Media worries: Georg Greve misqoted by Reuters
Yesterday, Reuters ran a story about the upcoming GPLv3 process. It was based on the official GPLv3 press release (also here) and a telephone discussion with Georg Greve, the president of the Free Software Foundation Europe.
While there are really enough factual news to go around, Reuters picked up on two possible issues to address with the upcoming GPLv3.
One is that GPLv3 would have a patent retaliation clause. While it is true that the GPLv2 was written before software patents were as big an issue as they are now, and therefore some language with respect to the matter should find its way into the GPLv3, the Reuters story originally quoted Georg saying that anyone claiming a software patent would lose the right to use Free Software. This is obviously nonsense.
Georg explained that the next GPL version might include a clause somewhat similar to that in the Mozilla Public License (MPL), based on the idea […] that if someone uses software patents against free software, that company or person loses the right to distribute that particular programme and use it in their product. Unfortunately, the story was published with the wrong quote at first. Moreover, it was not marked as speculation, but rather as a hard fact. By the time they corrected it, it was already all over the place, including Slashdot, which did not react to emails pointing out the mistake.
The second issue is that of an “internet tax”. Obviously, people who create something should be remunerated. While the question of how to do this is not really related to the GPL in any of its versions, the Reuters journalist asked Georg about this topic. Georg answered that while this is not really one of FSFE’s topics, he knows of several ideas, but does not necessarily endorse any of them. Among those is that of a “cultural flatrate”, which could be implemented by levying a small fee on internet connections.
Georg’s clarification of this “internet tax” bit can be found here.
While I’m sceptical of the practice of having interviews approved before publishing, not doing so requires careful handling of the quotes. This does not appear to have been done here.