Subject: Fwd: Re: Your old articles

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:26:51 +0200

Hi all.

This is my reply to RMS after he reported some factual and phrasing comments 
to some FOSS-related resources on my site, which may be of general interest to 
this list.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Subject: Re: Your old articles
From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:19:56 +0200

Dear Dr. Stallman,

thanks for your E-mail. I apologise for any factual or spiritual errors in my 
documents, and see below for my comments.

I also apologise for the fact that KMail is breaking the long URLs in the 
quotes parts. This is due to a Qt 4 bug that is outside the control of the 
KDE/KMail people, which most KMail users hope will be fixed soon. Note, that I 
could view the original unbroken URLs fine when you sent them.

On Thursday 10 Mar 2011 01:03:20 Richard Stallman wrote:
> I'm unhappy with your article
> http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/foss-other-beasts/revision-2/foss-and-
> other-beasts.xml. In addition to the various problems you would imagine,
> here are some errors.
> 
>      The Berkeley University forked its own version of AT&T UNIX and
> started re-writing parts of the code, and incorporating many changes of
> its own.
>      The original parts were licensed under the BSD license which is a
>      copyright
>      licence that is almost entirely Public Domain. The BSD system became
>      very
>      popular (perhaps even more than the AT&T one).
> 
> Several errors there.
> 
> I think "original" is the wrong word.  BSD was originally Unix from
> AT&T.

Yes, maybe it should be "new" parts. I'll correct it in a new version.

> 
> Berkeley did not start releasing code under the original BSD license
> until the late 80s.  Before that, Berkeley's changes were proprietary
> and available only to AT&T licensees.

Ah, I see. It's good to know. I wasn't around at the time as I was born in 
1977 and only started programming in 1987 using various dialects of BASIC for 
the early PC machines, and was only fully introduced to the world of 
UNIXes/POSIX and GNU only later on in about 1996 when I got a job for an early 
web-design company. I recall thinking of prep.ai.mit.edu (= the old mirror for 
GNU) as an interesting host from which I could download software in source 
form and build it, which often proved to be useful, and was not aware of the 
implications of the GPL and LGPL. 

Anyway, I'll revise a future version of the article. I also hope to 
incorporate there some of the material I wrote for this one:

http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Open_Source_Software

I realise you won't like the fact that I usually referred to free software as 
"open source", and it's OK for you to be angry with me about that, but there 
are some terms I consciously deviate with from the GNU "terms-to-avoid" page:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html

(While trying to comply with other terms.)

Let's just say that it's a known bug in our mutual relationship, and we'll 
agree that you will be unhappy with that about me. You don't have to consider 
me as a friend, but at least we can help both help each other in the cause of 
promoting free software and similar free or at least redistributable cultural 
works (e.g: artwork under one of the Creative Commons licences, etc.). 

> 
>      What Sun Microsystems initially did was actually take the BSD source
>      code,
>      diverge from it and distribute it without full access to the code.
> 
> Note that this is little different from what Berkely was doing at the
> time.

Ah, yes, it is caused by what you said earlier. I'll revise the document in a 
future revision, and also add some errata for the existing version.

> 
>      To answer this threat, a new phenomenon sprang into existence: the
>      "free
>      software" movement, the GNU project and the copyleft licences, all led
>      by
>      one dynamic personality: Richard M. Stallman.
> 
> That's not accurate.  My decision to develop GNU was not a response to
> what AT&T, Berkeley and Sun were doing.  First I decided to make a
> free operating system.  Then I decided to make it Unix-compatible, as
> a technical decision.  At that time, I had never used Unix, but I knew
> it was proprietary software.
> 

I see. I'll correct it. Did you pick UNIX (instead of VMS, or other operating 
systems that were popular at the time) due to the availability of the source 
(although possibly under a non-free licence)? You also mentioned in a talk 
you've given to free software enthusiasts in Israel, that you consciously made 
a decision to make the GNU projects' C code only 32-bit instead of both 16-bit 
and 32-bit because you predicted that 16-bit systems will die and 32-bit will 
be the future (a prediction which turned out to be correct and wise.), even 
though 32-bit computers back then (e.g: the various VAXen and IBM's S/360) 
were still relatively uncommon. I forgot what I wanted to ask. :-)

>      Restrictive Integration by Other Code bases - GPL code can only be
>      linked
>      against code with free software licences that match some criteria.
> This property has been recently referred to as "viral".
> 
> That term is insulting and false.  Please don't repeat it
> without explaining why it is false.
> 

You are naturally right. I will say why it is not truly "viral", and why it 
should be avoided. I should also note that I've heard little use of it in a 
long time when talking to similar free software enthusiasts on various 
Internet mediums, but may still mention it (with the natural caveat) out of 
being a historical relic.

>      The incentive to restrict a software this way rather than following
> the traditional virtually public domain BSD licence, was to make sure that
> the
>      core GNU system would always remain free as well.
> 
> The original BSD license did not exist yet, but other lax permissive
> licenses showed be the danger.  Specifically TeX.
> 

Ah, fair enough. I'll mention it there. Lots of corrections to do.

> 
> 
>  http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/human-hacking-field-guide/r
> ms.html
> 
>  more or less the same as "Open Source Software",
> 
> That is backwards.  Free software came first; 15 years later, open source
> was coined as another name for it.

I agree. However, most people will be more familiar with the term "open 
source" than with what is meant by free software. Maybe I'll rephrase the 
necessary part from:

<quote>
In case you don't know, RMS is Richard M. Stallman. RMS was originally one of 
the original MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory hackers. He coined the 
term "Free Software" ("Free" as in "Free Speech"), which is more or less the 
same as "Open Source Software", except for some semantic and historical 
differences. He then went on to create the GNU Project, which has created a 
great deal of open-source software which consists of a large part of modern-
day Linuxes now. (but is also available for other operating systems) 
</quote>

Into:

<quote>
In case you don't know, RMS is Richard M. Stallman. He was one of the original 
hackers in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He also coined the term 
"Free Software" ("Free" as "Free Speech") which describes the phenomenon and 
culture we now know as "open source software", which is similar, except for 
some semantic and historical differences. He then went on to create the GNU 
project, in which a great deal of free software (or "open source" one if you 
may) which makes up a large and integral part of modern-day Linux systems now. 
(But is also available and commonly utilised in many other operating systems, 
both UNIX-like and not so UNIX-like operating systems.)
</quote>

> 
> 						  except for some
>  semantic and historical differences. He then went on to create the GNU
>  Project, which has created a great deal of open-source software which
>  consists of a large part of modern-day Linuxes now. (but is also
>  available for other operating systems)
> 
> It is really annoying that you write about my work and call it "open
> source" so much.

Yes, see how I rephrased it above. I'm sorry that you feel I am doing you a 
disservice by calling the packages of the GNU project "open-source". Like I 
said, I don't find saying that free software packages are "open-source" is an 
issue, because I don't feel (and I have good linguistics and semantic reasons 
for that, though I'm sure you won't be convinced), it's a bad term to describe 
that phenomenon. Anyway, I hope you'll be content with the rewrite, which will 
be featured in "Version 2" of the story, which will incorporate some other 
major changes I have in mind to the text and the plot. I will mention your 
reservations to "Version 1" in
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/conclusions/ (the Conclusions 
and Reviews section), and may also revise the text in the first version 
accordingly.

I hope you otherwise enjoyed reading the story "The Human Hacking Field Guide" 
and found it entertaining.

---------------------

Thanks for all of your important comments, and I hope you'll have a fun and 
constructive visit to Israel and to the Palestinian authority in Julyish. 

All that put aside, I would appreciate it, if you can reply to my original E-
mail (attached to this message) regarding your opinion regarding "Not Fully-
Free Cultural/Artistic/Media Works" with respect to free software, because 
many people on the Creative Commons mailing list and possibly elsewhere (as 
well as myself) are interested in learning your opinion, which we'd like to 
make public.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Subject: Your Opinion Regarding Not-Fully-Free Cultural/Artistic/Media Works with Respect to Free Software
From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 12:54:49 +0200

Hi Mr. Stallman,

first of all, thanks for coming to Israel again in the Summer, and thanks for 
visiting the Palestinian authority as well, because they also could use some 
encouragement and advocacy to use free software. I hope you'll enjoy your 
visit and find it fruitful.

In any case, in this thread on the Creative Commons mailing list:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2011-March/006049.html

We've been speculating about your opinion (and the FSF's official stance) 
about the licensing of non-software cultural/artistic/media works. As a 
result, I would be happy if you can answer the following questions, which I 
would like to share with the mailing list and possibly post them on one of my 
weblogs (with your permission).

Here goes:

1. I know you believe that non-free, public, software (which Joel Spolsky 
calls "shrinkwrap" software here - 
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html ) that is not free or 
even not entirely free, is illegitimate and immoral. However, do you believe 
that in an ideal world, such software should be illegal?

Alternatively, do you think the law should allow non-free software to be 
marketed (given some natural limitations on which restrictions would be held 
as legal and valid.) and protected, while still allowing competition from free 
software and naturaly advocacy against the use of non-free software?

2. Do you believe that one can prevent commercial use and commercial 
redistribution (i.e: mass selling for a profit) of their otherwise publicly 
available artwork? (Similar to the -nc variants of the Creative Commons 
licences.)

3. Do you believe that one can completely prevent derivative works of one's 
otherwise public artwork? (Similar to the -nd variants of the Creative Commons 
licences.).

4. In this Slashdot.org feature:

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/05/01/09/191257/

you were quoted as saying that:

[quote]
What is the future of free software development for games? Is it possible? 
Will the games ever equal or surpass their proprietary competitors? Why should 
we care? After thoroughly researching the free and open source software model, 
and interviewing both indie and free software game developers, author Matt 
Barton decided that the future is indeed very bright. Stallman is quoted here 
saying that game engines should be free, but approves of the notion that 
graphics, music, and stories could all be separate and treated differently 
(i.e., "Non-Free.")"
[/quote]

Can you confirm this?

----------------------------------

Please reply when you find the time for that, because we would be very 
interested in knowing of your opinion.

Thanks again for all your work as part of the Free Software Foundation or 
outside it, and I hope I'll be able to meet you again during your visit to 
Israel assuming I won't be feeling under the weather.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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