1st international FSFE Fellowship meeting: Nov 11th

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Registration is now possible for FSFE’s first international Fellowship meet, November 11th.

I think this is the first free software conference in Europe which isn’t technical, or focused on a particular law, or focused on a particular country. The idea is to host a get together for all the free software supporters and activists of Europe. The schedule will be decided by whoever is coming. That can be discussed on the new discussion@lists.fsfe.org mailing list.

This is also new for FSFE since it’s our first general conference. FSFE organised one conference before, but that was specific to the topic of GPLv3 (the Barcelona event).

"The Fellowship" was launched in February 2005 as FSFE’s membership program for community outreach. There have been various local meetups organised by the Fellows, and recently someone suggested a Europe-wide meetup, so that’s what’s happening.

The date is Saturday November 11th, and the venue is Bolzano, which is in South Tyrol, which is in Northern Italy. That time and place was chosen because there is a free software event happening there on November 10th, so there’re two reasons to come to that part of Italy that weekend. (That conference is SFScon, but there is little on their webpage right now.)

Registering is a good idea since then you can see who else will be there, and it will help in planning what discussions and sessions to have.

Stallman on draft 2 of GPLv3

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I’ve made a transcript of Richard Stallman’s talk at the recent 4th international GPLv3 conference in Bangalore, India. I would really appreciate some help with spreading this transcript around to websites, mailing lists, and forums of the community. A mainstream news website has published a shockingly FUD-filled article, so it’s important that some intelligent information reach the computer using public.

The transcript is as: http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/bangalore-rms-transcript and below are links to the sections in the transcript.

  1. The presentation
  2. Internationalisation
  3. Patents – a promise not to sue
  4. Patent retaliation
  5. Tivoisation and DRM
  6. Licence compatibility
  7. Audience question on the goals of the GPL
  8. Back to compatibility
  9. BitTorrent
  10. Distribution by Internet
  11. Termination

UPDATE: When I originally posted this, there were 15 minutes left to transcribe. I’ve done that now and added questions 7 to 10 to the above list of section titles.

GPLv3 updates: 4th conference tomorrow, in India

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The 4th International GPLv3 Conference, organised by FSFI, is taking place on the 23rd and 24th of August in Bangalore, India. I hope it goes well. The 3rd was in Europe.

This will be the first conference where the 2nd draft of GPLv3 will be discussed. The public comment period has been open for a few weeks now and I’ve made three comments so far, and am thinking about others. To see all the comments made so far, go to http://gplv3.fsf.org/comment

Other news is that FSF have released the source code of the comment system software "stet". It’s available at: http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/source/

One FSFE’s GPLv3 pages, I’ve much improved the diff comparing draft 1 and draft 2, and I’m working on producing a similar diff comparing GPLv2 and draft 2 of GPLv3. my first attempt isn’t so nice but it’s actually not that easy to make the diffs correctly. The obvious path of feeding draft 1 and draft 2 to wdiff gets the change boundaries wrong.

The future of the patents battle, and the July 12th hearing

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The software patents battle will return this Winter. Nothing much is happening this week, so this isn’t a call to arms. This entry is a quick review, a look at what’s coming, and a late report from the European Commission’s July 12th public hearing "Future Patent Policy in Europe"

Sections:

  1. Background: European patent governance
  2. The previous battle
  3. The coming battle
  4. What will be our difficulties
  5. What factors are on our side
  6. My 3-minute intervention on July 12th

I’ve gone into some length, but this is still a summary. If you think I’ve over-simplified or left anything out, leave a comment or email me at ciaran at fsfe dot org.

Background: European patent governance

There are three powers in the patent system:

  1. The law makers – write the rules defining what is patentable
  2. The patent office – read the law and approve/reject patent applications
  3. The national courts – decide whether a patent is valid or not when litigation occurs

This conforms to the traditional European form of governance: there is a separation of the administrative/executive (patent offices), the legislative (law makers), and the judicial (the courts). The theory is that by seperating these powers, a failure in one power can be spotted and fixed by one or two of the others.

The current status of software patents is that the law says that software is not patentable, the patent offices are approving software patent applications, and the national courts are mostly ruling that software patents are invalid.

Side note: The administrative/executive branch of the patent system suffers from bad design. The EPO answers to no one. They can, if they choose, grant patents for absolutely anything. They are instructed to follow the European Patent Convention (EPC), but there is no one with the power review the practice of the EPO and to fix the EPO if the public, or the law makers, or the judiciary believes that the EPC is not being adhered to. Fixing this design flaw might be the path we eventually have to take to secure a swpat-free EU.

The previous battle

The last battle was about legislation. The law makers were asked to change the law to make software patentable. We countered by asking the law makers to clarify the law to a point where the patent office could no longer justify the granting of software patents.

In July 2005, the proposal to change the legislation was dropped entirely. So neither side won. We didn’t win, but we did something very significant. We showed that we are a capable player in the legislative arena. Those in favour of software patents evaluated our ability and decided that the risk that we might win was too high, so they walked away.

The coming battle

Now, those in favour of software patent have decided to try modifying the judiciary power. They don’t like that the national courts are dismissing cases where software patent holders try to litigate against people.

They’ve found two ways to get at the judiciary power. One is the "Community Patent", and the other is the EPLA (European Patent Litigation Agreement).

There are proposals, backed by those in favour of software patents, for either of these to put the European Patent Office (EPO) in charge of the judiciary power. So instead of patent litigation cases being decided by the national courts, they would be decided by special patent courts with judges appointed by the EPO. …and the EPO are the people who say that software is patentable. If this happens, software patents will exist in every measurable sense in the EU.

The argument for having this one court is that a single EU-wide court would be more cost effective and would create EU-wide precedent and prevent conflicting results between states. The argument for giving the EPO control over this court is that the court should be made of experts and the EPO are the experts.

What will be our difficulties

  1. In the last battle, we proved ourselves to be particularly capable at working with the European Parliament (EP), but in the Community Patent, the EP have only an advisory role, and in the EPLA they have no influence. (Florian Mueller posted more details in response to this blog entry)
  2. The procedure is different. In the last battle, we expended a lot of expert-time in figuring out timetables and what power each body has at each stage and which milestones have effects on the end result that are irreversible or hard to reverse.
  3. The media spotlight isn’t on this issue anymore.
  4. Many of us, the anti-swpat campaigners, have turned our attention to other things.

What factors are on our side

  1. There are other factors involved which could greatly delay this. The Community Patent project began in 1968! So it could go on for a long time. The other side of this is that there are people who would love to see this get finished, so if it ever looks finishable, there will be a lot of people pushing to rush it to the finish line.
  2. Both the Community Patent and the EPLA are aimed at fixing a perceived problem that patent litigation is too expensive and bureaucratic. This is good for us because it will be hard for anyone to argue simultaneously both that the patent system is very cumbersome and that it should be expanded.
  3. The idea of giving the administrative/executive branch control over the judicial branch contradicts the European idea of democracy (and probably most or all regions’s ideas of democracy). If this inappropriateness can be pointed out to the public and the media, it shold be easily understandable.

My 3-minute intervention on July 12th

Preface

Below is exactly what I said for my intervention at the hearing. Given more time, I could have done better, but there were limits to what anything I said could achieve, so it wouldn’t have been worthwhile to spend much more time on it anyway. My aims were to register the FSFE does not support either current proposal, that democraticly questionable processes were not going unnoticed, and to remind those present that free software must be considered. I was limited to 3 minutes and I had to speak slowly to ensure that the translators could keep up.

My intervention

Last July, the European Parliament rejected a proposal to codify EPO practice with regards to software patents.

One year later, here we are in a room full of businesses and patent lawyers, discussing a proposal to codify EPO practice.

Without any directly elected representatives, and without journalists and the public, it’s certainly quieter, but it is not very democratic.

Business is part of the EU, but there are also people.

I’m not fundamentally against a community-wide patent. The problem is in the implementation.

Separation of executive and judiciary is a cornerstone of European democracy.

The EPO is out of control, but instead of being reined in, it is being given control of the judiciary.

Software can be made and distributed like cars, but it can also be made and distributed in many other models. For this reason, patents affect software differently.

Patents are incompatible with many models used by software SMEs, as has been mentioned by some today.

Patents are also incompatible with many models used by Free Software. This is not just about cost, so it doesn’t matter if the costs are doubled or halved.

Free Software is software which can be examined, modified, and re-published. Users of Free Software are enabled and free to help themselves and each other.

Software is an area prone to monopolies. This morning, the European Commission felt the need to fine one company 280 million euro. Software is the only sector that has required such intervention by the European Commission.

Free Software such as the GNU/Linux operating system should not be stiffled because a litigation problem was solved carelessly.

— 
Ciarán O’Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE’s Fellowship

Buckets of free software advocacy/awareness videos

Posted by ciaran on 0

Below is a list of free software videos. I find videos to be an extrememly valuable learning tool – and often interesting and entertaining. I don’t think I’d be able to maintain a list, which is why this is going in my blog instead of on a webpage. If you’d like to maintain such a list, I hope the below links are a good place to start.

If you know of more, please post them here as a comment or email me at ciaran at fsfe dot org and I’ll add them to this list.

GPLv3 discussion committees: “Draft 2 includes our input”

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A Newsforge journalist contacted the GPLv3 discussion committees to ask if they are being listened to by FSF, and if the 2nd draft of GPLv3 includes they’re input. All who responded said yes to both.

Here’s the story: Torvalds’ comments on GPLv3 committees refuted. The reason for that title is that Linus Torvalds said last week that he heard that FSF had ignored the discussion committees. I’m glad to hear his information was wrong.

That article doesn’t explain the role of the discussion committees, so I’ll just sketch it out quickly here.

The discussion committees are made up of people who have some interest in making the GNU GPL as good as possible. This includes many who are not supporters of the free software movement’s goals.

There are four committees, grouped by topic, with a total of something like 130 members:

Each comment that the public submits through gplv3.fsf.org goes to these committees where they group the comments into issues, and collect all the views on these issues and suggestions for how to address them.

For more information on the process, see FSFE’s GPLv3 project page.

Do look after your hands

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I heard recently that another friend is out of action due to hand pains. This reminded me to turn the typing break feature back on on my computer. It should be called "typing and mouse break" – both are common causes of overuse injuries. Some notes:

  1. Make sure you have something to do during your break – at least have something to read nearby
  2. Try to stand up and do something – make a drink, walk outside, etc.
  3. Exercise your wrists: here are some wrist stretches that can be done while seated
  4. Don’t look at your screen during your break – give your eyes a break too. (…increasing the font size is also a good idea to avoid eye strain. …and remember to blink when staring at the screen.)
  5. Try to take one day off every week. This is my own tip – I can’t find anyone else who thinks this is important, but it seems like a good idea.
  6. Get a keyboard which has low resistance keys. I type either on my laptop keyboard, or a USB keyboard which has laptop-like keys, and I think this has helped my fingers.

It seems that there is no single best duration or frequency for breaks. Most recommendations are in the range of 3-5 minutes every 30 minutes, or 5-10 minutes every 60 minutes.

If you use GNOME, you can enable a typing break via Desktop->Preference->Keyboard and then click on the "Typing Break" tab.

Alan Cox 5 minutes on GPLv3, plus comments

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In the Q+A session after a recent talk by Alan Cox in Limerick, he was asked for his thoughts on GPLv3. Below is a transcript of his off-the-cuff reply, and then my comments.

His comments were quite positive. The only issue he raised was that draft 1’s wording for thwarting DRM was a bit heavy-handed. His concern might be fixed by Draft 2, which will be out any day now. Stallman has said that the DRM wording is being reworked for draft 2 and it’s being thinned down a bit since it has been decided that some bits in draft 1 are probably redundant.

The topic of the talk itself was software engineering process of free software development. The audio recording is interesting, and I’m glad I’ve found something I can point others to when this topic comes up: AlanCox_UL_20060513.ogg The talk was organised by University of Limerick Computer Society. Thanks to them for recording it and putting it online.

Cox did some good work on raising awareness of software freedom issues such as software patents and the European Copyright Directive, so I’ve been looking out for his thoughts on GPLv3.

For more information about the draft GPLv3, and the ongoing year-long public consultation, the timeline, etc., see FSFE’s project page:

I had difficulty transcribing some bits. There are three words I can’t hear, which I marked "[inaudible]", and there could be other slight glitches. Any corrections, let me know.

What Alan Cox said

[1:10:50]

Audience member: What do you think about the talk about GPL 3? About Linus not going under it.

Alan Cox: Ahm, I understand why Linus feels that way, because one of the things that’s happened with the Linux kernel is the Linux kernel was released under a licence and that licence says there are some things you can do and some things you can’t do.

Not a perfect licence, there are people who push binaries of it, there are people who use it in entirely legal ways which most of the developers don’t like. There are Linux systems flying military equipment, and a lot of developers aren’t happy about it. But, that’s the way it goes.

The problem you’ve got though, all these people who’ve contributed to it, many individuals, companies, whatever have contributed to this project on the basis that they could use it under those terms. So, if you come along and say "This is the a licence, we’re changing the rules", all the stuff you’ve been contributing to it, and you have expectations, we are going to change the rules on you so you can’t – is a very hard thing to do. To some people it’s a very unfair thing to do.

When you get things like Digital Rights Management, you get into the question of: do the ends justify the means?

I think it’s something Linus is very concerned about is that he’s basically not breaking the trust. He doesn’t see himself, if you like, I think, as kind of the… how else can I put it … When people style him as sort of the "Chief dictator" but Linus in the project isn’t so much dictator overlord evil empire owner, as man in charge of a large number of things contributed by other people, so he’s custodian rather than dictator, so to speak, and that makes it very awkward to come along and say "Well, we’re going to the new version of the licence. Sorry Tivo, we love all the work you’ve given us in the kernel, but go away, goodbye". So, it is very hard, from that point of view.

I think it’s the ethical thing which are questions for the kernel, rather than, necessarily, the technical things about the change to new licences. And so I don’t entirely agree with Linus, but I understand where he’s coming from on the issue. If that makes any sense.

Audience member: What do you think about the Digital Rights Management stuff in the GPL 3 itself?

Alan Cox: Ehm, as the draft stands at the moment, it’s a bit heavy handed. I’d like to think there’s a more elegant way of solving the problem.

For one, it’s arguable that GPLv2 already covers it. It sufficiently vague to make lawyers nervous, rather than happy, to go and say "Oh yes, bang splat, we’ll win this one", but the GPL version 2 wording says, not just the program code, also all the scripts blah blah blah necessary, and there’s a distinct legal opinion that would include cryptographic keys in the case where you need it to digitally sign the binary that’s given to users.

So, the GPL 3, one way you could argue, it’s a clarification, but the way it deals with it, it’s a very heavy handed way of dealing with it. It talks about DRM on media and stuff, so not giving people, for example, GPL source code on an SD card – because that’s Digital Rights Management media – gets a bit silly if you take it to it’s extreme.

I mean, you don’t want a clause saying you can’t use media which has a patent on it. There goes the CD ROM, for example.

[laughter]

So, I’m very wary of that.

I think a lot of the other changes in GPLv3 are very good. Particularly, for example, where it’s clarifying graphical applications and the web. Because GPLv2 is really in the world of the command line. So it had things in it saying "if the program prints that it is GPL software, you may not remove that", but it didn’t have anything saying "if there’s an about box… you may not remove that", or "if the web page says… you may not remove that". So that’s being clarified. That kind of stuff I support. So I think those parts of the licence are a definite improvement.

But it’s only a draft. You still have an ongoing consultation and will do for quite some time yet. …and we’ll see how it evolves.

[1:15:31]

My (Ciaran O’Riordan‘s) comments

Below are four comments, mostly expanding on what Alan said. They’re not criticisms – it’s just a lot easier for me to give thorough answers here, now, than it is for him standing on stage.

Military uses

The idea that some software developers don’t like their software being used for military purposes comes up every now and again. Here are some reasons on why nothing is added to the GPL about this:

About the Tivo

About the Tivo. They won’t actually be told to "go away". They’ll be told to stop trying to use technical means to wiggle out of their obligations and to play by the same rules everyone else is playing by. They will probably not be happy with people being able to remove the spyware from their computers, and they won’t like people being able to add features (such as a work record button). So they might walk away.

Losing their contributions is not a big loss. The Linux kernel does not depend on them. It’s far more important to ensure that every other potential contributor knows that the deal is the same for everyone. The GPL has already been enforced to prevent another company which was doing something similar. GPLv3 makes the deal legally more solid.

Draft 1 is heavy handed

Draft 2 might please people who think draft 1 of GPLv3 is heavy handed in how it deals with Digital Restrictions Management. At FSFE’s recent GPLv3 conference in Barcelona, Stallman mentioned that some of the DRM clauses are probably redundant and will probably be reduced. GPLv3 will still protect user’s freedom from being taken away by DRM, but the licence wording is being lightened. Draft 2 is due out any day now.

"There goes CDs"

For two reasons, I think it was a bad choice of examples to say that not allowing the use of patented media would ban using CDs. First, GPLv3 doesn’t ban the use of patented media, and second, the anti-swpat movement wasn’t against the patents on physical things such as CDs. So it was completely unrelated, but using the example might be mistaken by some as a comment on something that is in or was considered for GPLv3.

Other related links

Videos and transcripts of the GPLv3 conference, both days

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I was really glad that a Fellow of FSFE living in Brussels, Sean Daly, was able to come down to the GPLv3 conference and record the whole thing with his camera. The content is important and high quality, and the goal of this conference was to spread information, so it would have been a terrible waste if we were not able to arrange recordings.

Processing two days of video took some time, and during that time, I worked with Giacomo Poderi and Cristian Rigamonti on making transcripts of Stallman and Moglen’s presentations. Finally, everything is online:

Please pass these URLs around to mailing lists, forums, blogs, and news sites where you can submit stories. That would be a very useful thing to do. The videos are available by BitTorrent, so bandwidth should not be a problem.