0000
1.6
+++ copyright-versus-community-2000.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000
1.7
@@ -117,7 +117,8 @@
their wealth: they had beautiful illuminated wealth to show that they
could afford this. And poor people still sometimes copied books by
hand because they couldn't afford printed copies. As the song goes
-“Time ain't money when all you got is time.” So some poor
+“Time ain't money when all you got is time.”
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So some poor
people copied books with a pen. But for the most part the books were
all made on printing presses by publishers and copyright as a system
fitted in very well with the technical system. For one thing it was
@@ -244,7 +245,8 @@
it, then you have to reconsider the desirability of those old deals
that used to be advantageous. Typically in a such a situation you
decide that “I'm not going to sell all of this any more; I'm
-going to keep some of it and use it.” So if you were giving up a
+going to keep some of it and use it.”
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So if you were giving up a
freedom that you couldn't exercise and now you can exercise it, you
probably want to start retaining the right to exercise it at least
partially. You might still trade part of the freedom: and there are
@@ -301,7 +303,8 @@
with a copyright and there are various situations in which you might
do them, and each of those is an independent question. Should
copyright cover this or not? In addition, there is a question of
-“How long?”. Copyright used to be much shorter in its
+“How long?”.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Copyright used to be much shorter in its
period or duration, and it's been extended over and over again in the
past fifty years or so and in fact in now appears that the owners of
copyrights are planning to keep on extending copyrights so that they
@@ -343,7 +346,8 @@
company handing out copies to its staff or you could imagine a school
doing it, or some private, non-profit organisation doing it.
Different situations, and we don't have to treat them all the same.
-So one way in we could reclaim the… in general though, the
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So one way in we could reclaim the… in
general though, the
activities that are the most private are those that are most crucial
to our freedom and our way of life, whereas the most public and
commercial are those that are most useful for providing some sort of
@@ -353,7 +357,8 @@
income for authors, while the activities that are most directly
relevant to peoples' private lives become free again. And this is the
sort of thing that I propose doing with copyright for things such as
-novels and biographies and memoires and essays and so on. That at the
+novels and biographies and memoires and essays and so on.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>That at the
very minimum, people should always have a right to share a copy with a
friend. It's when governments have to prevent that kind of activity
that they have to start intruding into everyone's lives and using
@@ -382,7 +387,8 @@
publish a modified version this means we have to almost completely get
rid of copyright but the free software movement is showing that the
progress that society wants that is supposedly the justification for
-society having copyright can happen in other ways. We don't have to
+society having copyright can happen in other ways.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>We don't have to
give up these important freedoms to have progress. Now the publishers
are always asking us to presuppose that their there is no way to get
progress without giving up our crucial freedoms and the most important
@@ -396,7 +402,8 @@
only way to get progress is to have copyright but even for these kinds
of works there can be some kinds of compromise copyright systems that
are consistent with giving people the freedom to publish modified
-versions. Look, for example, at the GNU free documentation license,
+versions.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Look, for example, at the GNU free
documentation license,
which is used to make a book free. It allows anyone to make and sell
copies of a modified version, but it requires giving credit in certain
ways to the original authors and publishers in a way that can give
@@ -418,7 +425,8 @@
one's legal position, memoirs, anything that says, whose point is to
say what you think or you want or what you like. Book reviews and
restaurant reviews are also in this category: it's expressing a
-personal opinion or position. Now for these kinds of works, making a
+personal opinion or position.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Now for these kinds of works, making a
modified version is not a useful thing to do. So I see no reason why
people should need to have the freedom to publish modified versions of
these works. Verbatim copying is the only thing that people need to
@@ -583,7 +591,8 @@
know, that's so crassly commercial it hardly matters if that is
limited to one company in most cases. Maybe the copyright on the
movies themselves, maybe that's legitimate for that to last twenty
-years. Meanwhile for software, I suspect that a three year copyright
+years.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Meanwhile for software, I suspect that a three
year copyright
would be enough. You see if each version of the programme remains
copyrighted for three years after its release well, unless the company
is in real bad trouble they should have a new version before those
@@ -656,7 +665,8 @@
prison for years because they shared with their friends, but still
does in various ways encourage people to write more. We can also I
believe look for other ways of encouraging writing other ways of
-facilitating authors making money. For example, suppose that verbatim
+facilitating authors making money.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>For example, suppose that verbatim
redistribution of a work is permitted and suppose that the work comes
with something, so that when you are playing with it or reading it,
there is a box on the side that says “click here to send one
@@ -678,7 +688,8 @@
dig up their address, which might not be easy. But with a convenient
internet payment system which makes it efficient to pay someone one
dollar, then we could put this into all the copies, and then I think
-you'd find the mechanism starting to work well. It may take five of
+you'd find the mechanism starting to work well.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>It may take five of
ten years for the ideas to spread around, because it's a cultural
thing, you know, at first people might find it a little surprising but
once it gets normal people would become accustomed to sending the
@@ -700,7 +711,8 @@
when you have different version which have been worked on by different
people there's no simple automatic way of working out who ought to get
what fraction of what users donate for this version or that version.
-It's philosophically hard to decide how important each contribution
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>It's philosophically hard to decide how
important each contribution
is, and all the obvious ways of trying to measure it
are <em>[emphasis]</em> obviously
<em>[/emphasis]</em> wrong in some cases, they're obviously closing
@@ -730,7 +742,8 @@
something more or less like this. I think that what they are hoping
to do is collect a bunch of payments that you make to various
different people, and eventually charge your credit card once it gets
-to be big enough so that it's efficient. Whether those kind of
+to be big enough so that it's efficient.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Whether those kind of
systems work smoothly enough in practice that they'll get going is not
clear, and whether they will become adopted widely enough for them to
become a normal cultural practice is not clear. It may be that in
@@ -817,7 +830,8 @@
me.” Now that you might consider doing, and if you're right and
the laws are not valid in France then the case would get thrown out.
I don't know. Maybe that is a good idea to do, I don't know whether,
-what its effects politically would be. I know that there was just a
+what its effects politically would be.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>I know that there was just a
couple of years ago a law was passed in Europe to prohibit some kind
of private copying of music, and the record companies trotted out some
famous very popular musicians to push for this law and they got it, so
@@ -913,7 +927,8 @@
secret. But now, it's turning into something where the public in
general is becoming conscripted into keeping secrets for business even
if they have never agreed in any way to keep these secrets and that's
-a pressure. So those who pretend that trade secrecy is just carrying
+a pressure.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So those who pretend that trade secrecy is
just carrying
out some natural right of theirs; that's just not true any more.
They're getting explicit government help in forcing other people to
keep their secrets. And we might want to consider whether
@@ -988,7 +1003,8 @@
other institutions would set up mirror sites, and I predict that you
would find ten years down the road, a very well organised unofficial
system of co-ordinating the mirroring to make sure that nothing was
-getting left out. At this point the amount that it costs to set up
+getting left out.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>At this point the amount that it costs to set
up
the mirror site for years of a journal is so little that it doesn't
require any special funding; nobody has to work very hard: just let
librarians do it. Anyway, oh there was some other thing that this
@@ -1014,6 +1030,7 @@
with each other, it's sharing with you friend, it's good. And sharing
with your friend is more important than how much money these companies
get. The society shouldn't be shaped for the sake of these companies.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>
We have to keep on… because you see the idea that they've
spread—that anything that reduces their income is immoral and
therefore people must be restricted in any way it takes to guarantee
@@ -1080,7 +1097,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:06 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: google-engineering-talk.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/google-engineering-talk.html,v
retrieving revision 1.9
retrieving revision 1.10
diff -u -b -r1.9 -r1.10
--- google-engineering-talk.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:13 -0000 1.9
+++ google-engineering-talk.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.10
@@ -84,7 +84,8 @@
<p>(They asked a couple of other interesting questions; they asked about
company, so I said I'm available tonight. [Looking at name tag][Laughter] And
they asked for my host, so I put down fencepost.gnu.org. But that's just the
hacker spirit.)</p>
-<p>So I found myself in a situation where the only way you could get a modern
computer and start to use it was to sign a non-disclosure agreement for some
proprietary operating system. Because all the operating systems for modern
computers in 1983 were proprietary, and there was no lawful way to get a copy
of those operating systems without signing a non-disclosure agreement, which
was unethical. So I decided to try to do something about it, to try to change
that situation. And the only way I could think of to change it was to write
another operating system, and then say as the author "this system is free; you
can have it without a non-disclosure agreement and you're welcome to
redistribute it to other people. You're welcome to study how it works. You're
welcome to change it." So, instead of being divided and helpless, the users of
this system would live in freedom. Ordinary proprietary software is part of a
scheme where users are deliberately kept divided and helpless. The program
comes with a license that says you're forbidden to share it, and in most cases
you can't get the source code, so you can't study it or change it. It may even
have malicious features and you can't tell. With free software, we respect the
user's freedom, and that's the whole point. The reason for the free software
movement is so that the people of cyberspace can have freedom, so that there is
a way to live in freedom and still use a computer, to avoid being kept divided
and helpless.</p>
+<p>So I found myself in a situation where the only way you could get a modern
computer and start to use it was to sign a non-disclosure agreement for some
proprietary operating system. Because all the operating systems for modern
computers in 1983 were proprietary, and there was no lawful way to get a copy
of those operating systems without signing a non-disclosure agreement, which
was unethical. So I decided to try to do something about it, to try to change
that situation. And the only way I could think of to change it was to write
another operating system, and then say as the author "this system is free; you
can have it without a non-disclosure agreement and you're welcome to
redistribute it to other people. You're welcome to study how it works. You're
welcome to change it."
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So, instead of being divided and helpless, the
users of this system would live in freedom. Ordinary proprietary software is
part of a scheme where users are deliberately kept divided and helpless. The
program comes with a license that says you're forbidden to share it, and in
most cases you can't get the source code, so you can't study it or change it.
It may even have malicious features and you can't tell. With free software, we
respect the user's freedom, and that's the whole point. The reason for the free
software movement is so that the people of cyberspace can have freedom, so that
there is a way to live in freedom and still use a computer, to avoid being kept
divided and helpless.</p>
<h3 id="gnu-operating-system">3. GNU operating system</h3>
@@ -125,7 +126,8 @@
<p>But I had no job, and I was looking for some way to make some money through
my work on free software. So I announced, "send me $150 and I'll mail you a
tape of GNU Emacs." And the orders began dribbling in. By the middle of the
year, they were trickling in, eight to ten orders a month, which, if necessary,
I could have lived on.</p>
-<p>That's because I make efforts to resist expensive habits. An expensive
habit is like a trap; it's dangerous. Now most Americans have the exact
opposite attitude: if they make this much money, they look for how to spend
this much, [makes ample gesture] which is completely imprudent. So they start
buying houses and cars and boats and planes and rare stamps and artwork and
adventure travel and children, [laughter] all sorts of expensive luxuries that
use up a lot of the world's resources, especially the children. And then, the
next thing they know, they've got to desperately struggle all day long to get
money to pay for these things, so they have no time even to enjoy them, which
is especially sad when it's a matter of children. The other things, I guess,
can get repossessed. So then they become puppets of money, unable to decide
what they're going to do with their lives. If you don't want to be a puppet of
money, then resist the expensive habits, so that the less you need to spend to
live on, the more flexibility you've got and the less of your life you're
forced to spend to make that money.</p>
+<p>That's because I make efforts to resist expensive habits. An expensive
habit is like a trap; it's dangerous. Now most Americans have the exact
opposite attitude: if they make this much money, they look for how to spend
this much, [makes ample gesture] which is completely imprudent. So they start
buying houses and cars and boats and planes and rare stamps and artwork and
adventure travel and children, [laughter] all sorts of expensive luxuries that
use up a lot of the world's resources, especially the children.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>And then, the next thing they know, they've
got to desperately struggle all day long to get money to pay for these things,
so they have no time even to enjoy them, which is especially sad when it's a
matter of children. The other things, I guess, can get repossessed. So then
they become puppets of money, unable to decide what they're going to do with
their lives. If you don't want to be a puppet of money, then resist the
expensive habits, so that the less you need to spend to live on, the more
flexibility you've got and the less of your life you're forced to spend to make
that money.</p>
<p>So I still live, basically, like a student, and I want it to be that
way.</p>
@@ -218,17 +220,20 @@
<p>So I've explained the reasons for the four freedoms. And thus I've
explained to you what free software means. A program is free software for you,
a particular user, if you have all of these four freedoms. Why do I define it
that way? The reason is that sometimes the same code can be free software for
some users and non-free for the rest. This might seem strange, so let me give
you an example to show how it happens.</p>
-<p>The biggest example I know of is the X Window System. It was developed at
MIT in the late '80s and released under a license that gave the user all four
freedoms, so if you got X in source code under that license, it was free
software for you. Among those who got it were various computer manufacturers
that distributed UNIX systems. They got the source code for X, they changed it
as necessary to run on their platform, they compiled it and they put the
binaries into their UNIX system, and they distributed only the binaries to all
of their customers under the same license as the rest of UNIX -- the same
non-disclosure agreement. So, for those many users, the X Window System was no
more free than the rest of UNIX. In this paradoxical situation, the answer to
the question "is X free software or not?" depended on where you made the
measurement. If you made the measurement coming out of the developer's group,
you'd say, "I observe all four freedoms; it's free software." If you made the
measurement among the users, you'd say, "most of them don't have these
freedoms; it's not free software."</p>
+<p>The biggest example I know of is the X Window System. It was developed at
MIT in the late '80s and released under a license that gave the user all four
freedoms, so if you got X in source code under that license, it was free
software for you. Among those who got it were various computer manufacturers
that distributed UNIX systems. They got the source code for X, they changed it
as necessary to run on their platform, they compiled it and they put the
binaries into their UNIX system, and they distributed only the binaries to all
of their customers under the same license as the rest of UNIX -- the same
non-disclosure agreement.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So, for those many users, the X Window System
was no more free than the rest of UNIX. In this paradoxical situation, the
answer to the question "is X free software or not?" depended on where you made
the measurement. If you made the measurement coming out of the developer's
group, you'd say, "I observe all four freedoms; it's free software." If you
made the measurement among the users, you'd say, "most of them don't have these
freedoms; it's not free software."</p>
<p>The developers of X did not consider this a problem, because their goal was
not to give users freedom, it was to have a big success, and as far as they
were concerned, those many users who were using the X Window System without
freedom were just a part of their big success. But, in the GNU Project, our
goal specifically was to give the users freedom. If what happened to X had
happened to GNU, GNU would be a failure.</p>
<p>So I looked for a way to stop this from happening. And the method I came up
with is called copyleft. Copyleft is based legally on copyright law, and you
can think of it as taking copyright and flipping it over to get copyleft.</p>
-<p>Here's how it works: we start with a copyright notice which legally doesn't
actually make a difference anymore, but it reminds people that the program is
copyrighted, which means that, by default, it's prohibited to copy, distribute
or modify this program. But then we say, "you are authorized to make copies,
you are authorized to distribute them, you are authorized to modify this
program and you are authorized to publish modified or extended versions." But
there is a condition, and the condition says that any program you distribute
that contains any substantial part of this must, as a whole, be distributed
under these conditions, no more and no less. Which means that, no matter how
many people modify the program or how much, as long as any substantial amount
of our code is in there, that program must be free software in the same way. In
effect, we guarantee that nobody can put himself between you and me and strip
off the freedom and pass the code on to you missing the freedom. In other
words, forbidding is forbidden.</p>
+<p>Here's how it works: we start with a copyright notice which legally doesn't
actually make a difference anymore, but it reminds people that the program is
copyrighted, which means that, by default, it's prohibited to copy, distribute
or modify this program.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But then we say, "you are authorized to make
copies, you are authorized to distribute them, you are authorized to modify
this program and you are authorized to publish modified or extended versions."
But there is a condition, and the condition says that any program you
distribute that contains any substantial part of this must, as a whole, be
distributed under these conditions, no more and no less. Which means that, no
matter how many people modify the program or how much, as long as any
substantial amount of our code is in there, that program must be free software
in the same way. In effect, we guarantee that nobody can put himself between
you and me and strip off the freedom and pass the code on to you missing the
freedom. In other words, forbidding is forbidden.</p>
<h3 id="general-public-license">13. GNU General Public License</h3>
-<p>Copyleft makes the four freedoms into inalienable rights for all users, so
that wherever the code goes, the freedom goes with it. The specific license
that we use to implement the general concept of copyleft is called the GNU
General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. This license is used for around
two thirds or three quarters of all free software packages. But that still
leaves a substantial number that have other licenses. Some of those licenses
are copyleft licenses, some are not. So we have copylefted free software and we
have non-copylefted free software. In both cases, the developers have respected
your freedom; they have not tried to trample your freedom. The difference is,
with copyleft we go further and we actively defend your freedom against anyone
who would try to be a middleman and take it away from you, whereas the
developers of non-copylefted free software don't do that. They have not tried
to take away your freedom, but they don't actively protect your freedom from
anyone else. So I think that they could do more for the sake of freedom. But
they haven't done anything bad; insofar as they have done things, those things
are good. So I won't say that they are wrong, I will just say that they could
do more. I think that they're making a mistake.</p>
+<p>Copyleft makes the four freedoms into inalienable rights for all users, so
that wherever the code goes, the freedom goes with it. The specific license
that we use to implement the general concept of copyleft is called the GNU
General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. This license is used for around
two thirds or three quarters of all free software packages. But that still
leaves a substantial number that have other licenses. Some of those licenses
are copyleft licenses, some are not. So we have copylefted free software and we
have non-copylefted free software.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>In both cases, the developers have respected
your freedom; they have not tried to trample your freedom. The difference is,
with copyleft we go further and we actively defend your freedom against anyone
who would try to be a middleman and take it away from you, whereas the
developers of non-copylefted free software don't do that. They have not tried
to take away your freedom, but they don't actively protect your freedom from
anyone else. So I think that they could do more for the sake of freedom. But
they haven't done anything bad; insofar as they have done things, those things
are good. So I won't say that they are wrong, I will just say that they could
do more. I think that they're making a mistake.</p>
<p>But their work is free software, so it does contribute to our community
and, in fact, that software can be part of a free operating system such as
GNU.</p>
@@ -240,7 +245,8 @@
<h3 id="making-money-off-free-software">14. Making money off free software</h3>
-<p>However, it only happened occasionally that someone else released some free
software that was useful in GNU and when it happened, it was a coincidence,
because they were not writing this software in order to have a free operating
system. So when it happened, that was great, but there were lots of other
pieces we had to develop. Some were developed by staff of the Free Software
Foundation. The Free Software Foundation is a tax-exempt charity to promote
free software which we founded in October, '85, after GNU Emacs' popularity
suggested that people might actually start donating money to the GNU project.
So we founded the Free Software Foundation and it asked for donations, but also
took over selling the tapes of GNU Emacs. And it turns out that most of the
FSF's income for the first many years came from that, from selling things, from
selling copies of software and manuals that everyone was free to copy. Now this
is interesting, because this was supposedly impossible; but we did it
anyway.</p>
+<p>However, it only happened occasionally that someone else released some free
software that was useful in GNU and when it happened, it was a coincidence,
because they were not writing this software in order to have a free operating
system. So when it happened, that was great, but there were lots of other
pieces we had to develop. Some were developed by staff of the Free Software
Foundation. The Free Software Foundation is a tax-exempt charity to promote
free software which we founded in October, '85, after GNU Emacs' popularity
suggested that people might actually start donating money to the GNU project.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So we founded the Free Software Foundation and
it asked for donations, but also took over selling the tapes of GNU Emacs. And
it turns out that most of the FSF's income for the first many years came from
that, from selling things, from selling copies of software and manuals that
everyone was free to copy. Now this is interesting, because this was supposedly
impossible; but we did it anyway.</p>
<p>Now that meant I had to find some other way to make a living. As the
president of the FSF, I did not want to compete with it; I thought that would
be unfair and not correct behavior. So I started making my living by
commissions to change the software I had written and teaching classes about it.
So people would want some change to be made in Emacs or GCC, and they would
think of hiring me, because they figured I was the author so I could do a
better job faster. So I started charging as much as $250 an hour and I
calculated I could make a living in 7 weeks of paid work per year -- and that
meant enough money to spend, an equal amount to save, and an equal amount for
taxes. And [when I reached] that point I figured, "I won't take any more paid
work this year, I've got other, better things to do."</p>
@@ -264,7 +270,8 @@
<p>Another motivation is gratitude. If you've been using the community's free
software for years and appreciating it, then when you write a program, that's
your opportunity to pay something back to the community that has given you so
much.</p>
-<p>Another motivation is hatred for Microsoft. [Laughter] Now, this is a
rather foolish motive, because Microsoft is really just one of many developers
of non-free software and they're all doing the same evil thing. It's a mistake
to focus [solely] on Microsoft, and this mistake can have bad consequences.
When people focus too much on Microsoft, they start forgetting that all the
others are doing something just as bad. And they may end up thinking that
anything that competes with Microsoft is good, even if it is also non-free
software and thus inherently just as evil. Now, it's true that these other
companies have not subjugated as many users as Microsoft has, but that's not
for want of trying; they just haven't succeeded in mistreating as many people
as Microsoft has, which is hardly, ethically speaking, an excuse. Nonetheless,
{when this particular motive motivates} this motive does motivate people to
develop free software, so we have to count it as one of the motives that has
this result.</p>
+<p>Another motivation is hatred for Microsoft. [Laughter] Now, this is a
rather foolish motive, because Microsoft is really just one of many developers
of non-free software and they're all doing the same evil thing. It's a mistake
to focus [solely] on Microsoft, and this mistake can have bad consequences.
When people focus too much on Microsoft, they start forgetting that all the
others are doing something just as bad. And they may end up thinking that
anything that competes with Microsoft is good, even if it is also non-free
software and thus inherently just as evil.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Now, it's true that these other companies have
not subjugated as many users as Microsoft has, but that's not for want of
trying; they just haven't succeeded in mistreating as many people as Microsoft
has, which is hardly, ethically speaking, an excuse. Nonetheless, {when this
particular motive motivates} this motive does motivate people to develop free
software, so we have to count it as one of the motives that has this result.</p>
<p>And another motive is money. When people were being paid to develop free
software, that's part of their motive for the work that they're doing. In fact,
when I was paid to make improvements in various programs I had written, that
money was part of my motive for doing those particular jobs, too.</p>
@@ -302,7 +309,8 @@
<p>The reason we have the GNU+Linux system is because of a many-year campaign
for freedom. We in the GNU Project didn't develop Linux, just as we didn't
develop X, or TeX, or various other free programs that are now important parts
of the system. But people who didn't share our values, who weren't motivated by
the determination to live in freedom, would have seen no reason to aim for a
complete system, and they would never have done so, and never have produced
such a thing, if not for us.</p>
-<p>But this tends to be forgotten nowadays. You will see, if you look around,
most of the discussion of the GNU system calls it Linux, and tends to refer to
it as "open source" rather than as "free software", and doesn't mention freedom
as an issue. This issue, which is the reason for the system's existence, is
mostly forgotten. You see many techies who prefer to think of technical
questions in a narrowly technical context, without looking beyond at social
effects of their technical decisions. Whether the software tramples your
freedom or respects your freedom, that's part of the social context. That's
exactly what techies tend to forget or devalue. We have to work constantly to
remind people to pay attention to freedom and, unfortunately, while we keep
doing this, the users of our system often don't pay attention because they
don't know it's our system. They don't know it's the GNU system, they think
it's Linux. And that's why it makes a real difference if you remind people
where the system came from.</p>
+<p>But this tends to be forgotten nowadays. You will see, if you look around,
most of the discussion of the GNU system calls it Linux, and tends to refer to
it as "open source" rather than as "free software", and doesn't mention freedom
as an issue. This issue, which is the reason for the system's existence, is
mostly forgotten. You see many techies who prefer to think of technical
questions in a narrowly technical context, without looking beyond at social
effects of their technical decisions. Whether the software tramples your
freedom or respects your freedom, that's part of the social context. That's
exactly what techies tend to forget or devalue.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>We have to work constantly to remind people to
pay attention to freedom and, unfortunately, while we keep doing this, the
users of our system often don't pay attention because they don't know it's our
system. They don't know it's the GNU system, they think it's Linux. And that's
why it makes a real difference if you remind people where the system came
from.</p>
<p>People will say to me that it doesn't look good to ask for credit. Well,
I'm not asking for credit for me personally; I'm asking for credit for the GNU
Project, which includes thousands of developers. But they are right, it's true:
people who are looking for some reason to see evil can see evil in that. So
they go on and say, "you should let it drop, and when people call the system
Linux, you can smile to yourself and take pride in a job well done." That would
be very wise advice if the assumption were correct: the assumption that the job
is done.</p>
@@ -324,7 +332,8 @@
<p>And now, the FCC is considering applying the broadcast flag regulation to
software. The FCC adopted a regulation {prohibiting digital TV tuners unless}
requiring digital TV tuners to have a mechanism to block copying and this has
to be tamper-resistant, meaning it can't be implemented in free software. They
haven't finished deciding whether this applies to software or not, but if they
do, they will have prohibited GNU Radio, which is free software that can decode
digital TV broadcasts.</p>
-<p>Then, there's the threat from hardware that has secret specifications or is
designed to interfere with the user's control. Nowadays there are many pieces
of hardware you can get for your PC whose specifications are secret. They'll
sell you the hardware, but they won't tell you how to run it. So how do we
write free software to run it? Well, we either have to figure out the specs by
reverse engineering or we have to put market pressure on those companies. And
in both cases, we are weakened by the fact that so many of the users of
GNU/Linux don't know why this system was developed and have never heard of
these ideas that I'm telling you today. And the reason is that, when they hear
about the system, they hear it called Linux and it's associated with the
apolitical philosophy of Linus Torvalds. Linus Torvalds is still working on
developing Linux. {which is, you know} Developing the kernel was an important
contribution to our community. At the same time, he is setting a very public
bad example by using a non-free program to do the job. Now, if he were using a
non-free program privately, I would never even have heard about it and I
wouldn't make a fuss about it. But by inviting the other people who work on
Linux to use it with him, he's setting a very public example legitimizing the
use of non-free software. So when people see that, you know, if they think
that's okay, they can't possibly believe that non-free software is bad. So
then, when these companies say, "yes, {we support} our hardware supports Linux,
here is this binary-only driver you can install, and then it will work," these
people see nothing wrong in that, so they don't apply their market pressure and
they don't feel motivated to help in reverse engineering.</p>
+<p>Then, there's the threat from hardware that has secret specifications or is
designed to interfere with the user's control. Nowadays there are many pieces
of hardware you can get for your PC whose specifications are secret. They'll
sell you the hardware, but they won't tell you how to run it. So how do we
write free software to run it? Well, we either have to figure out the specs by
reverse engineering or we have to put market pressure on those companies. And
in both cases, we are weakened by the fact that so many of the users of
GNU/Linux don't know why this system was developed and have never heard of
these ideas that I'm telling you today. And the reason is that, when they hear
about the system, they hear it called Linux and it's associated with the
apolitical philosophy of Linus Torvalds.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Linus Torvalds is still working on developing
Linux. {which is, you know} Developing the kernel was an important contribution
to our community. At the same time, he is setting a very public bad example by
using a non-free program to do the job. Now, if he were using a non-free
program privately, I would never even have heard about it and I wouldn't make a
fuss about it. But by inviting the other people who work on Linux to use it
with him, he's setting a very public example legitimizing the use of non-free
software. So when people see that, you know, if they think that's okay, they
can't possibly believe that non-free software is bad. So then, when these
companies say, "yes, {we support} our hardware supports Linux, here is this
binary-only driver you can install, and then it will work," these people see
nothing wrong in that, so they don't apply their market pressure and they don't
feel motivated to help in reverse engineering.</p>
<p>So when we face the various dangers that we must confront, we are weakened
by the lack of resolve. Now, having strong motivation to fight for freedom
won't guarantee that we win all of these fights, but it will sure help. It will
make us try harder, and if we try harder, we'll win more of them.</p>
@@ -338,9 +347,11 @@
<p>And there are various different things that treacherous computing can be
used to do, things like prohibit you from running any program that hasn't been
authorized by the operating system developer. That's one thing they could do.
But they may not feel they dare go that far. But another thing that they plan
to do is to have data that's only available to a particular application. The
idea is that an application will be able to write data in an encrypted form,
such that it can only be decrypted by the same application, such that nobody
else can independently write another program to access that data. And, of
course, they would use that for limiting access to published works, you know,
something to be a replacement for DVDs so that it would be not only illegal,
but impossible to write the free software to play it.</p>
-<p>But they don't have to stop at doing this to published data. They could do
it to your data too. Imagine if treacherous computing is common in 10 years and
Microsoft decides to come out with a new version of Word format that uses
treacherous computing to encrypt your data. Then it would be impossible to
write free software to read word files. Microsoft is trying every possible
method to prevent us from having free software to read Word files. First, they
switched to a secret Word format, so people had to try to figure out the
format. Well, we more or less have figured it out. There are free programs that
will read most Word files (not all). But then they came up with another idea.
They said, "let's use XML." Now here's what Microsoft means when they speak of
using XML. The beginning of the file has a trivial thing that says "this is XML
and here comes binary Word format data," and then there's the binary Word
format data and then there's something at the end that says, "that was binary
Word format data." And they patented this. {so that... I'm not sure} I don't
know exactly what the patent does and doesn't cover, but, you know, there are
things we could do, either reading or writing that file format, probably they
could try suing us about. And I'm sure that, if treacherous computing is
available for them to use, they'll use that too.</p>
+<p>But they don't have to stop at doing this to published data. They could do
it to your data too. Imagine if treacherous computing is common in 10 years and
Microsoft decides to come out with a new version of Word format that uses
treacherous computing to encrypt your data. Then it would be impossible to
write free software to read word files. Microsoft is trying every possible
method to prevent us from having free software to read Word files. First, they
switched to a secret Word format, so people had to try to figure out the
format. Well, we more or less have figured it out. There are free programs that
will read most Word files (not all).
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But then they came up with another idea. They
said, "let's use XML." Now here's what Microsoft means when they speak of using
XML. The beginning of the file has a trivial thing that says "this is XML and
here comes binary Word format data," and then there's the binary Word format
data and then there's something at the end that says, "that was binary Word
format data." And they patented this. {so that... I'm not sure} I don't know
exactly what the patent does and doesn't cover, but, you know, there are things
we could do, either reading or writing that file format, probably they could
try suing us about. And I'm sure that, if treacherous computing is available
for them to use, they'll use that too.</p>
-<p>This is why we have a campaign to refuse to read Word files. Now there are
many reasons you should refuse to read Word files. One is, they could have
viruses in them. If someone sends you a Word file, you shouldn't look at it.
But the point is, you shouldn't even try to look at it. Nowadays there are free
programs that will read most Word files. But it's really better, better than
trying to read the file is if you send a message back saying, "please send that
to me in a format that isn't secret. It's not a good idea to send people Word
files." And the reason is, we have to overcome the tendency in society for
people to use these secret formats for communication. We have to convince
people to insist on publicly documented standard formats that everyone is free
to implement. And Word format is the worst offender and so that's the best
place to start. If somebody sends you a Word file, don't try to read it. Write
back, saying "you really shouldn't do that." And there's a page in
www.gnu.org/philosophy which is good to reference. It gives an explanation of
why this is an important issue.</p>
+<p>This is why we have a campaign to refuse to read Word files. Now there are
many reasons you should refuse to read Word files. One is, they could have
viruses in them. If someone sends you a Word file, you shouldn't look at it.
But the point is, you shouldn't even try to look at it. Nowadays there are free
programs that will read most Word files. But it's really better, better than
trying to read the file is if you send a message back saying, "please send that
to me in a format that isn't secret. It's not a good idea to send people Word
files." And the reason is, we have to overcome the tendency in society for
people to use these secret formats for communication.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>We have to convince people to insist on
publicly documented standard formats that everyone is free to implement. And
Word format is the worst offender and so that's the best place to start. If
somebody sends you a Word file, don't try to read it. Write back, saying "you
really shouldn't do that." And there's a page in www.gnu.org/philosophy which
is good to reference. It gives an explanation of why this is an important
issue.</p>
<p>[<a
href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html";>http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html</a>]</p>
@@ -600,7 +611,7 @@
<p>Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:13 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: moglen-harvard-speech-2004.html
===================================================================
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retrieving revision 1.11
retrieving revision 1.12
diff -u -b -r1.11 -r1.12
--- moglen-harvard-speech-2004.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:14 -0000 1.11
+++ moglen-harvard-speech-2004.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.12
@@ -661,7 +661,8 @@
accessible to us all, doesn't appeal. Therefore, for the survival of
the Microsoft monopoly, and I do actually mean its survival, the
theory being presented by Mr. McBride that we are doing something
-horrid to the American way of life must prevail. Regrettably for
+horrid to the American way of life must prevail.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Regrettably for
Microsoft, it won't, because what we are actually doing is more
apparent to the world than that propagandistic view will allow for.
We at any rate have to go on about our business, which is encouraging
@@ -692,7 +693,8 @@
This is not surprising, 18th century thinkers were a little dubious
about the patent law as well. They had a concern for statutory
monopolies and a deep history of English law that made them worry
-about them very much. Patent law in the 21st century is a collection
+about them very much.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Patent law in the 21st century is a collection
of evil nuisances. There's no question about it. And in the world of
software where we exist, there are some particularly unfortunate
characteristics of the way that the patent law works. We are going to
@@ -714,7 +716,8 @@
high-level seminar in the next five years around the world over the
relationship between patentability and free software ideas and get
square for ourselves what license terms and ways of working minimize
-the risks posed by patents. There is what I would characterize at the
+the risks posed by patents.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>There is what I would characterize at the
moment as a constructive diversity of views on that subject. But the
diversity will have to be thinned a little bit through an improvement
of our thought processes if we are by the end of this decade to have
@@ -765,7 +768,8 @@
distribution inside it and to go only to the places that have paid to
receive it. The result is an increasing movement to create what is in
truly Orwellian fashion referred to as trusted computing, which means
-computers that users can't trust. In order to continue to move for
+computers that users can't trust.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>In order to continue to move for
the freedom of knowledge in 21st century society, we have to prevent
trusted computing and its various ancillary details from constituting
the occupation of the hardware of the Net, to prevent the hardware
@@ -803,7 +807,8 @@
21st century is how to return the electromagnetic spectrum to use by
sharing rather than use-by-propertization. Here again, as you will
notice, free software itself, free executable software, has a major
-role to play. Because it is software-controlled radios, that is to
+role to play.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Because it is software-controlled radios, that
is to
say devices whose operating characteristics are contained in software
and can be modified by their users, that reclaim the spectrum for
shared rather than propertarian use. Here is the central problem that
@@ -896,7 +901,8 @@
Reasoning about hardware is, in that sense, like reasoning about the
economy we grew up in and presents all of those questions of how you
actually cover the costs of each new unit that the market is designed
-to help us solve. It's precisely because so much of human knowledge
+to help us solve.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>It's precisely because so much of human
knowledge
and culture in the 21st century no longer participates in the
traditional microeconomics of price, asymptotically reaching towards a
non-zero marginal cost, that we experience so much opportunity to give
@@ -935,7 +941,8 @@
what could become a series of lawsuits filed ad seriatim and in
parallel against free software? And wanted to get your view on two
possible types of lawsuits that could follow on the heels of SCO,
-regardless of whether SCO won or lost. The first would be a lawsuit
+regardless of whether SCO won or lost.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The first would be a lawsuit
filed by a company that to its shock and amazement found that instead
of its programmers hoping for their first house, working on the stuff
they were supposed to work on by day, they were in fact spending most
@@ -946,7 +953,8 @@
actually is property of the company, maybe even a work for hire, what
is the prospect that a company could then say, Our code through that
coder has been worked in to something like Linux, and it is now
-infringing unless we are paid damages? The second possible way in
+infringing unless we are paid damages?
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The second possible way in
which you could see this kind of lawsuit come up would be, oddly
enough, through the thirty-five year termination rule, something that
normally would be heralded by people in your position, to say
@@ -979,7 +987,8 @@
too, Mr. Stallman was quite prescient, because they are going to
recognize that the way they want their free software put together is
the way the Free Software Foundation put it together since now more
-than twenty years. The way we're going, they're going to discover that
+than twenty years.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The way we're going, they're going to discover
that
they really would like to have it, is for each individual contribution
of code to a free software project, if the guy who contributed the
code was working in the industry, they would really like to have a
@@ -1194,7 +1203,8 @@
hear people will still do the same amount of it because they love to
do it or are interested to do it, but I don't think that quite
compensates for the compensation that many of those creators now
-receive. And so I was wondering if you would comment a little bit on
+receive.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>And so I was wondering if you would comment a
little bit on
how the free distribution world, which differs from the current world
in that many of the current distribution regimes were created
specifically only to compensate people, will differ in terms of
@@ -1357,7 +1367,8 @@
certain limits, and that's why, you point out, nobody is really
wanting to challenge it all that much because it would be a Pyrrhic
challenge. If you win and the license evaporates, then it
-rubber-bands back to the author. That seems so persuasive, and almost
+rubber-bands back to the author.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>That seems so persuasive, and almost
proves too much, doesn't it? Because, suppose another author writes
software, writes for now with the author and chooses to license it
under the Grand Old Party License, by which only Republicans may make
@@ -1556,7 +1567,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:14 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: ms-doj-tunney.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/ms-doj-tunney.html,v
retrieving revision 1.15
retrieving revision 1.16
diff -u -b -r1.15 -r1.16
--- ms-doj-tunney.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:14 -0000 1.15
+++ ms-doj-tunney.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.16
@@ -99,7 +99,8 @@
products, it can even be prohibited from using licensed information
it receives in order to make those applications interoperate with
Defendant's products also interoperate with its own competing
- operating system. What should be a provision requiring Defendant to
+ operating system.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>What should be a provision requiring Defendant
to
share information with potential competitors in the monopolized
market turns out, after Defendant's careful manipulation, to be a
provision for sharing information “solely” with people
@@ -128,7 +129,8 @@
GPL”) represents both an operating system, known as GNU, and
an enormous corpus of applications programs that can run on almost
all existing architectures of digital computers, including
- Intel-compatible PCs. Through one such free software component, an
+ Intel-compatible PCs.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Through one such free software component, an
operating system “kernel” called Linux, written by
thousands of individuals and distributed under the GPL, the GNU
operating system can execute on Intel-compatible PC's, and by
@@ -196,7 +198,8 @@
code in new programs without payment of royalties or license fees,
permits vast numbers of interoperable, high-quality programs to be
written by a mixture of volunteers and professional project
- developers for free distribution. By authorizing Defendant to engage
+ developers for free distribution.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>By authorizing Defendant to engage
in non-reciprocity by charging royalties for the same information
about its programs, thus purposefully ousting volunteer developers,
and by prohibiting “sublicensing,” thus precluding
@@ -226,7 +229,8 @@
connected with the security and authentication aspects of electronic
commerce (including especially “without limitation” keys
and authorization tokens, which are the basic building blocks of all
- electronic commerce systems) can be kept secret. At present, all
+ electronic commerce systems) can be kept secret.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>At present, all
such protocols and APIs are public, which is appropriate
because—as computer security experts would testify if, as it
should, the District Court seeks evidentiary supplementation under
@@ -234,7 +238,8 @@
communications field by the use of secret protocols, but rather by
the use of scientifically-refereed and fully public protocols, whose
security has been tested by full exposure in the scientific and
- engineering communities. If this provision were enforced as
+ engineering communities.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>If this provision were enforced as
currently drafted, Defendant could implement new private protocols,
extending or replacing the existing public protocols of electronic
commerce, and then use its monopoly position to exclude the free
@@ -303,7 +308,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:14 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: nit-india.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/nit-india.html,v
retrieving revision 1.10
retrieving revision 1.11
diff -u -b -r1.10 -r1.11
--- nit-india.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:15 -0000 1.10
+++ nit-india.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.11
@@ -198,7 +198,8 @@
display these ads. They figure that most of the users won't notice,
they won't will be able to figure out. They figure you will install
several programs and you won't know which one changed your computer's
-configuration. Or that you won't know how to undo it. Of course, if it
+configuration. Or that you won't know how to undo it.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Of course, if it
were free software this could be fixed. I will get to that in a
minute. But sometimes they get even worse. Sometimes programs have
features designed to stop you from doing things. Software developers
@@ -239,7 +240,8 @@
way you can find it, and then you can fix the program to get rid of
it. You can make the program better. With non-free software you are
just helpless. But with free software you have power over your
-computer. You are in control. But freedom one is not enough. Freedom
+computer. You are in control.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But freedom one is not enough. Freedom
one is the freedom, to personally study the source code and then
change it to do what you want. That is the freedom to help
yourself. But freedom one is not enough, because first of all there
@@ -357,7 +359,8 @@
but helping your neighbor is good and must be encouraged and what does
it mean when the start making harsh punishments for people who share
with their neighbors. How much fear is it going to take before people
-are too scared to help their neighbors. Do you want to be living in a
+are too scared to help their neighbors.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Do you want to be living in a
society filled with this level of terror. The only … for what
they are doing is terror campaign. In 2 countries so far in Argentina
and then in Germany, these companies, the developers of non-free
@@ -378,7 +381,8 @@
I have a copy of this program. You are now in a moral dilemma, where
you have to choose between two evils. One evil is make a copy help
your neighbor, but you violate the license, the other evil is you
-follow the license but you are a bad neighbor. They are both wrong, so
+follow the license but you are a bad neighbor.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>They are both wrong, so
you have to choose the lesser evil, the lesser evil in my opinion is
to share with your neighbor and violate the license. Because your
neigh deserves… presuming this person had done nothing wrong,
@@ -444,7 +448,8 @@
copy. They might pay a certain amount you know if the price is small
enough, if it is easier them for them to pay it, than to go hunt
around and go to the trouble of getting a copy gratis. There are
-people sell copies, and they make some money with it. But people
+people sell copies, and they make some money with it.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But people
generally can't do is hold the users to ransom, squeezing a lots of
painful money out of them, because at that point the users will
redistribute copies to each other, they will make the effort. So free
@@ -456,7 +461,10 @@
because they are not forced to pay for permission, can be important
for encouraging computer use, in a country with lots of poor people,
because authorized copies of the software can cost more than the
-computer. Now the computer can cost this much and the authorized
+computer.
+</p>
+
+<p>Now the computer can cost this much and the authorized
copies of software can cost this much. Well, there are lots of people
in India who might be able to afford the computer, but couldn't
possibly afford the software, because they can just barely afford a
@@ -469,7 +477,8 @@
rape people in prison, and the other one is technical changes that can
prevent the unauthorized copies from running, making people register
in order for the software to run, you can see this in Windows XP, and
-there are more such measures coming. So what we can expect is, that it
+there are more such measures coming.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So what we can expect is, that it
would be harder and harder in India to get by using unauthorized
copies. And that means computer use in India and computer users in
India are heading for a train wreck. They are on a course that leads
@@ -572,7 +581,8 @@
non-free software is a system of colonialism. The developers…
Instead of one country colonizing another, it is various companies
trying to colonize the whole world. And they do this, using divide
-conquer tactics. Keeping the user divided and helpless. And if you
+conquer tactics. Keeping the user divided and helpless.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>And if you
think about it, that is what a non-free program does, it keeps the
users divided and helpless. Divided, because you are forbidden to
distribute copies to other people, forbidden to help your
@@ -617,7 +627,8 @@
this. Non-free software just keeps you in the dark. But if the schools
of India switched to free software, then they can offer the students
the opportunity to learn to be good programmers. To learn the same way
-I learnt. In the 1970s, I had a special opportunity. I worked at the
+I learnt.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>In the 1970s, I had a special opportunity. I
worked at the
AI lab at <abbr>MIT</abbr>. And there, we had our own time sharing
system, which was free software. We would share with anybody. In fact,
we were delighted anytime when somebody was interested in any part of
@@ -656,7 +667,8 @@
some people from Microsoft were waiting to see him next. I am sure
when he spoke with them… that this comparison will go through
his mind, as they try to convince him to do something or other, as
-they offered some kind of inducement to help keep India inline. What
+they offered some kind of inducement to help keep India inline.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>What
happened in that meeting, of course I don't know; because I wasn't
there in his subsequent meeting with Microsoft. But I'm sure with this
analogy running through his minds, he would have had some effect and I
@@ -687,7 +699,8 @@
way you can get a modern computer and run it was to sign a contract
promising to betray your neighbors. How could there be an alternative?
The only way to have an alternative, the only way to use a computer
-and within freedom, was to write a free operating system. So I decided
+and within freedom, was to write a free operating system.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So I decided
I would do that. I was an operating system developer, I've the skills
to undertake this project. So I decided I would write free operating
system, or die trying, presumably of old age. Because at that time,
@@ -710,7 +723,8 @@
the best possible name for anything. I should explain that the word
GNU is the name of an animal that was in Africa. We use the animal as
our symbol. So if you see a smiling animal with some horns that is
-associated with our software, that's a gnu. So 20 years and 1 month
+associated with our software, that's a gnu.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So 20 years and 1 month
ago, in January 1984, I quit my job at <abbr>MIT</abbr> and began
developing the GNU system. I didn't do it all myself, of course, I was
also trying to recruit other people to help and gradually over the
@@ -788,7 +802,8 @@
every computer is a copier for software. And I don't need any special
facilities to be able to study the plans and change them. I just need
to understand programming. Then I can read the source code, as long as
-the developer will let me have a copy of the source code. But hardware
+the developer will let me have a copy of the source code.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But hardware
isn't made by copying. You don't make computers, by putting them into
a universal copier. You know, if somebody gives you one CPU chip, you
can't copy that CPU chip to make another identical chip. Nobody can do
@@ -851,7 +866,8 @@
you don't know whether it is spying on you. So, it has to be free
software. Consider for instance, portable phones. You shouldn't use a
portable, unless the software is free. There really have been
-dangerous malicious features, in portable phones. There are portable
+dangerous malicious features, in portable phones.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>There are portable
phones in Europe which have this feature, that somebody can remotely
tell the phone to listen to you. It really is a spy device, in the
most classical sense. And if you have a portable phone, do you know
@@ -938,7 +954,8 @@
sight practical values only. They say that they have a superior
design… sorry a superior development model — superior in
its shallow technical sense, that it usually produces technically
-better software. But that's the most they will say. They won't say
+better software.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But that's the most they will say. They won't
say
that this is an ethical imperative, they won't say that software
should be open source, they won't say that closed source software is
an attempt to colonize you and you should escape. They won't say
@@ -976,7 +993,8 @@
it. There are about a million people contributing to the free software
and most of them are volunteers. Large programs has been developed by
volunteers, which proves that its not necessary to raise a lot of
-money. It's not necessary to have any money. Now I suppose that these
+money. It's not necessary to have any money.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Now I suppose that these
volunteers are not starving, they are not living on the streets. They
must have jobs. I don't know what their jobs are, but remember that if
you look at all computer related employment, only a small fraction of
@@ -1031,7 +1049,8 @@
software should be rewarded and people who develop non-free software
should be punished. Because, free software is a contribution to
society but non-free software is a scheme to colonize society and that
-deserves punishment not reward. Another way to look at it is to
+deserves punishment not reward.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Another way to look at it is to
realize that to use a non-free program is either to be foolish or
unethical or both. Which means that, for me, these non-free program
…is… might as well be nothing because I am not going to
@@ -1042,7 +1061,8 @@
“I can only develop this program if I make it proprietary;
that's the only way I can bring in enough money so that I can spend
the time developing this program.” I'm not going to tell him
-that can't be true because I don't know his circumstances. If he says
+that can't be true because I don't know his circumstances.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>If he says
that there is no way he can develop this program unless he has paid
full time and if he says that he doesn't know any way to get payed
full time except to make the program proprietary; I'm not going to
@@ -1075,7 +1095,8 @@
re-charge this much because we're trying to raise substantial money
with these books. But you are free to copy and change them. And you
could even get the source code through the Internet, the source code
-for the books. And now we are not the only ones. There is now a
+for the books.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>And now we are not the only ones. There is now
a
movement for free text books. In-fact there are projects in India and
elsewhere to develop free educational materials to make available to
schools. A complete curriculum of free educational materials. Because
@@ -1143,7 +1164,8 @@
survive; only because it's better. Free software has to be twice as
good. In order to get practically minded people to choose it. Of
course you can hear my scorn in the term practically minded. These are
-people who don't value their freedom. They're fools. A fool and this
+people who don't value their freedom.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>They're fools. A fool and this
freedom are soon parted. But there are plenty of fools; especially in
a lot of organizations are people who believe that they are not
supposed to pay attention to ethics or freedom. They are only supposed
@@ -1175,7 +1197,8 @@
this… this… idea there is some kind of balance. I don't
know what in the world he is talking about? But remember if a business
is making money by subjugating people, that's bad, that's some thing
-we should bring to an end. There are many businesses that operate by
+we should bring to an end.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>There are many businesses that operate by
mistreating people. And those businesses are bad. They don't have a
right to continue. They deserved to be brought to an end. I won't say
that non-free software is the biggest such problem. Because, you know
@@ -1348,7 +1371,8 @@
platform. So then several months later you'll try the program on our
platform and find that you did months work based on a feature we don't
have and you will say “Oh! it would be so much work to redo
-that; that I can't do it.” So then your program won't run on a
+that; that I can't do it.”
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So then your program won't run on a
free platform at all. At least not until years go by and we have
implemented a replacement for that feature. So you should use our free
Java platform to develop that. Use the GNU Java platform… the
@@ -1472,7 +1496,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:15 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: patent-practice-panel.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/patent-practice-panel.html,v
retrieving revision 1.10
retrieving revision 1.11
diff -u -b -r1.10 -r1.11
--- patent-practice-panel.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:15 -0000 1.10
+++ patent-practice-panel.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.11
@@ -80,7 +80,8 @@
it. They don't see it, it's baked into the price of the software
they're buying and if you were to ask a consumer if they've bought
insurance against being sued for patent infringement, they would say
-they don't believe that have. But in fact they had, because if someone
+they don't believe that have.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But in fact they had, because if someone
sues a user of Microsoft software, Microsoft has built in the cost of
stepping in to defend them from that into the cost of the license
fee. On the other side, if you have royalty-free distributed software
@@ -109,7 +110,8 @@
call it less-onerous, will harm their business, because people could
copy them. Well, large businesses aren't worried about being
copied. They really aren't. At least not by other large businesses,
-this is why they enter into cross-licenses all the time. If a large
+this is why they enter into cross-licenses all the time.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>If a large
company really didn't want its software to be copied, why is it
licensing its patent portfolio to every other big company in the
world? Because it can't stop them from copying it once they enter into
@@ -134,7 +136,8 @@
consumers. And so I think as we bring the point home, if we had two
seconds in an elevator to pitch this idea to someone, software patents
have a net-negative effect on competition in the software
-industry. True, they may increase competition in some ways, but the
+industry.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>True, they may increase competition in some
ways, but the
net-effect is anti-competitive. And that's what putting the ability to
decide success in the software industry in the hands of the patent
office or in hands of the courts does. If you need examples, if people
@@ -196,7 +199,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:15 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: rms-interview-edinburgh.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/rms-interview-edinburgh.html,v
retrieving revision 1.7
retrieving revision 1.8
diff -u -b -r1.7 -r1.8
--- rms-interview-edinburgh.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:16 -0000 1.7
+++ rms-interview-edinburgh.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.8
@@ -62,7 +62,8 @@
necessarily against corporate domination, but against any domination.
The users of software should not be dominated by the developers of the
software, whether those developers be corporations or individuals or
-universities or what. The users shouldn't be kept divided and
+universities or what.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The users shouldn't be kept divided and
helpless. And that's what non-free software does; It keeps the users
divided and helpless. Divided because you are forbidden to share
copies with anyone else and helpless because you don't get the source
@@ -92,7 +93,8 @@
and to agree to that is an unethical act in itself, which we should
reject. And that is the basic reason why I started the free software
movement. I wanted to make it easy to reject the unethical act of
-agreeing to the license of a non free program. If you are using an
+agreeing to the license of a non free program.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>If you are using an
unauthorized copy then you haven't agreed to that. You haven't
committed that unethical act. But you are still… you are
condemned to living underground. And, you are still unable to get the
@@ -129,7 +131,8 @@
successful, there are many people who use our free software, which we
developed for the sake of freedom and cooperation who have never heard
the reasons for which we did so. And, this makes our community weak.
-It is like a nation that has freedom but most of its people have never
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>It is like a nation that has freedom but most
of its people have never
been taught to value freedom. They are in a vulnerable position,
because if you say to them: “Give up your freedom and I give you
this valuable thing”, they might say “yes” because
@@ -141,7 +144,8 @@
together with some non free user subjugating software and so they say
the user subjugating software is a bonus, that it enhances the system.
And if you haven't learnt to value freedom, you won't see any reason
-to disbelieve them. But this is not a new problem and it is not
+to disbelieve them.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But this is not a new problem and it is not
limited to large corporations. All of the commercial distributors of
the GNU/Linux system going back something like 7 or 8 years, have made
a practice of including non free software in their distributions, and
@@ -173,7 +177,8 @@
you are being asked to betray the rest of humanity. And I reached the
conclusion in the early eighties, that this was evil, it is wrong
treatment of other people. But there was no other way of using a
-modern computer. All the operating systems required exactly such a
+modern computer.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>All the operating systems required exactly
such a
betrayal before you could get a copy. And that was in order to get an
executable binary copy. You could not have the source code at all.
The executable binary copy is just a series of numbers, which even a
@@ -181,7 +186,8 @@
looks sort of like mathematics, and if you have learned how to program
you could read that. But that intelligible form you could not even
get after you signed the betrayal. All you would get is the
-nonsensical numbers, which only the computer can understand. So, I
+nonsensical numbers, which only the computer can understand.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So, I
decided to create an alternative, which meant, another operating
system, one that would not have these unethical requirements. One,
that you could get in the form of source code, so that, if you decided
@@ -201,7 +207,8 @@
reliable, and is powerful, and it's cool and exciting, and you can
get it cheap. And they did not mention, that this allowed you to
avoid an unethical betrayal of the rest of society. That it allowed
-users to avoid being kept divided and helpless. So, there were many
+users to avoid being kept divided and helpless.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So, there were many
people who used free software, but had never even heard of these
ideas. And that included people in business, who were committed to an
amoral approach to their lives. So, when somebody proposed the term
@@ -254,7 +261,8 @@
It could be destroyed by treacherous computing. It can be destroyed
simply by hardware manufacturers' refusal to tell us enough about how
to use the hardware, so that we can't write free software to run the
-hardware. There are many vulnerabilities, that we have over the
+hardware.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>There are many vulnerabilities, that we have
over the
long-term. And, well the things we have to do to survive these threats
are different, in all cases, the more aware we are, the more motivated
we are, the easier it will be for us to do whatever it takes. So the
@@ -280,7 +288,8 @@
point it is inertia, social inertia. Lots of people have learnt to
use windows. And they haven't yet learned to use GNU/Linux. It is no
longer very hard to learn GNU/Linux, 5 years ago it was hard, now it
-is not. But still, it is more than zero. And people who are, you
+is not. But still, it is more than zero.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>And people who are, you
know,… if you never learned any computer system, than learning
GNU/Linux is as easy as anything, but if you already learned windows
it's easier. It's easier to keep doing what you know. So that's
@@ -289,7 +298,8 @@
convince people to change over, you are working against inertia. In
addition we have a problem that hardware manufacturers don't cooperate
with us the way they cooperate with Microsoft. So we have that
-inertia as well. And then we have the danger in some countries of
+inertia as well.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>And then we have the danger in some countries
of
software idea patents. I would like everybody reading this to talk to
all of — or anybody listening to this — to talk to all of
their candidates for the European Parliament and ask where do you
@@ -297,7 +307,8 @@
parliament's amendments that were adopted last September and that
apparently are being removed by the Council of Ministers? Will you
vote to bring back those amendments in the second reading? This is a
-very concrete question. With a yes or no answer. You will often get
+very concrete question. With a yes or no answer.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>You will often get
other kinds of — you may get evasive answers if you ask
“Do you support or oppose software idea patents?” The
people who wrote the directives claim that it does not authorize
@@ -348,7 +359,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:16 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: rms-on-radio-nz.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/rms-on-radio-nz.html,v
retrieving revision 1.10
retrieving revision 1.11
diff -u -b -r1.10 -r1.11
--- rms-on-radio-nz.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:16 -0000 1.10
+++ rms-on-radio-nz.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.11
@@ -132,7 +132,8 @@
point is, what Bush did by invading Iraq, using those attacks as an
excuse, was tremendously worse and we must remember than governments
gone amok can do far more damage than anybody not state-sponsored.
-After all, governments have a lot more men under arms and they don't
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>After all, governments have a lot more men
under arms and they don't
have to hide the fact that they have men under arms, so they're in a
much bigger position to do damage, so we must be concerned about
letting them have too much power. A world in which the police can
@@ -328,7 +329,8 @@
to keep records of everything, check everything. In New York City for
instance a taxi driver told me he had been required to install a
camera which transmits by radio people's faces to the police where
-they run face recognition over it. I don't think that should be
+they run face recognition over it.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>I don't think that should be
allowed. I don't mind if they have a system that records people's
faces and keeps it for a week in case somebody attacks the taxi
driver, that's not going to do anything to us if we don't attack taxi
@@ -444,7 +446,8 @@
and sell what, companies can say “we're against this, and if you
do this we'll just move our operations elsewhere” and the
politicians now have a wonderful excuse for why they're not going to
-do it. Of course it was they who decided to adopt that treaty in the
+do it.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Of course it was they who decided to adopt
that treaty in the
first place which they shouldn't have done. But then a lot of these
treaties go beyond that, and they explicitly deny democracy. Now the
US had a law that said it wouldn't sell tuna — you weren't
@@ -655,7 +658,8 @@
much money people pay and everybody who reads had a debt, now owes
money and he has to be made to pay. I think this is entirely twisted
and I'm against it, because the freedom to share must be respected.
-But I have other proposals for ways to support artists. And remember
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But I have other proposals for ways to support
artists. And remember
the current system mostly supports corporations, so I don't think it
works very well. And it makes a few authors quite rich, and those get
treated with great deference by the corporations, and the rest
@@ -939,7 +943,8 @@
tell the public. So the point is that the; many governments,
including of course the US are conspiring in secret to impose new
restrictions on us relating to copyright and part of their latest
-propaganda is they call sharing “counterfeiting”. But the
+propaganda is they call sharing “counterfeiting”.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But the
point is that this treaty will have provisions to restrict the public,
we think, but they won't tell us. This is called Policy Laundering,
this general practice; instead of democratically considering a law,
@@ -987,7 +992,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:16 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: software-patents.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/software-patents.html,v
retrieving revision 1.12
retrieving revision 1.13
diff -u -b -r1.12 -r1.13
--- software-patents.html 10 Jun 2012 08:06:17 -0000 1.12
+++ software-patents.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.13
@@ -64,7 +64,8 @@
It also lumps together trademarks which are even more different, and
various other things more or less commonly encountered. None of them
has anything in common with any of the others. Their origins
-historically are completely separate. The laws were designed
+historically are completely separate.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The laws were designed
independently. They covered different areas of life and activities.
The public policy issues they raise are completely unrelated. So, if
you try to think about them by lumping them together, you are
@@ -164,7 +165,8 @@
are pending are secret. After a certain amount of time they may get
published, like 18 months. But that is plenty of time for you to
write a program and even release it not knowing that there is going to
-be a patent and you are going to get sued. This is not just academic.
+be a patent and you are going to get sued.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>This is not just academic.
In 1984, the compress program was written, a program for data
compression. At the time, there was no patent on the LZW compression
algorithm which it used. Then in 1985, the US issued a patent on this
@@ -194,7 +196,8 @@
for key words and so-on. That one works to a certain extent. You
will find some patents in the area. You won't necessarily find them
all however. For instance, there was a software patent which may have
-expired by now on natural order recalculation in spread sheets. This
+expired by now on natural order recalculation in spread sheets.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>This
means basically that when you make certain cells depend upon other
cells, it always recalculates everything after the things it depends
on, so that after one re-calculation, everything is up to date. The
@@ -202,7 +205,8 @@
cell depend on a cell lower down, and you had a few such steps, you
had to recalculate several times to get the new values to propagate
upwards. You were supposed to have things depend upon cells above
-them. Then someone realized why don't I do the recalculation so that
+them.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Then someone realized why don't I do the
recalculation so that
everything gets recalculated after the things it depends upon? This
algorithm is known as topological sorting. The first reference to it
I could find was in 1963. The patent covered several dozen different
@@ -243,13 +247,15 @@
When he first saw Hypercard, he didn't think it had anything to do
with his patent, with his “Inventions”. It didn't look
similar. When his lawyer told him that you could read the patents as
-covering part of Hypercard, he decided to attack Apple. When I had a
+covering part of Hypercard, he decided to attack Apple.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>When I had a
speech about this at Stanford, he was in the audience, he said “That's
<a
href="http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/articles/int-prop/heckel-debunking.html";>
not true</a>, I just didn't understand the extent of my
protection!” I said yes, that's what I said! So, in fact, you
will have to spend a lot of time talking with lawyers to figure out
-what these patents prohibit you from doing. Ultimately they are going
+what these patents prohibit you from doing.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Ultimately they are going
to say something like this: “If you do something in here, you
are sure to lose, If you do something here, there is a substantial
chance of losing, and if you really want to be safe, stay out of this
@@ -287,7 +293,8 @@
word processor XyWrite got a downgrade in the mail. The downgrade
removed a feature which allowed you to pre-define abbreviations. That
when you typed an abbreviation followed by a punctuation character, it
-would immediately replace itself with by some expansion. So that way
+would immediately replace itself with by some expansion.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So that way
you could define the abbreviation for some long phrase, type the
abbreviation then the long phrase will be in your document. They
wrote to me about this because they knew
@@ -295,7 +302,8 @@
In fact, it had it since the 70's. This was interesting because it
showed me that I had at least one patentable idea in my life. I knew
it was patentable because somebody else patented it afterward!
-Actually, they had tried these various approaches. First they tried
+Actually, they had tried these various approaches.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>First they tried
negotiating with the patent holder, who turned out not to negotiate in
good faith. Then they looked at whether they could have a chance of
overturning the patent. What they decided to do was take out the
@@ -325,7 +333,8 @@
1997. Until then, it largely blocked the use of Public Key Encryption
in the US. A number of programs that people started to develop got
crushed. They were never really available because the patent holders
-threatened them. Then, one program got away. The
+threatened them.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>Then, one program got away. The
program <a href="http://www.pgpi.org/";>PGP</a>, which initially was
released as free software. Apparently, the patent holders by the time
they got around to attacking, realized they might get too much bad
@@ -357,7 +366,8 @@
happened to have the weekly patent column in it. I didn't see a copy
of the Times more than once every few months. So I looked at it and
it said that somebody had got a patent for “Inventing a new
-method of compressing data”. I figured I better take a look at
+method of compressing data”.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>I figured I better take a look at
this patent. I got a copy and it turned out to cover the program that
we were just a week away from releasing. That program died before it
was born. Later on we did find another algorithm which was
@@ -367,7 +377,8 @@
compression, it was fine. Anyone who wanted to do data compression
could use gzip instead of compress. But the same patented LZW
compression algorithm was also used in image formats such as
-the <a href="/philosophy/gif.html">GIF</a> format. But there because
+the <a href="/philosophy/gif.html">GIF</a> format.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But there because
the job people wanted to do was not to simply compress data but to
make an image that people could display with their software, it turned
out extremely hard to switch over to a different algorithm. We have
@@ -432,7 +443,8 @@
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/patent-practice";>World Wide Web
Consortium</a> was proposing to start adopting standards that were
covered by patents. The community objected so they reversed
-themselves. They went back to insisting that any patents had to be
+themselves.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>They went back to insisting that any patents
had to be
freely implementable by anyone and that the standards had to be free
for anyone to implement. That is an interesting victory. I think
that was the first time any standards body has made that decision. It
@@ -518,7 +530,8 @@
lottery. What happens with any given patent could be nothing, could
be a windfall for some patent holder or a disaster for everyone else.
But IBM being so big, for them, it averages out. They get to measure
-the average harm and good of the patent system. For them, the trouble
+the average harm and good of the patent system.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>For them, the trouble
of the patent system would have been 10 times the good. I say would
have been because IBM through cross-licensing avoids experiencing that
trouble. That trouble is only potential. It doesn't really happen to
@@ -536,7 +549,8 @@
years starving in the attic designing a new wonderful kind of whatever
and now wants to manufacture it and isn't it a shame the big companies
are going to go into competition with him, take away all the business
-and he'll “starve”. I will have to point out that people
+and he'll “starve”.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>I will have to point out that people
in high tech fields are not generally working on their own and that
ideas don't come in a vacuum, they are based on ideas of others and
these people have pretty good chances of getting a job if they need to
@@ -545,7 +559,8 @@
that he is in danger of starving is unrealistic. But it is
conceivable that somebody could have an idea and this idea along with
100 or 200 other ideas can be the basis of making some kind of product
-and that big companies might want to compete with him. So let's see
+and that big companies might want to compete with him.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>So let's see
what happens if he tries to use a patent to stop them. He says
“Oh No, IBM. You cannot compete with me. I've got this patent.
IBM says let's see. Let's look at your product. Hmmm. I've got this
@@ -570,7 +585,8 @@
that they cannot get enough patents to do this. Any given patent is
pointing in a certain direction. So if a small company has patents
pointing there, there and there and somebody over there points a
-patent at them and says give me your money, they are helpless. IBM
+patent at them and says give me your money, they are helpless.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>IBM
can do it because with these 9000 patents, they are pointing
everywhere, no matter where you are, there is probably an IBM patent
pointing at you. So IBM can almost always make you cross license.
@@ -678,7 +694,8 @@
precisely what was published when and which of those things somebody
manages to find. Which of them didn't get lost, precise dates and
so-on. Many historical accidents determine whether a patent is valid.
-In fact, it is a weird thing that the
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>In fact, it is a weird thing that the
<a href="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04873662__";>British
Telecom following hyper links together with telephone access
patent</a>, I think, was applied for in 1975. I think it was in 1974
@@ -690,7 +707,8 @@
that. I didn't think this was interesting enough to publish it.
After all, the idea of following hyper links I got from the demo of
Engelbart's editor. He is the one who had an idea which was
-interesting to publish. What I done I called poor mans hypertext as I
+interesting to publish.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>What I done I called poor mans hypertext as I
had to implement it in the context of TECO. It was not as powerful as
his hypertext but it was at least useful for browsing documentation,
which it all it was meant for, and as for there being dial-up access
@@ -778,7 +796,8 @@
and not just copied, then it is probably using a different combination
of ideas combined, of course, with newly written code, because you
can't just magically say the names of these ideas and have them work.
-You have to implement them all. You have to implement them all in
+You have to implement them all.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>You have to implement them all in
that combination. The result is that even when you write a program,
you are using lots of different ideas, any one of them might be
patented by somebody. A pair of them may be patented as a combination
@@ -787,15 +806,19 @@
are possibly thousands of things, thousands of points of vulnerability
in your program, which might be patented by somebody else already.
This is why software patents tend to obstruct the progress of
-software—the work of software development. If it were one
-patent-one product, then these patents wouldn't obstruct the
+software—the work of software development.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it were one patent-one product, then these patents wouldn't obstruct the
development of products because if you developed a new product, it
wouldn't be patented by somebody else already. But when one product
corresponds to many different ideas combined, it becomes very likely
your new product is going to be patented by somebody else already. In
fact, there is economic research now showing just how imposing a
patent system on a field where there is incremental innovation, can
-retard progress. You see, the advocates of software patents say
+retard progress.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>You see, the advocates of software patents say
“well yes, there may be problems but more important than any
problems, the patents must promote innovation and that is so important
it doesn't matter what problems you cause”. Of course, they
@@ -830,7 +853,8 @@
‘If’ statement will draw and whether it can dissipate the
heat there inside that while statement. Whether there will be a
voltage drop across the while statement that will make the
-‘If’ statement not function. I don't have to worry that
+‘If’ statement not function.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>I don't have to worry that
if i run this program in a salt water environment that the salt water
may get in between the ‘If’ statement and the
‘While’ statement and cause corrosion. I don't have to
@@ -843,7 +867,11 @@
‘If’ statement inside the ‘While’ statement.
I don't have to worry about how I am going to gain access in case that
‘If’ statement breaks, to remove it and replace it with a
-new one. So many problems that we don't have to worry about in
+new one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So many problems that we don't have to worry about in
software. That makes it fundamentally easier. It is fundamentally
easier to write a program than to design a physical object that's
going to work. This may seem strange because you have probably heard
@@ -855,7 +883,8 @@
physical system. But the intelligence of people in these various
fields is the same, so what do we do when we are confronted with an
easy field? We just push it further! We push our abilities to the
-limit. If systems of the same size are easy, let's make systems which
+limit.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>If systems of the same size are easy, let's
make systems which
are ten times as big, then it will be hard! That's what we do! We
make software systems which are far bigger in terms of number of parts
than physical systems. A physical system whose design has a million
@@ -878,7 +907,9 @@
will use the same equipment which will copy any contents on a CD. You
don't have to build a factory to make this product. There is
tremendous simplification and tremendous reduction in costs of
-designing things. The result is, say for an automobile company, who
+designing things.
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The result is, say for an automobile company,
who
will spend 50 million dollars to build a factory, to build a new model
of auto, they can hire some lawyers to cope with patent license
negotiations. They can even cope with a law suit if they wanted to.
@@ -911,7 +942,9 @@
of musical ideas which you could state in words. Then imagine it is
around 1800 and you are Beethoven and you want to write a symphony.
You will find that getting your symphony so that it doesn't infringe
-any patents is going to be harder than writing a good symphony. When
+any patents is going to be harder than writing a good symphony.
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>When
you complain about this, the patent holders would say “Ah
Beethoven, you are just bitching because you have no ideas of your
own. All you want to do is rip off our inventions”. Beethoven,
@@ -922,7 +955,11 @@
re-invent music and make something that people would want to listen
to. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Boulez";>Pierre
Boulez</a> said he would try to do that, but who listens to Pierre
-Boulez? Nobody is so brilliant he can re-invent all of computer
+Boulez?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobody is so brilliant he can re-invent all of computer
science, completely new. If he did, he would make something that the
users would find so strange that they wouldn't want to use it. If you
look at a word processor today, you would find, I think, hundreds of
@@ -941,7 +978,9 @@
to happen, because I was in the software field before there were
software patents, was most of the developers would publish any new
ideas that they thought were noteworthy, that they thought that they
-might get any credit or respect for. The ideas that were too small or
+might get any credit or respect for.
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The ideas that were too small or
not impressive enough, they would not publish because that would be
silly. Now the patent system is supposed to encourage disclosure of
ideas. In fact, in the old days, nobody kept the ideas secret. They
@@ -950,19 +989,15 @@
ideas so that way the employees would get some credit and feel good.
After software patents, they still kept the code secret and they
patented the ideas, so in fact, disclosure has not been encouraged in
-any meaningful sense.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The same things are kept secret now as what were kept secret before,
+any meaningful sense. The same things are kept secret now as what were kept
secret before,
but the ideas which used to be published so that we could use them are
-now likely to be patented and off-limits for 20 years. What can a
-country do to change this? How should we change the policy to solve
-this problem?
+now likely to be patented and off-limits for 20 years.
</p>
<p>
-There are two places you can attack it. One is the place where
+What can a
+country do to change this? How should we change the policy to solve
+this problem? There are two places you can attack it. One is the place where
patents are being applied for and issued, in the patent office. The
other is when patents are being applied—that is, the question of
what does a patent cover.
@@ -991,7 +1026,8 @@
labeled as software patents. I say software patents but what do I
really mean? Patents which might potentially apply to software.
Patents which might potentially get you sued for writing software.
-The patent office doesn't divide patents into software patents and
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The patent office doesn't divide patents into
software patents and
other patents. So, in fact, any patent might conceivably get you sued
for writing software if it could apply to some software. So in the US
the solution would have to be done through changing the applicability,
@@ -1013,7 +1049,8 @@
which considered a patent on a process for curing rubber. The ruling
was that the fact that the apparatus included a computer and a program
as part of the process to cure the rubber did not make it
-un-patentable. The appeals court the next year which considers all
+un-patentable.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The appeals court the next year which
considers all
patent cases, reversed the qualifiers. They said the fact that there
is a computer and a program in this makes it patentable. The fact
that there is a computer and program in anything makes it patentable.
@@ -1220,7 +1257,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:17 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
Index: stallman-mec-india.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/stallman-mec-india.html,v
retrieving revision 1.23
retrieving revision 1.24
diff -u -b -r1.23 -r1.24
--- stallman-mec-india.html 23 Jun 2012 11:50:37 -0000 1.23
+++ stallman-mec-india.html 1 Oct 2012 17:40:18 -0000 1.24
@@ -237,7 +237,8 @@
very often, and it just happened to have the weekly patents column and
I noted it and so I read it. It said that somebody had got a patent
for inventing a new method, a better method of data compression. Well,
-that was not in fact true. When I saw this, I thought we'd better get a
+that was not in fact true.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>When I saw this, I thought we'd better get a
copy of this patent and see if it's a problem, and it turned out to cover
exactly the algorithm that we were about to release. So this program
was killed one week before it was released. And in fact that person,
@@ -252,7 +253,8 @@
So in principle, you could read them all, and see what they restrict,
what they prohibit you from doing. Practically speaking though, once
there are software patents there are so many of them that you can't
-keep up with them. In the US there are over a hundred thousand of
+keep up with them.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>In the US there are over a hundred thousand of
them; maybe two hundred thousand by now. This is just an estimate.
I know that 10 years ago they were issuing 10,000 a year and I believe
that it has accelerated since then. So it's too much for you to keep
@@ -388,7 +390,8 @@
one and you give him another one, he'll switch; but if what he wants
to do is make images that can be displayed by Netscape, then he can't
switch, unless Netscape handles the other format… and it didn't.
-It took years, I think, before Netscape started to handle PNG format.
+
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>It took years, I think, before Netscape
started to handle PNG format.
So people essentially said “I can't switch, I just have…
” And so the result was, society had invested so much in this one
format, that the inertia was too great for a switch, even though there
@@ -764,7 +767,8 @@
values in some other parts of the data. We don't have to worry about
whether it will loop at a speed that causes a resonance and eventually
the if statement will vibrate against the while statement and one of them
-will crack. We don't have to worry that chemicals in the environment
+will crack.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>We don't have to worry that chemicals in the
environment
will get into the boundary between the if statement and the while
statement and corrode them, and cause a bad connection. We don't have
to worry that other chemicals will get on them and cause a short-circuit.
@@ -2124,7 +2128,7 @@
<p> Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/23 11:50:37 $
+$Date: 2012/10/01 17:40:18 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
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