Pre-class Discussion for Jan 11

• Speaking of selling your soul (er, data) to an OSP, here's your postal mail online--the last(ish) frontier? Personally I would love this service, my snail mail is all but a hassle for me at this point. But of course, there are a slew of concerns from privacy to control to reliability, which somehow, quite irrationally, I worry about less with all my online communications. --Jumpingdeeps 23:00, 10 January 2008 (EST)

Normative Principles for Evaluating Free and Proprietary Software

Prof. Zittrain briefly mentions in his conclusion one solution for the legal imbalance between the free software and proprietary models: shortening the Statute of Limitations on copyright claims against free software providers. Granting that this would, by its nature, reduce the potential volume of litigation against free software providers, does it resolve the problems Prof. Zittrain identified (imbalance of litigation funds, increased identifiability of copyright violations in open source code, anonymity of authorship)? My first instinct is "no, it wouldn't," although Prof. Zittrain noted he would be writing an article about the subject, so perhaps I just haven't sufficiently thought it through.

To my mind, though, there seems no good legal resolution to this problem. The greatest difficulty seems to be that there's no effective locus of liability (or point of control, if you prefer): given that proprietary source code is not open-sourced, the only party involved with a free software project who could have knowledge of copying (or, alternatively, patent violation) is the individual code editor (who, incidentally, is almost assuredly judgment-proof). Thus, so long as there is at least one unscrupulous editor in the pool of editors working on a project - and given GNU/Linux's thousands of editors, there will almost certainly be an unscrupulous editor somewhere - a copyright or patent violation is almost certain. So who can be liable for a violation? As noted, the editors themselves are liability proof; the end-users (see SCO v. IBM) have no knowledge of violations, so if they were liable, the resulting uncertainty about the costs of using a particular product would scare them away from free software generally; and there doesn't appear to be a primary distributor of free software products, nor, if there was one, could it have any greater knowledge of violations than the end-users.

Thus, it appears to me that the only effective defense of the free software movement is blanket liability protection, but doesn't this simply invite users to steal code from proprietary products? Is there some other balance that I fail to see, or are free software and proprietary software simply irreconcilable? Kratville 09:55, 11 January 2008 (EST)

To link things up with other parts of the class, perhaps this is another instance of the Catch-22 of generativity: the more mainstream open-source software gets, the more likely you are to get bad actors. JoshuaFeasel 10:07, 11 January 2008 (EST)

• There are several commercial distributors of free software products, like Red Hat, Novell/SUSE, and perhaps Canonical. Red Hat already provides an "Intellectual Property Warranty" through the Open Source Assurance Program that promises to replace infringing software. Novell offers a similar program that includes indemnification from SCO-like claims. I think the larger point is that individual actors can quite easily tailor their exposure to free-software related risk through existing market tools (e.g., insurance). Of course, that would drive up the total cost of using free software, but as Benkler points out, companies like Amazon and Google probably choose GNU/Linux not because it's cheaper, but because it meets their needs better. Rlumpau 10:09, 11 January 2008 (EST)

• Also, to nitpick: they're not "editors." Perhaps "developers" or "coders" is a better term. Rlumpau 10:10, 11 January 2008 (EST)

A Quick Guide to GPLv3

• Full text of GPLv3
• Client alert on GPLv3 that I helped draft.

Rlumpau 09:43, 11 January 2008 (EST)

Some Confusing or Loaded Words and Phrases that are Worth Avoiding

Obviously, Mr. Stallman (the author of this section) is something of a zealot. Among other things, he clearly wants to distinguish himself and his free software movement from the "less idealistic" open source movement, and this entire section exudes an "us-against-them" attitude. But, hypothetically, if copyleft were unavailable and the free software users of GPL licenses were forced into other models, would they stop coding altogether? Or would they simply shift to Stallman's detested "open source" model? If - as I happen to think is the case - they would probably just adopt open source as the least of all available evils and continue their work, isn't it universally economically advantageous to eliminate copyleft, as that would encourage profit-motivated coders to work on previously-copylefted software, while still permitting those who otherwise would have worked on free software to modify the same open source code and release their changes (with source) free of charge? Kratville 10:05, 11 January 2008 (EST)

• "Universally" is a strong word. It would be economically advantageous to the profit-motivated coders, but disadvantageous to all those coders who had worked on the open-source software prior to its appropriation by a profit-minded coder who adds a (perhaps trivial) patch and declares his version proprietary. It might also be disadvantageous to users who want the software but cannot afford the cost, and disadvantageous to society as a whole if those users would provide a net benefit.

• It is telling that Mr. Stallman distinguishes between "free" and "free-of-charge;" the profit-minded coders have ample opportunity to offer their services as technical support for a subscription fee (I believe this is part of Red Hat's business model), and ultimately it is a macroeconomic question as to whether there is a net benefit from this action as opposed to the creation of proprietary software in its place. Eroggenkamp 10:13, 11 January 2008 (EST)

• Also, I don't know whether proprietizing software will create significantly more opportunities for money-minded programmers--after all, they can already code their own proprietary version of any free software program they want. JoshuaFeasel 10:15, 11 January 2008 (EST)

• RMS is certainly a character. Zealot is one way to describe him; others call him a visionary. It's quite likely that without his uncompromising position, the software industry would be very different today. No matter what you think of him, I think his central point is that it is simply not an economics issue. The ability to profit from software, while important, is not the goal. The licenses are designed to ensure that users and developers have certain freedoms. It's much more of a normative question than profit maximization by indivudual actors. Rlumpau 10:21, 11 January 2008 (EST)

• A little RMS fun: 1 and 2

Microsoft Takes On the Free World

• Do Microsoft's threats demonstrate that free software is more vulnerable than proprietary software to legal action, or does the Open Invention Network suggest that the problem is less significant? Smaller, less business-oriented free software projects are less likely to get this kind of help from large corporations, but are these projects less susceptible to legal threats as well? JoshuaFeasel 09:59, 11 January 2008 (EST)
• Perhaps the question isn't vulnerability to legal action (since it's not clear whether the suit has any merit), it's willingness to sue. I noticed that the article mentioned the Open Invention Network, which could potentially file a patent countersuit against Microsoft; but the FOSS producers have little to no incentive to file suit, whereas Microsoft has every incentive to attack competitors that may pose a threat to its near-monopoly. Eroggenkamp 10:13, 11 January 2008 (EST)

What This Gadget Can Do is Up to You

• It looks like other companies are warming up to the idea of open hardware. In September 2007, AMD/ATI released over 900 pages of GPU specifications; AMD is now working an on open-source driver for their recent chipsets. PDF goodness available from x.org.
  • By way of background, the consumer-grade GPU market is dominated by NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, and Intel. Until recently, most of the drivers (as distinguished from hardware specifications) for Linux have been distributed as object code without the accompanying source code. Intel has been working on free drivers for their hardware, and a number of independently created drivers are available. However, the reverse-engineering process is quite difficult without access to hardware specs, so the AMD/ATI move is excellent news for the free software community.
• Another example of free hardware is OpenMoko, an open hardware/software mobile phone platform. Unlike Google's Android and the closed iPhone, OpenMoko provides access to hardware specs.

Rlumpau 09:58, 11 January 2008 (EST)