July 5, 2023

FOSSY 2023

Summary

This show was released on Wednesday 5 July 2023; its running time is 00:05:55.

Show Notes

March 9, 2021

0x6C: Even More DMCA Exemption Requests!

Summary

This show was released on Tuesday 9 March 2021; its running time is 00:52:52.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:39)

• Supporters of Conservancy can join this mailing list to hear and see live recordings of every show!

Segment 1 (06:30)

• Conservancy filed a DMCA exemption request for wireless routers, and updated it with their long comment on the issue.
• NPR's Planet Money had a show that discussed how recycling plastic in the USA was somewhat of a large con game funded by the plastics industry. Both audio a transcript is available. (19:32, 20:44)

Segment 2 (29:10)

• Bradley and Karen discuss the third exemption request that Conservancy filed, for research to find privacy flaws, and updated it with a long comment on the issue.
• Karen and Bradley noted that individuals can file reply comments before the deadline of Wednesday 10 March 2021 at 23:59 US/Eastern. Note that the “neutral comment” requirement appears to no longer be listed; the 2021-03-10 (47:20)



Tags: faif, copyright

January 14, 2021

0x6B: GPL Enforcement Investigation DMCA Exemption Request

Summary

This show was released on Thursday 14 January 2021; its running time is 00:51:45.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:39)

• Bradley claims that you'll now love the audcast more than ever (02:51)
• Conservancy filed many exemptions as part of the currently ongoing triennial DMCA Process. (02:50)

Segment 1 (04:22)

• Everyone in the Free Software community wishes the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act didn't exist. (05:24)
• Bradley is currently doing research going to the year 1790 that shows the foundations of the copyright act, but Karen points out that Bradley isn't a professional copyright historian (yet). He points out he is an amateur copyright historian (05:45)
• DMCA is the USA's implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), but is more a restrictive copyright act than the WCT requires. (06:50)
• Bradley mentioned that the three videos from the Copyright Office, which are linked to from Conservancy's blog post on the subject that, while they are Copyright Office propaganda, that are helpful to explain the DMCA (10:57):
  • A Legal Overview of § 1201 (PDF slides only).
  • The Triennial Rulemaking Process for §1201 (PDF slides only).
  • Streamlined Petitions for Renewed Exemptions (PDF slides only).
• Conservancy filed the most exemption requests in the 2020/2021 Rulemaking Process (21:25)

Segment 2 (28:07)

• Conservancy filed an exemption request and a “Long Form” comment in support of it that was labeled “Class 16: Computer Programs &—; Copyright License Investigation” by the Copyright Office (29:00)
• Bradley mentioned that people can get arrested just for giving talks under the DMCA, referring to Dmitry Sklyarov. Adobe simply called the FBI and got him arrested under DMCA. (38:50)

Segment 3 (34:36)

If you are a Conservancy Supporter as well as being a FaiFCast listener, you can join this mailing list to receive announcements of live recordings and attend them through Conservancy's Big Blue Button (BBB) server.

Tags: faif, copyright, copyleft, Conservancy

March 31, 2020

0x6A: Live Show from SeaGL 2019

Summary

The first live podcast of Free as in Freedom, hosted at SeaGL 2019 in November 2019. Hear questions from the studio audience and answers from Bradley and Karen.

This show was released on Tuesday 31 March 2020; its running time is 1:21:02.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

Producer Dan speaks on mic to introduce that this is a live show.

Segment 1 (01:17)

• This is a live show from SeaGL 2019, a community-organized FaiP (02:15)
• Carol Smith from Microsoft asked about being a charity in the USA under recent tax changes regarding tax deduction and, and asked about Conservancy's annual fundraiser which had completed by the time this show was released. (04:53)
• Deb took a photo during the show (07:30)
• A questioner asked about the so-called “ethical but-non-FOSS licenses”. Bradley gave an answer that is supplemented well by this blog post (10:15) and Karen mentioned at CopyleftConf 2020 there was a discussion about this. (15:15) The follow up question was also related to these topics (15:44).
• Eric Hopper asked about how Conservancy decides when a project joins, and what factors Conservancy considers in projects joining (18:14)
• A written questioner asked how to handle schools requiring proprietary software as part of their coursework. (22:00)
• Michael Dexter asked about Karen's teaching at Columbia Law School. (27:25)
• A written questioner asked about copyleft-next's sunset clause. (29:22) Karen mentioned “Copyleft, All wrongs reversed” as it appeared on n June 1976 on Tiny BASIC, which inspired the term copyleft to mean what it does today. (30:45)
• Karen spoke about the issues of copyright and trademark regarding Disney, that is supplemented by this blog post. (32:52)
• Carol Smith asked what Karen and Bradley thought were Conservancy's and/or FOSS' biggest achievements in the last decade. (35:20) Karen mentioned Outreachy was a major success. (37:08)
• A questioner asked about using the CASE Act to help in GPL enforcement. Bradley discussed how it might ultimately introduce problems similar to arbitration clauses. (41:42) Since the podcast was recorded, the CASE Act has also passed the Senate, but does not seem to have been signed by the President. (47:30)
• Bradley noted that Mako Hill has pointed out that FOSS has not been involved in lobbying enough. (48:10)
• A questioner in the audience asked about the Mozilla Corporation structure would allow Mozilla to do lobbying for FOSS. (50:57) Karen explained the Mozilla corporate legal structure (51:35).
• A questioner in the audience asked about Mako Hill's keynote and how individuals can help further the cause of software freedom. (54:53)
• Michael Dexter asked if software patents are still as much of a threat as they once were. (1:01:30)
• Carol asked about the supreme court hearing the Oracle v. Google case (1:09:04)

Tags: faif, Conservancy

November 12, 2019

0x69: Microsoft's E-Book Platform and Other DRM Disasters

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the end to Microsoft's e-book platform and generally the dangers and disasters that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) cause for software users and developers.

This show was released on Tuesday 12 November 2019; its running time is 00:46:57.

Show Notes

Karen and Bradley discuss the end to Microsoft's e-book platform and generally the dangers and disasters that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) cause for software users and developers.

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley mentioned that Microsoft ended their e-book platform. He said this was “last month” but we ended up releasing this show late, so it was in August 2019 (01:31).
• Bradley mentioned the analog hole. (09:50)
• Karen discussed the exception process under DMCA, which Conservancy participated in regarding “Smart” TVs. (12:30)
• Bradley mentioned this historical burning of the Library of Alexandria as a Roman weapon, comparing it to DRM. (15:07)
• Bradley talked about how Netflix and Microsoft used Silverlight initially as the method of DRM, and that Microsoft was a leader in the entertainment industry in providing DRM (20:00)

Segment 1 (26:31)

• Bradley and Karen discuss how DRM and other lock-down of devices, including medical devices, are creating problems in society generally.
• Karen noted that the role of for-profit companies is not to safeguard the public interest. (41:10)
• Bradley mentioned you can turn off DRM on the Google Play store for your book (as the publisher). (43:04)

Tags: faif, microsoft, Conservancy

May 31, 2019

0x68: Molly De Blanc at CopyleftConf 2019

Summary

Bradley and Karen enjoy and discuss Molly De Blanc's keynote at the first annual CopyleftConf, entitled The Margins of Software Freedom, followed by an exclusive interview with Molly!

This show was released on Friday 31 May 2019; its running time is 00:58:07.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Bradley mentioned (without the title) the film, When a Stranger Calls, which is indeed a real movie, not a TV movie, and was from the late 1970s — although Bradley saw it on TV sometime in the 1980s. (02:15)

Segment 1 (04:11)

A recording of Molly De Blanc's keynote at the first annual (2019) CopyleftConf, entitled entitled The Margins of Software Freedom. Slides for Molly's talk are available on her gitlab account.

Segment 2 (20:11)

Bradley and Karen talk about the keynote and set up the interview.

Segment 3 (23:56)

Extended interview with Molly from on site at CopyleftConf 2019!

Segment 4 (34:06)

• Bradley and Karen discuss what ideas Molly's interview got them thinking about.
• Bradley wrote a blog post about Delta's anti-union marketing. (40:50)
• Molly De Blanc is now an employee at the GNOME Foundation and President of the Open Source Initiative (52:53)



Tags: faif, GPL, security, social justice

May 11, 2019

0x67: Analysis of Two Backports of GPLv3 Termination Provisions to GPLv2

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss two additional permissions that can be used to “backport” the GPLv3 Termination provisions to GPLv2 — the Kernel Enforcement Statement Additional Permission, and the Red Hat Cooperation Commitment. A blog post on Conservancy's site summarizes the discussion on this show.

This show was released on Saturday 11 May 2019; its running time is 00:41:56.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley mentioned irregardless is not actually a word, but it does appear to be slang, which dates back to 1795! (03:23)
• The additional permission system was codified as a formal part of GPLv3, but are generally more informal under GPLv2. (05:24)
• Karen explained what the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement. (07:49)
• Karen mentioned that Daleks terminate! (08:51)

Segment 1 (13:04)

• Bradley mentioned the inbound=outbound FOSS licensing contributor assent system (18:15)

Segment 2 (26:10)

• Karen and Bradley discuss the term “non-defensive” and what it means.
• Bradley mentioned the Twin Peaks lawsuit as a non-hypothetical case where the RHCC would not apply where GPL enforcement was used by Red Hat itself as a retaliation tactic. (29:23)
• The Kernel Enforcement Statement and the RHCC are available online.

Segment 3 (38:40)

The next episode of will be an interview with Molly De Blanc and recording of her keynote at CopyleftConf 2019

Tags: faif, GPL, copyright

April 22, 2019

0x66: The End of Hellwig vs. VMware

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the details of the completion of the lawsuit (which Conservancy supported) between Christoph Hellwig and VMware in Germany.

This show was released on Monday 22 April 2019; its running time is 00:38:29.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Bradley mentioned the episode of Red Dwarf, White Hole, where the characters are speaking too slowly or two quickly due to time differentials. (01:30)
• Bradley explained that the Hellwig vs. VMware suit in Germany has concluded. (03:30)
• German is a civil law legal system. (05:15)
• Christoph Hellwig announced on his website that he has decided not to appeal. (07:18)
• Bradley did a technical analysis how much of Christoph's code appeared in the infringing VMware product. (07:50)
• Till Jaeger was Christoph's lawyer; Till was also the lawyer for Harald Welte's (currently defunct) gpl-violations.org project. (09:04)

Segment 1 (09:26)

• “Trolling” refers to being a non-practicing entity. Patrick McHardy is specifically a practicing entity, since he upstreamed a lot of code in Linux. (09:50)
• Bradley was thinking of the patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. (10:40)
• Bradley that the Eastern district of Texas hears many patent cases in the USA. (10:50)
• Bradley mentioned a This American Life, Episode 411, which discussed patents. Show hosts/producers Laura Sydell and Alex Blumberg visit one of those “empty-but-not” office buildings in the Eastern District of Texas. (11:18)
• Bradley and Karen wrote about Patrick McHardy's behavior back in July 2016 — Conservancy was the first to talk about it publicly. Bradley sought to prevent the “compliance industrial complex” from using knowledge of Patrick's behavior to unduly scare people. (13:10)
• Conservancy (with FSF) also published the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement (15:10)
• The rest of the Netfilter team, except for Patrick McHardy, endorsed the Principles. (16:30)
• The VMware suit started 2015-03-05, and began before Patrick McHardy started his problematic behavior. While the VMware suit was working its way through the court, McHardy had filed many inappropriate lawsuits. (18:30)
• German court decisions are very rarely published, but thanks to hard work by everyone involved, the appeal decision, and the lower Court's decision (the latter of which was also translated into English.) (27:30)

Segment 2 (33:01)

Tags: faif, copyright, patents, copyleft

April 2, 2019

0x65: Linux Foundation's Community Bridge

Summary

This show was released on Tuesday 2 April 2019; its running time is 00:47:17.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Conservancy helped Free Software Foundation and GNOME Foundation begin fiscal sponsorship work. (07:50)
• Conservancy has always been very coordinated with Software in the Public Interest, which is a FOSS fiscal sponsor that predates Conservancy. (08:26)
• Conservancy helped NumFocus get started as a fiscal sponsor by providing advice. (08:53)
• The above are all 501(c)(3) charities, but there are also 501(c)(6) fiscal sponsors, such as Linux Foundation and Eclipse Foundation. (10:00)
• Bradley mentioned that projects that are forks can end up in different fiscal sponsors, such as Hudson being in Eclipse Foundation, and Jenkins being associated with a Linux Foundation sub-org. (10:30)
• Bradley mentioned that any project — be it SourceForge, GitHub, or Community Bridge — that attempts to convince FOSS developers to use proprietary software for their projects is immediately suspect (12:00)
• Open Collective, a for-profit company seeking to do fiscal sponsorship (but attempting to release their code for it) is likely under the worst “competitive” threat from this initiative. (19:50)

Segment 1 (21:23)

• Projects that use CommunityBridge are required to act in the common business interest of the Linux Foundation members. (27:30)
• Board of Directors seats at the Linux Foundation are for sale, according to their by-laws. (28:50)
• Bradley advises that you should not put anything copylefted into CommunityBridge — given Linux Foundation's position on copyleft and citing the ArduPilot/DroneCode example. (29:50)
• CommunityBridge appears to only allow governance based on the “benevolent dictator for life model” (31:40), at least with regard to who controls the money (34:30)
• Bradley mentioned the LWN article about Community Bridge. (33:22)

Segment 2 (36:54)

• Karen mentioned that CommunityBridge also purports to address diversity and security issues for FOSS projects. (37:00)
• Bradley mentioned the code hosted on k.sfconservancy.org and also the Reimbursenator project that PSU students wrote. (42:00)

Segment 3 (42:44)

Bradley and Karen discuss (or, possibly don't) discuss what's coming up on the next episode. Fact of the matter is that this announcement wasn't written yet when we recorded this episode and we weren't sure if 0x65 would be released before or after that announcement was released. We'll be discussing that topic on 0x66.

Tags: faif, licensing, Conservancy, Linux Foundation

March 27, 2019

0x64: Our Producer Dan Lynch Interviewed at Copyleft Conf 2019

Summary

Bradley and Karen interview their own producer, Dan Lynch, on site at Copyleft Conf 2019.

This show was released on Wednesday 27 March 2019; its running time is 00:36:00.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:46)

• Karen now teaches teaches a course at Columbia University. (03:40)
• In addition to being the producer of Free as in Freedom, Dan Lynch was the host of Rat Hole Radio, the co-host of Linux Outlaws, and currently co-hosts Hollywood Outlaws. (04:30)

Segment 1 (5:19)

• Dan helps co-organize Oggcamp which is having its tenth-anniversary event on Saturday 19 October 2019. (08:00)
• Bradley mentioned the phrase from IT Crowd quote: Did you see that ludicrous display last night? (11:08)
• Dan talked about The Manchester Ship Canal. (13:16)
• Dan promoted Hollywood Outlaws where he and his co-host Fab talk about Bosch. (23:18)
• Dan promoted his own podcast about comics called Tales of the Unattested. (23:27)
• Dan Lynch has a personal website, which has his blog. (23:55)
• Bradley referenced the phrase You are no Jack Kennedy which was stated by Bentsen on Wednesday 5 October 1988 during the VP debate between Quayle and Bentsen for the 1988 USA Presidential campaign. Details and background of this are explained by NBC in this story. (26:30)

Segment 2 (28:23)

Bradley and Karen briefly dissect the interview with Dan.

Segment 3 (32:22)

Karen and Bradley mention that they'll discuss the Linux Foundation initiative, “Community Bridge” in the next episode. If you want a preview Bradley and Karen's thoughts, you can read their blog post about Linux Foundation's “Community Bridge” initiative.

Tags: faif, conferences, copyleft

March 20, 2019

0x63: Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today? (Part IV)

Summary

In their final installment regarding their joint keynote at FOSDEM 2019, entitled: Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today?: Confessions of Activists Who Try But Fail to Avoid Proprietary Software, you listeners can hear the final product — a recording of the actual FOSDEM keynote. Afterwards, Karen and Bradley compare notes on what went wrong and what went right (but mostly what went wrong) during the talk.

This show was released on Wednesday 20 March 2019; its running time is 01:10:28.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:35)

Bradley and Karen talk logistics of how the talk is embedded in the audio.

Segment 1 (00:04:14)

The audio in this segment taken directly from the video of Karen and Bradley's FOSDEM 2019 opening keynote, entitled Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today? Confessions of Activists Who Try But Fail to Avoid Proprietary Software, which was given . If you'd rather watch the video, you can do so via FSODEM's video site in either webm format or in mp4 format.

Segment 2 (00:46:01)

• Karen mentioned “time shifting”, which was permitted for the public, despite accusations of copyright infringement, in the Betamax case. (55:10)

Segment 3 (01:05:31)

Karen and Bradley mention that the next episode will be an interview with Dan Lynch recorded at CopyleftConf 2019.

Tags: faif, conferences, FOSDEM

March 12, 2019

0x62: Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today? (Part III)

Summary

Bradley and Karen have the last pre-talk installment of discussing the preparation for their joint keynote at FOSDEM 2019, entitled: Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today?: Confessions of Activists Who Try But Fail to Avoid Proprietary Software. This episode is the third of three episodes where Bradley and Karen record their preparation conversations for this keynote address. In this particular episode, they discuss the issue of letting others use proprietary software on your behalf, the problem of relying too much on that, and then finish up discussing with how they'll include this material into the final talk.

This show was released on Tuesday 12 March 2019; its running time is 00:28:00.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Karen discussed the idea of a shabbos goy, and the analogy between that and allowing other people use proprietary on your behalf. (02:58)
• Bradley and Karen discussed that it is equally abhorrent to ask someone else to use proprietary software for you as it is to use yourself, since someone's software freedom is compromised in any event (06:58)
• Bradley mentioned that he had previously applied to serve on the USA's Internal Revenue Service (IRS)'s Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee (ETAAC). Bradley mentioned how sadly the IRS typically accepts people from proprietary software companies like Intuit but has to his knowledge never accepted anyone involved in FOSS software for IRS form preparation (10:02)
• Bradley mentioned the Free Software PDF fill-in tools evince and flpsed (12:24)
• Karen stated that Conservancy's policy is that: We care so much about software freedom that we would rather use proprietary software than have someone else lose their software freedom. (15:20)
• Karen mentioned that her Linux Conf Australia 2019, Right to Not Broadcast, which you can view online. (22:18)

Segment 1 (23:15)

• Bradley mentioned the A-Team line, “I love it when a plan comes together”. (23:23)
• Bradley and Karen generally discuss the final plans for incorporating this material into the keynote

Tags: faif, FOSDEM, social justice

February 19, 2019

0x61: Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today? (Part II)

Summary

Bradley and Karen continue the process of preparing their joint keynote at FOSDEM 2019, entitled: Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today?: Confessions of Activists Who Try But Fail to Avoid Proprietary Software. This episode is the second of three episodes where Bradley and Karen record their preparation conversations for this keynote address. In this particular episode, they discuss the golden age in history when they used very little proprietary software, and then discuss the beginning of their personal Dark Ages of using some proprietary software.

This show was released on Tuesday 19 February 2019; its running time is 00:35:23.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley mentioned The Who's destruction of their instruments and his discomfort with it in relation to computers. (06:10)
• Bradley and Karen mentioned their long-time use of the HTC Dream (07:30)
• Bradley mentioned that he helped start the Replicant project, but his primary contribution was its name. (08:24)

Segment 1 (12:34)

• Karen mentioned the pinball machine that she owns. (12:50)
• Bradley mentioned the Dead Kennedys album, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. (25:10)
• Karen and Bradley discuss proprietary Javascript. (28:20)
• This is the screen you get if you attempt to use Google maps without Javascript. (28:45) Karen was wrong about this image no longer appearing. The image linked to here is from the day before our FOSDEM keynote was delivered. (29:55)
• Bradley and Karen recorded this episode while on site at LinuxConf Australia 2019. They had dinner the night this was recorded at a restaurant called, Dux Dine in Christchurch, NZ. There were, in fact, ducks dining at Dux Dine. (35:07)

Tags: faif, conferences, FOSDEM

January 13, 2019

0x60: Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today? (Part I)

Summary

Bradley and Karen pull back the curtain and begin the process of preparing their joint keynote at FOSDEM 2019, entitled: Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today?: Confessions of Activists Who Try But Fail to Avoid Proprietary Software. This episode is the first of multiple episodes where Bradley and Karen record their preparation conversations for this keynote address.

This show was released on Sunday 13 January 2019; its running time is 00:36:37.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

Segment 1 (07:13)

• Bradley read out the abstract from Bradley and Karen's keynote, Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today? Confessions of Activists Who Try But Fail to Avoid Proprietary Software at FOSDEM 2019. (circa 10:00)
• This started for Bradley with the HTC Dream, and Karen's struggle started with her heart device (10:42)
• Bradley and Karen discussed how they plan to organize their FOSDEM 2019 joint keynote.
• Bradley mentioned that if Karen and Bradley recorded an episode of the two of them reading Lorem Ipsum that listeners would likely still listen. Karen disagreed. (33:05)

Tags: faif, conferences, FOSDEM

December 31, 2018

0x5F: Was 2018 the Year of Non-FOSS Licensing?

Summary

Bradley and Karen return, as promised, in 2018 (just barely)! They discuss the many non-FOSS and otherwise software-freedom-unfriendly licenses that have been promulgated in 2018.

This show was released on Monday 31 December 2018; its running time is 00:36:49.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

Bradley and Karen discuss ideas for what to do with the oggcast going forward.

Segment 2 (07:49)

• Bradley mentioned the field of endeavor restriction in Open Source Defintion. (09:20)
• Bradley mentioned how badly Amazon treats its workers who pack boxes, which was widely reported this month (10:22).
• Bradley referenced that someone changed attempted to change a license on a project to prohibit use by USA border protection agents. This was the Lerna project, and Bradley wrote a blog post about it earlier this year. (12:14)
• Bradley mentioned the controversy about the new MongoDB license, the SS Public License, which Bradley also wrote a blog post about earlier this year (14:09)
• karen reports that many people at the Sustain OSS Conference were surprised that sustaining the idelogy of software freedom was something that people value. (27:10)



Tags: faif, licensing

November 1, 2016

0x5E: Conservancy's ContractPatch Initiative

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss Conservancy's ContractPatch Initiative that will help Free Software developers negotiate their agreements with employers.

This show was released on Tuesday 1 November 2016; its running time is 00:50:29.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

• Software Freedom Conservancy has two blog posts and a mailing list to discuss the Contract Patch initiative (02:40).
• Bradley searched for the NPR story he mentioned but just couldn't find it, but he did fine a similar one covering terms of service agreements (08:30)
• Karen mentioned the the Outreachy Project of Conservancy. (09:30)
• The Google Map API ToS states that you have to pay for it after a certain amount of usage (17:30)
• Bradley mentioned the book, What Color Is Your Parachute? (24:30)
• The “put it in writing” commercials from AT&T and MCI. (46:44)

Tags: faif, commercial, Conservancy

September 21, 2016

0x5D: Conference Report, 1st Half of 2016

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss Conservancy's conference trips and presentations during the first half of 2016.

This show was released on Wednesday 21 September 2016; its running time is 00:53:28.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

• Bradley attended and spoke at FOSDEM 2016 and LinuxConf Australia 2016 (03:10)
• Bradley and Karen co-coordinated the FOSDEM 2016 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom (04:43)
• Tom Marble did an interview-format discussion with Richard M. Stallman at FOSDEM 2016 (04:55)
• Bradley gave two talks at FOSDEM 2016, Copyleft For the Next Decade: A Comprehensive Plan for the GPL and A Beautiful Build: Releasing Linux Source Correctly (06:40)
• Richard Fontana gave a talk at FOSDEM 2016 entitled Open source foundations: threat or menace? (08:15)
• The Doge take on FOSDEM 2016 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom was Much politics. Many peoples. (11:00)
• There was a Conservancy Supporter event at the Novotel Grand Place in Brussels at FOSDEM 2016. (14:00)
• Bradley gave a talk at LCA 2016. (15:20)
• Karen gave the closing keynote at LibrePlanet 2016, entitled Companies, free software, and you . (16:54)
• Karen Sandler gave a talk at the Linux Foundation's Embedded Linux Conference 2016 entitled Tales of Enforcement (27:00)
• Karen gave a talk at at the Postgres Conference in New York. (34:26)
• Bradley and Karen were both on a panels at OSCON. (35:00)
• Bradley and Karen flipped burgers (vegan ones and otherwise) at the OSCON 2016 party. (39:30)
• Bradley gave a keynote at OSS 2016. (45:05)
• Bradley spoke at two user groups in Norway as well. He hasn't made the blog post he mentioned yet, but plans to. (45:50)
• Karen mentioned Episode 0x4A which discussed the OpenStack CLA debate. (50:50)

Tags: faif, OSCON, conferences, FOSDEM, Conservancy

September 2, 2016

0x5C: Basic FLOSS Concepts: Licensing 101

Summary

Bradley and Karen give a basic introduction of copyright licensing of Open Source and Free Software.

This show was released on Friday 2 September 2016; its running time is 01:02:03.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley mentioned the phrase “fixed in a tangible medium” which appears in the USA copyright law. (03:10)
• Bradley mentioned the Sherman Antitrust act. (04:05)
• Bradley mentioned the card game Pit (04:15)
• Bradley jokingly quoted Mit Romney's famous gaffe, “Corporations are people, my friend.” (04:44)
• Bradley read Title 17, the USA Copyright act many times. (06:50)
• Bradley mentioned the court case, UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. v. Berkeley Software Design, Inc., which resulted in releasing the parts of BSD that could be Free Software. (12:27)
• Bradley mentioned the FSF's Free Software Definition (13:11)
• Bradley mentioned OSI's Open Source Definition (13:16)
• Apparently, the problem of categorization is called Categorization in Philosophy. (14:30)
• The issue of Open Source not being trademarked is discussed in this essay by Richard Stallman. (15:44)
• The basic categorizations of types of FLOSS licenses are copyleft and non-copyleft.
• Karen suggests reading GPLv2 and GPLv3. (39:31)
• Bradley made a crude drawing of the spectrum of licenses. (40:20)
• Bradley mentioned the The Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement (55:40)

Tags: faif, GPL, copyright, copyleft

August 18, 2016

0x59: Audio Killed the Video Star

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the plan for restarting Free as in Freedom and plans for episodes to come.

This show was released on Thursday 18 August 2016; its running time is 00:26:59.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Bradley said in the before time — in the long long ago, which is a reference to the South Park parody of the ST:TOS episode, Miri (01:30)
• Bradley mentioned when Karen Sandler left the GNOME Foundation and took over Bradley's old job as Executive Director of Conservancy. (02:20)
• Karen mentioned that Bradley used to be Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation, a position now held by John Sullivan. (03:25)
• Dan blogged about his illness, details of scheduling surgery, which he occurred successfully. (10:28)
• Karen mentioned the Conservancy Supporter program discussed in detail on Episode 0x57. (12:40)
• Bradley mentioned the short lived Jon Masters Linux Kernel Mailing List Summary Podcast. (14:45)
• Karen and Bradley discussed Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles, and Bradley attempted to mention this version which he likes better. (17:36)
• Bradley mentioned Kantian Ethics (20:05)
• Bradley mentioned the Portlanda skit, Rent it Out from S04E02 (20:24)
• Karen mentioned WellDeserved: A Marketplace for Privilege (20:38)

Tags: faif, Conservancy

July 14, 2016

0x58: Debian Copyright Aggregation

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss Conservancy's Debian Copyright Aggregation project. (Note: While it was released just after DebConf16, this episode was recorded well before DebConf16; the discussions about DebConf refer to DebConf15.)

This show was released on Thursday 14 July 2016; its running time is 00:39:32.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

Note: While it was released just after DebConf16, this episode was recorded well before DebConf16; the discussions about DebConf refer to DebConf15.

• Bradley mentioned his talk at DebConf. This was recorded before DebConf 16, so Bradley is talking about DebConf 15, which was summarized in this blog post and his keynote from DebConf15. A video of that talk is available. (02:00)
• Bradley mentioned this bug about the copyright notice on the Debian website (07:47)
• Ian Jackson asked about bequeathing copyright at Bradley's talk. (15:45)

Tags: faif, copyright, Debian

November 24, 2015

0x57: Support Conservancy Now!

Summary

Free as in Freedom host Christopher Allan Webber interviews Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn about their work on copyleft and at Software Freedom Conservancy. You can become a Supporter of this work!

This show was released on Tuesday 24 November 2015; its running time is 00:26:10.

Show Notes

• Bradley mentioned Cygnus Solutions, ultimately acquired by Red Hat, which was an early for-profit supporter of copylefted projects.
• Bradley and Karen discussed the VMware lawsuit.
• Chris Webber wrote this blog post in response to a Shane Curcuru, who is VP of Brand Management at the Apache Software Foundation, anti-copyleft talk at OSCON 2015. Shane's talk is consistent with Apache Software Foundation's historical and recent anti-copyleft positions (12:23)

Tags: faif, licensing, copyleft, Conservancy

June 4, 2015

0x56: … & We're Back!

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the VMware lawsuit that Software Freedom Conservancy is funding.

This show was released on Thursday 4 June 2015; its running time is 00:33:52.

Show Notes

• Bradley and Karen discuss the lawsuit that Christoph Hellwig filed. (07:37)
• Karen mentioned her LibrePlanet keynote about the VMware lawsuit. (21:30)
• Bradley's talk at LinuxConf Australia 2015, Considering The Future of Copyleft, is available online. (22:04)
• Bradley mentioned the discussion on pump.io about NPR fundraisers. (24:23)
• Bradley mentioned a Debian 8 release party at LinuxFest Northwest, which Microsoft didn't invite him to, since he wasn't willing to give Microsoft his contact info for marketing purposes. (29:16)
• Karen and Bradley promoted the Conservancy supporter program (31:40)

Tags: GPL, Debian, conferences, copyleft

March 3, 2015

0x55: Nick Coghlan at LCA 2015

Summary

Bradley and Karen interview Nick Coghlan, who works onn development and test infrastructure for Red Hat and is heavily involved with the Python community.

This show was released on Tuesday 3 March 2015; its running time is 00:40:12.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:35)

Bradley and Karen interviewed Nick Coghlan who works for Red Hat and contributes to various Open Source and Free Software projects such as Python. Nick discussed his work on the infrastructure team at Red Hat, and his advocacy of Kallithea for use for the CPython project.

Tags: faif, conferences, Kallithea

January 29, 2015

0x54: Carol Smith at LCA 2015

Summary

Bradley and Karen interview Carol Smith, Programs and Open Source Community Manager of Google Summer of Code about the program and its policies and procedures.

This show was released on Thursday 29 January 2015; its running time is 00:39:39.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:35)

Bradley encourages those who attend FOSDEM 2015 to attend sign up to attend the Supporter Night Event on 30 January 2015 in Brussels, Belgium.

Segment 1 (00:50:11)

More Show notes for this one coming soon!

Tags: faif, conferences, Google Summer of Code

December 30, 2014

0x53: Can Plagiarism Happen Under Copyleft?

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss what plagiarism is (or isn't) and how it interacts with copyleft licenses.

This show was released on Tuesday 30 December 2014; its running time is 01:16:43.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:37)

• Please donate to to send Dan to a conference. There's a progress bar on faif.us now.
• You can also donate to support Software Freedom Conservancy, where Bradley and Karen work, by becoming a supporter.
• Karen mentioned her blog post about the supporter program. (00:08:30)
• Bradley mentioned his blog post about the supporter program as well. (00:09:30)

Segment 1 (00:16:16)

• Bradley and Karen pick up on a topic original discussed in Segment 1 of FaiF 0x02. (00:16:50)
• Bradley discussed the Laurie Stearns' article from the California Law Review, entitled Copy Wrong: Plagiarism, Process, Property, and the Law (00:23:50)
• Bradley mentioned The GNOME Foundation Copyright Assignment Guidelines that he co-authored. (00:28:05)
• Bradley mentioned the Doris Kearns Goodwin Plagiarism controversy, and how it would have been simply redressed if the material she reused had been copylefted. (00:29:26)
• Karen mentioned that Flickr made different policies for CC-BY-SA'd works when selling printed versions. (32:30)
• Bradley mentioned that even software freedom advocates just comply with the copyleft licenses and don't work collaboratively, particularly during hostile forks, using Conservancy's Kallithea project as an example. (00:35:25)
• Bradley reiterated a point he made in FaiF 0x08, where he discussed that Linus Torvalds switched to GPL for Linux because he realized non-commercial restrictions weren't appropriate. (00:37:50)
• Bradley mentioned the hostile fork of GCC called egcs. The H-Online years later wrote a long article that discussed the egcs fork egcs fork. (00:39:46)
• Bradley mentioned that plagiarism is ultimately about attribution, and modern DVCS systems makes attribution easy and renders plagiarism impossible (if DVCS logs are accurate). (00:44:15)
• Bradley mentioned that he continually has learned the lesson that if you let your employer keep copyright, you lose everything you had when you switch employers (if the work isn't copylefted). (00:47:00)
• Bradley discussed the methods of attribution required in GPLv3. (00:50:05)
• Bradley mentioned that copyright notices are the primary method of attribution in copyleft licenses, and even non-copyleft ones too. (00:53:19)
• Karen discussed the attribution requirements in text of CC-BY-SA 4.0. (00:53:49)
• Bradley wants to do a whole FaiF show about how CC-BY-SA may not be a true copyleft since it has no source code requirement (00:54:40)
• Bradley mentioned the “fake name” that film directors use when they wish to disavow a work they aren't happy with. The name is, in fact, Alan Smithee, and indeed the 1984 film Dune lists Smithee as a director even though David Lynch is known publicly to be the director. (00:58:40)
• Bradley mentioned the unfair accusations against Red Hat when they stopped publishing their internal Linux Git repository and instead released a more standard ChangeLog. (01:05:30)

Tags: faif, GPL, Creative Commons, commercial, licensing, plagiarism

December 24, 2014

0x52: Legal Issues from a Radical Community Angle

Summary

Bradley and Karen play and discuss

Stefano Zacchiroli's talk entitled Legal issues from a radical community angle that he gave 12:00 European/Central time on Sunday 2 February 2014 at FOSDEM 2014.

This show was released on Wednesday 24 December 2014; its running time is 01:04:50.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:35)

Karen and Bradley introduce the talk.

Segment 1 (00:02:38)

Stefano Zacchiroli's talk entitled Legal issues from a radical community angle . You can watch the video instead of listening to our audio and/or follow along with Zach's slides.

Segment 2 (00:53:17)

• Please note: Bradley and Karen recorded these comments before the init system coupling referendum completed, which is why Karen and Bradley don't discuss it. However, their comments about the Debian democratic process are highly relevant to the recent vote. Also, Bradley discussed his views on that specific issue as a guest co-host on Linux Outlaws, Episode 368.
• Bradley and Karen discussed SPI as Debian's fiscal sponsor and used a few terms like grantor/grantee (01:01:20)

Tags: faif, licensing, copyright, Debian, FOSDEM, trademarks

December 11, 2014

0x51: Why Licenses Requiring Use of Trademarks are Non-Free

Summary

Bradley and Karen play and discuss Pam Chestek's talk entitled Why Licenses Requiring Use of Trademarks are Non-Free that she gave on Sunday 2 February 2014 at FOSDEM 2014.

This show was released on Thursday 11 December 2014; its running time is 01:10:00.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:34)

• You can donate now to send Producer Dan Lynch to a Free Software conference. Donations will be made to Conservancy and any proceeds raised beyond the amount needed to send Dan to a conference will support Conservancy generally. (05:30)
• Dan will of course need to follow Conservancy's travel policy since Conservancy will fund his travel. (06:50)
• Bradley discussed the backstory on the Groupon attempt to steal GNOME's name. GNOME Foundation had to go public to raise funds to fight Groupon (10:05)

Segment 1 (00:13:26)

Pam Chestek gives a talk entitled Why Licenses Requiring Use of Trademarks are Non-Free. You can watch the video instead of listening to our audio and follow along with Pam's slides.

Segment 2 (01:00:37)

• Bradley mentioned Pam's talk from the previous year, which was played on 0x3C. (01:01:32)
• Bradley mentioned that GPLv3§7 allows for removal of additional restrictions that abuse that clause of GPLv3. (01:04:24)

Tags: faif, commercial, licensing, FOSDEM, trademarks

November 24, 2014

0x5B: Interview with RMS on GNU's 30th Anniversary

Summary

Karen and Bradley interview Richard M. Stallman on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the GNU Project.

Note: Episode 0x5B was released out of sequence, but they are in the order of release date on faif.us (rather than numerical order by episode number).

This show was released on Monday 24 November 2014; its running time is 00:40:06.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

Note: Episode 0x5B was released out of sequence, but they are in the order of release date on faif.us (rather than numerical order by episode number).

Bradley and Karen introduce the interview.

Segment 1 (01:20)

• This segment is an interview with Richard M. Stallman on the occasion of GNU's thirtieth anniversary.
• RMS mentioned the LibreJS project. (26:10)

Segment 2 (33:58)

• Bradley and Karen discuss the interview.
• Bradley mis-rememered, RMS said he would start on Thanksgiving in the original announcement (38.40).



Tags: faif, GNU, Richard M. Stallman

November 11, 2014

0x50: Big Announcements & Evans' FOSDEM 2014 Talk

Summary

Karen and Bradley announce Conservancy's DMCA filing and Conservancy and FSF's joint launch of the copyleft.org project, and then discuss Eileen Evans' FOSDEM 2014 talk, entitled Licensing Models and Building an Open Source Community.

This show was released on Tuesday 11 November 2014; its running time is 01:13:10.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Conservancy file a DMCA petition regarding so-called “Smart TVs”. (02:00)
• Bradley mentioned the magic marker that was as circumvention technique under DMCA. Here's an amusing joke press release about the issue. (03:10)
• There isn't much documentation online of Bruce Perens live DMCA violation, but this article appears to be the main one on the subject, and there is also this interview (06:46).
• Bradley and Karen talked about the joint FSF/Conservancy copyleft.org announcement. (09:10)
• Bradley first pulled together the materials for copyleft.org for FSF's CLE seminars, particularly the one in March 2014. (10:00)
• Karen noted that Conservancy donated the time to write up a pristine example of good complete, corresponding source code for a GPL'd product. (11:30)
• Bradley discussed the incorrect GPLv2§2(a) violation accusations that some made against Red Hat regarding its changes to its publication of RHEL's Linux fork. (12:00)
• Karen and Bradley encouraged listeners to submit talk proposals for the FOSDEM 2015 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom (15:03)

Segment 1 (19:38)

This is a recording of Eileen Evans' FOSDEM 2014 talk, entitled Licensing Models and Building an Open Source Community. If you'd rather watch the video, which includes the slides from her talk, it's available on FOSDEM's site.

Segment 2 (46:40)

• Bradley and Karen discuss Eileen's talk.
• Bradley mentioned the OpenStack CLA fight, which was covered in a panel discussion on FaiF 0x4B. (56:16)
• Karen mentioned the 501(c)(6) issues that OpenStack Foundation has faced, which were discussed already on FaiF 0x4E. (56:34)

Tags: faif, commercial, licensing, non-profit, copyright, CLAs, copyleft

October 23, 2014

0x5A: Gamergate's Free Software Connection

Summary

Note: Episode 0x5A was released out of sequence, but they are in the order of release date on faif.us (rather than numerical order).

Karen and Bradley discuss connections between the so-called “Gamergate” controversy and how it relates to the Free Software community and a few obvious legal issues.

This show was released on Thursday 23 October 2014; its running time is 00:55:31.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Karen asked if Bradley had heard of the Gamergate situation. (01:30)
• Matthew Garrett wrote a blog post regarding this topic entitled Actions have consequences (or: why I'm not fixing Intel's bugs any more) (10:23)
• Mathew was attacked on LKML about this blog post (10:50)
• Lennart Poettering also wrote an essay recently about aggression and attacking people in Free Software communities. (12:12)
• Karen mentioned the harassment Kathy Sierra faced in the late 2000s. (13:00)
• Bradley called out Linux Foundation to ask why they tacitly support the bad behavior by its employees and others in the Linux Project (14:35, 31:10)
• Bradley mentioned that Antti Aumo in his LinuxCon Europe 2011 keynote, said that a great thing about the Internet of Things is that you can put a lock on your fridge when the wife's on a diet. (16:32)
• Bradley mentioned the Eddie Murphy's Saturday Night Live skit, White Like Me, which according to the transcript, originally aired on 1984-12-15 on SNL. (24:45)
• Bradley mentioned FaiF 0x13, which discussed torts and why they're important. (29:50)
• Bradley wrote a blog post about Bradley mentioned his blog post about John Oliver's discussion of the Miss America Pageant (43:30)
• Bradley suggested that Intel should have instead given the Gamasutra money to Society of Women Engineers Scholarship fund. (45:30)
• Karen mentioned the statement Intel published a statement regarding the situation. (47:10)

Tags: faif, commercial, tort, gender

October 9, 2014

0x4F: Linus Torvalds' Comments at DebConf 2014

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss and criticize comments made by Linus Torvalds at his Q&A during DebConf 2014 in Portland, OR on 29 August 2014.

This show was released on Thursday 9 October 2014; its running time is 00:38:51.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

Bradley and Karen discuss the Q&A with Linus Torvalds at DebConf 2014 in Portland, OR on 29 August 2014. (01:09)

Segment 1 (04:30)

• Ryan Lortie asked about an offensive public statement Linus Torvalds made on 6 July 2012. (05:04)
• Bradley mentioned that Linus Torvalds argued Red Hat was kowtowing to Microsoft using offensive language. (07:57)
• Karen mentioned that Linus called GNOME an unholy mess. (19:05)

Tags: faif, GPL, FSF, licensing, Debian, gender, conferences

September 23, 2014

0x4E: IRS Refusal Redux

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the key differences between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) organizations in the USA, and discuss recent refusals by the IRS to grant such statuses to Open Source and Free Software orgs.

This show was released on Tuesday 23 September 2014; its running time is 00:49:25.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Bradley mentioned the 501(c)(3) vs. 501(c)(6) difference came up on FaiF 0x41. (03:35)
• Bradley mentioned that in 501(c)(3) status from the IRS is based on receiving some status governed by §170(b)(1)(A) of the tax code. (Most Free Software charities, such as Conservancy, are classifed as non-profit charities under §170(b)(1)(A)(vi).) (05:10)
• Bradley mentioned this issue had been discussed on FLOSS Foundations' mailing list (05:50)
• Bradley discussed that at the OSCON 2013 tutorial, Community Foundations 101, most of the 501(c)(6) representatives who spoke argued incorrectly that the differences between 501(c)(3)'s and 501(c)(6)'s were not substantive. (10:50)
• Karen referenced how the TV show Silicon Valley parodies the irony of for-profit software companies claiming they make the world a better place. (11:58)
• Bradley mentioned he was inspired by Michael Moore in his work on Free Software. (15:02)
• Bradley mentioned Karen's talk called Identity Crisis (15:21)
• Karen mentioned that open source was on the list of items the IRS gave additional scrutiny. (16:51)
• Bradley mentioned a blog post by Jim Nelson where Yorba's rejection was discussed; Yorba's 501(c)(3) application was previously discussed on was discussed on 0x1C, and covered in many other places. (17:46)
• Karen wrote a blog post about why she isn't worried for Conservancy's 501(c)(3) status at this time. (18:30)
• Bradley mentioned that IRS decisions don't make precedent, and if there's a dispute, it would go to USA Tax Court (19:00)
• Mozilla Foundation's odd hybrid for-profit/non-profit model was audited by the IRS, and Mozilla Foundation settled with the IRS. (20:22)
• Open Stack Foundation was initially denied 501(c)(6) status, as reported on Mark McLoughlin's blog. (25:10)
• Bradley promised links to both Yorba's 501(c)(3) denial letter from the IRS and Open Stack Foundation's 501(c)(6) denial letter from the IRS. (The response to the IRS from OpenStack, written by DLA Piper, OpenStack Foundation's law firm, is also available, too. (27:15)
• Bradley and Karen discussed Board of Directors meetings in FaiF 0x45: I'm Board (31:40)
• Bradley mentioned the How fresh stays fresh campaign, which includes the Nature's Pause Button television commercials by the American Frozen Food Institute, which is a 501(c)(6) organization. It's FY 2012 Form 990 is the most recent on available.
• Bradley also mentioned the Beef: It's What's For Dinner advertisting campaign that has existed for decades in the USA, which is sponsored by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, Inc. which is a 501(c)(6) as well. It's FY 2012 Form 990 is the most recent on available.
(35:40)
• Bradley further mentioned the Pork: the other white meat advertising campaign, which has also existed for decades but is now called the Pork: Be Inspired campaign, seems a bit more dubious in its non-profit existence. It appears to be funded by the National Pork Board Foundation, which is ostensibly a 501(c)(3) but has no assets, revnue nor expenses, and appears to be a front for an org called the America's Pork Producers / Pork Checkoff, which appears to be some quasi-govermental agency related to pork (in other words, it's pork for pork). More research would probably be needed to figure out better what's going on here with regard to non-profit status, but it seems that unlike the Beef ads, which are clearly funded by a 501(c)(6), this campaign is funded by a separate legislation, presumably unrelated to §501(c). There is, BTW, also, a 501(c)(5) called the National Pork Producers Council, which appears to be where the big money is (— not surprisingly — 501(c)(4)'s and 501(c)(5)'s often make 501(c)(6)'s and 501(c)(3)'s look tiny by comparison). (36:13)

Segment 1 (39:43)

Conservancy and OSI jointly announced a working group on IRS applications and denials. (40:49)

Tags: faif, non-profit, Form 1023

September 11, 2014

0x4D: 2013 Interview: Poettering & Day on Sandboxed GNOME Applications

Summary

Karen Sandler interviews Lennart Poettering and Alan Day during the GNOME Asia Summit 2013. Bradley and Karen comment on this interview.

This show was released on Thursday 11 September 2014; its running time is 00:44:39.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

Bradley and Karen introduce Karen's interview with Lennart Poettering and Alan Day.

Segment 1 (02:06)

Karen interviews Lennart Poettering and Alan Day about Lennart's Sandboxed Applications for GNOME talk at GNOME Asia Summit 2013.

Segment 1 (35:24)

• Bradley mentioned his comment during the GPLv3 process regarding the Ty Coon issue. (41:20)

Tags: faif, gnome

August 26, 2014

0x4C: Copyleft vs permissive vs CLAs

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the talk, Copyleft vs. Permissive vs. Contributor License Agreements: A Veteran’s Perspective by Simo Sorce given at FOSDEM 2013 on Sunday 3 February 2013.

This show was released on Tuesday 26 August 2014; its running time is 01:14:47.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:38)

Bradley and Karen introduce Simo's talk.

Segment 1 (00:03:02)

The slides from Simo's talk are available, if you want to follow along

Segment 2 (00:59:50)

• Bradley menitoned his blog post about CLA's on Conservancy's website. (01:00:10)

Segment 3 (01:10:22)

Bradley and Karen are still trying to decide what to do about the FOSDEM 2014 talks.

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, copyright, CLAs

August 5, 2014

0x4B: CLA Panel Discussion

Summary

Bradley and Karen host a panel discussion on CLAs with Van Lindberg and Richard Fontana.

This show was released on Tuesday 5 August 2014; its running time is 00:54:05.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

Bradley and Karen introduce the panel discussion.

Segment 1 (01:28)

• The panel guests are Van Lindberg and Richard Fontana.
• Van quoted from the Apache Corporate CLA. (40:55)

Segment 2 (48:17)

• Bradley and Karen wrap up the discussion.
• Bradley mentioned the AKG C1000S which we use to record the oggcast. (50:40)

Tags: faif, commercial, licensing, CLAs

July 30, 2014

0x4A: See LA?

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss Contributor Licensing Agreements, which pulls material from Bradley's blog posts on the subject.

This show was released on Wednesday 30 July 2014; its running time is 00:44:34.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Bradley mentioned FSF's copyright assignment process. (05:50)
• Bradley mentioned RMS' essay regarding what you should do if a company asks you to assign copyright on Free Software. (14:00)
• Open Stack is reconsidering their CLA.
• Bradley mentioned again that goofy Eclipse contributor poster. (27:22)

Tags: faif, commercial, licensing, copyright, IBM, patents, CLAs

July 18, 2014

0x49: Why Free Software Phone Doesn't Exist

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the talk, Why the free software phone doesn't exist by Aaron Williamson given at FOSDEM 2013 on Sunday 3 February 2013.

This show was released on Friday 18 July 2014; its running time is 01:08:30.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

Bradley and Karen introduce the talk.

Segment 1 (04:06)

Aaron's slides area available.

Segment 2 (56:41)

• Bradley mentioned dakota imaging where he used to work. (1:02:15)
dacotag imaging
• Karen mentioned Aaron's OSCON 2010 talk (but we incorrectly said it was 2009). (1:04:35)

Tags: faif, mobile, FOSDEM, Restricted Boot

July 1, 2014

0x48: copyleft-next

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the talk, copyleft-next: an Introduction by Richard Fontana given at FOSDEM 2013 on Sunday 3 February 2013.

This show was released on Tuesday 1 July 2014; its running time is 01:35:07.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

Bradley and Karen introduce the talk.

Segment 1 (05:37)

The slides Fontana's talk on copyleft-next are available.

Segment 2 (01:06:51)

• Bradley mentioned the issue of Noam Chomsky's points on concision (01:13:23).
• Bradley mentioned the anti-GPL keynote by Tom Preseton-Werner of Github at OSCON 2013. (01:14:53)
• Bradley and Karen discussed the Harvey Birdman Rule. (1:27:45)
• Bradey mentioned a comment he posted about CHR-governed policy meetings. (01:29:00)

Tags: faif, GNU, GPL, FSF, copyright, Richard Fontana

June 19, 2014

0x47: Why Are You a Software Freedom Zealot?

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss why software freedom as a political, social and moral issue is important to each of them personally.

This show was released on Thursday 19 June 2014; its running time is 01:09:27.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Bradley mentioned that he used to frequently give talks on why software freedom is important to him. There are available on FSF's Audio/Video website three different recordings of that talk, usually titled Software Freedom and the GNU Generation. (01:28)
• Bradley's first distribution was SLS. (18:20)
• Bradley mentioned that OpenStack was denied 501(c)(6) trade association status by the IRS. (37:56)
• Karen mentioned the Cooper Union law suit. (48:40)

Tags: faif, social justice

June 3, 2014

0x46: O'Sullivan's Legally Cementing Licences in Legislation

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the talk, Legally Cementing Licences in Legislation: Two Law Merchant Models for Free Software Licences by Maureen O’Sullivan given at FOSDEM 2013 on Sunday 3 February 2013.

This show was released on Tuesday 3 June 2014; its running time is 01:06:41.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:37)

• Bradley mentioned the Planet money t-shirt story (03:04)
• Bradley mentioned he buys Union made sweat pants (04:42)

Segment 1 (00:06:48)

Bradley and Karen introduce the talk.

Segment 2 (00:07:20)

This segment is the talk, Legally Cementing Licences in Legislation: Two Law Merchant Models for Free Software Licences by Maureen O’Sullivan given at FOSDEM 2013 on Sunday 3 February 2013. You can follow along with the slides.

Segment 3 (00:50:55)

• Bradley mentioned a talk he gave on 2005-03-12 at UC Irvine to a workshop of academics meeting about the research area of Computing Communities. Bradley still has some email archives regarding this, but can't find any online link to the workshop (URLs in the emails are all dead) or a recording of his talk. (58:52).
• As Bradley mentioned, ESR self-identifies as a gun nut. (01:00:19)
• Bradley mentioned FaiF 0x3A, which had Gabriel Holloway's talk (01:03:27)

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, copyright

May 27, 2014

0x45: I'm Board

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the details, what to worry about, and what the usual duties are when serving on a Board of Directors for a USA non-profit. The discussion is primarily about 501(c)(3) organizations, but at the end they spend some time discussing 501(c)(6) organizations as well.

This show was released on Tuesday 27 May 2014; its running time is 01:02:56.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:44)

• An image of Alfie chewing on the antler (01:22)
• Karen is running for the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors. (05:15)
• Bradley once criticized the CNRI OPEN SOURCE LICENSE AGREEMENT (used for parts of Python), because it is governed by the laws of a place that doesn't exist. (06:48)
• Bradley mentioned a Planet Money episode that talked about it's “too easy” to incorporate in Delaware (23:50)

Segment 1 (00:32:25)

• Bradley and Karen discuss various additional things about being on a Board of Directors, including why and how you might be able to serve on one.
• Bradley and Karen discuss the requirements for getting on a 501(c)(6) Board like Linux Foundation (55:30)

Tags: faif, non-profit

May 13, 2014

0x44: Oracle v. Google Federal Appeals Court Decision

Summary

Bradley and Karen explain why they've been gone for so long, and then discuss the recent Oracle v. Google Federal Appeals Court Decision.

This show was released on Tuesday 13 May 2014; its running time is 00:55:43.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:31)

• Karen is now Executive Director of Conservancy and Bradley is President and Distinguished Technologist. (03:01)
• Bradley will be working extensively on the NPO Accounting Project. (03:40)

Segment 1 (00:09:37)

• Karen says the Oracle v. Google Federal Appeals Court Decision is not an engaging read, but the lower court decision was. (09:50)
• Karen said: You're out of your element, Donny! (12:38)
• Karen mentioned a tweet from the EFF (15:23)
• Bradley mentioned his older blog post about the previous decision (16:48)
• Karen incorrectly said we never recorded a show on the previous decision, but we did indeed discuss the previous Oracle v. Google decision in , which Bradley and Karen discussed in Episode 0x35 (18:53)
• Karen and Bradley explained what an affirmative defense, arguments in the alternative, and merger doctrine. (21:03)
• Bradley mentioned the Apache Software Foundation is now publicly more against copyleft software than proprietary software, and that such position is unreasonable, unlike the OpenBSD position that copyleft and proprietary software are equally bad: a position Bradley disagrees with but agrees is consistent, reasonable moral stance. (38:40)
• Bradley mentioned his discussions with Mark J. Wielaard of the Classpath project (52:20)
• Bradley and Karen ask people to doante to Conservancy.

Tags: faif, copyright, Oracle

October 17, 2013

0x43: State of the GNUnion

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss John Sullivan's talk from FOSDEM 2013, entitled State of the GNUnion.

This show was released on Thursday 17 October 2013; its running time is 01:19:37.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:33)

Karen and Bradley introduce the talk.

Segment 1 (00:01:58)

The slides for John's talk are available, and the source of those slides is available too.

Segment 1 (00:54:31)

• Bradley mentioned RMS' essay, Who Does That Server Really Serve? (01:08:55)

Segment 2 (01:14:53)

Private Internet Access became a new GNOME Advisory Board Member.

Tags: faif, GNU, GPL, FSF, non-profit, copyright, FOSDEM

September 4, 2013

0x42: libVLC LGPL Relicensing

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss Jean-Baptiste Kempf's talk from FOSDEM 2013, entitled Relicensing libVLC and VLC modules from GPL to LGPL.

This show was released on Wednesday 4 September 2013; its running time is 01:25:43.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:28)

• The plural of hiatus appears to be hiatukset, but hiatuses is the proper English. (01:50)
• Bradley adopted two dogs from a shelter. They like kongs (02:30)
• Bradley's wife has a blog with pictures of their dogs. (04:30)

Segment 1 (00:05:52)

Jean-Baptiste Kempf slides are available for this talk.

Segment 2 (01:03:20)

• Bradley had written a a blog post about the VLC relicensing. (01:03:48)
• Bradley mentioned a an article in The Onion about pugs known health problems (01:15:47)
• Karen mentioned The Last GUADEC blog post.

Segment 3 (01:21:00)

Bradley and Karen discussed the release of the ExFAT Samsung source code.

Tags: faif, FSF, licensing, copyright, LGPL

August 14, 2013

Episode 0x41: Interview with Jim Zemlin at OSCON 2013

Summary

Bradley and Karen interview Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the The Linux Foundation.

This show was released on Wednesday 14 August 2013; its running time is 00:37:16.

Show Notes

Bradley and Karen interview Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the The Linux Foundation.

Segment 0 (00:00:33)

Bradley and Karen introduce the interview.

Segment 1 (00:03:03)

Bradley and Karen interview Jim Zemlin.

Segment 2 (00:25:23)

• Karen and Bradley wrap up the discussion about 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6).
• Bradley referenced this post which ocurred in this thread about Linus saying Greg KH is a door-mat. (26:36, 34:55)
• The OSCON session that Bradley chaired was Non-Profits Organizations for FLOSS Projects: There Is No Place Like Home, and the slides are available. (33:21)

Tags: faif, commercial, non-profit

August 2, 2013

Episode 0x40: Alison Chaiken on Free Software in Cars

Summary

Note: initially, from 2013-08-01 18:30 through 2013-08-02 08:40 (US/Eastern), the audio file links in the feed did not work. That has been corrected.

Bradley and Karen interview Alison Chaiken about Free Software in cars.

This show was released on Friday 2 August 2013; its running time is 00:51:30.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:38)

Bradley and Karen introduce the interview.

Segment 1 (00:01:43)

• Bradley and Karen interview Alison Chaiken about Free Software in the automotive industry.
• Alison mentioned the Genivi Alliance, which is an industry trade association with some interest in “Open Source”.
• Alison presented a session at LibrePlanet about the Right to Repair act in Massachusetts. (00:14:30)
• Alison encouraged listens to get involved with Right to Repair and the Massachusetts Right to Repair.

Segment 2 (00:36:09)

• Karen moderated a panel at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit 2013 on Automotive issues (37:12)

Tags: GPL, licensing

July 17, 2013

Episode 0x3F: FOSDEM 2013 - AGPLv3 Panel Discussion

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss The panel discussion on the GNU Affero General Public License from FOSDEM 2013.

This show was released on Wednesday 17 July 2013; its running time is 01:28:47.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:38)

• Bradley asked for donations again to Conservancy's NPO accounting software campaign and Karen asked for donations to GNOME's Privacy Campaign.

Segment 1 (00:04:50)

This is the Panel Discussion: GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 from FOSDEM 2013. The speakers, in the order their voices are heard, are Tom Marble (introduction), Richard Fontana (moderator), Bradley M. Kuhn, Eileen Evans, and Christopher Allan Webber.

Segment 2 (01:06:47)

• Bradley mentioned the phrase Give me convenience or give me death, which is from a title of the Dead Kennedys album he suggested applied to the selection of proprietary software (01:10:10)
• Bradley mentioned RMS' recent update to his Who does that server really serve? essay. (01:11:30)
• Bradley mentioned his blog post on doing VoIP encryption with Free Software. (01:14:04)
• Bradley mentioned his talk entitled The Affero GPLv3: Why It Exists & Who It's For? at the Southern California Linux Expo 11x. The slides are available and the sources for the slides are available. (01:17:30)

Tags: faif, FSF, FOSDEM, AGPL

June 13, 2013

0x3E: Mozilla - Licensing in the Trenches

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss Gervase Markham's talk from FOSDEM 2013, entitled Mozilla: Licensing In The Trenches.

This show was released on Thursday 13 June 2013; its running time is 01:11:55.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:34)

• Bradley encouraged listeners to Conservancy's campaign for non-profit accounting software.
(02:10)
• Bradley mentioned his 2009 blog post encouraging people to donate to Free Software charities (02:50)
• Karen asked people to donate to the GNOME Foundation privacy campaign (04:11)

Segment 1 (00:04:57)

Gerv's slides from his FOSDEM 2013 talk can be downloaded from FOSDEM's website.

Segment 2 (00:51:48)

Bradley and Karen discuss Gerv's talk.

Tags: Creative Commons, licensing, non-profit, copyright, IBM, conferences, FOSDEM

May 28, 2013

0x3D: Conference Behavior Redux

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the sexist comment issue that occurred a few months ago at PyCon USA 2013.

This show was released on Tuesday 28 May 2013; its running time is 00:39:23.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:34)

• Bradley and Karen previously discussed conference behavior back in Episode 0x04.
• Bradley had blogged a few years ago about the issues of sexism through the computer industry, including this study showing the glass ceiling in CS academics. (05:17)
• Bradley mentioned that he'd blogged in the past that proprietary software companies also have issues of sexism at conferences (05:58)
• Bradley mentioned the How to Perform Like a Porn Star CouchDB talk at a Ruby Conference (06:13)
• There is indeed a Project named PyCorn. (09:38)
• Bradley mentioned the Planet Money story about Online Pharmacies but he couldn't find the original audio of the longer piece that ends with the phrase Stay Shady, Internet (21:30)
• Bradley mentioned a quote about the human mind being the most dangerous thing because everything is in it, which is actually from Heart of Darkness by Joesph Conrad. (23:40)
• Bradley mentioned that a keynoter at LinuxCon Europe made sexist comments back in 2011. (30:02)
• Bradley and Karen encouraged listeners to promote the GNOME Foundation Outreach Program for Women (31:20)
• Bradley mentioned Shuttleworth's comment at LinuxCon North America in 2009 (32:02).

Tags: faif, gender, conferences

May 7, 2013

0x3C: FOSDEM 2013: How to Share a Trademark

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss Pamela Chestek's talk from FOSDEM 2013, entitled How to Share a Trademark.

This show was released on Tuesday 7 May 2013; its running time is 01:23:47.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:33)

Karen and Bradley introduce the talk.

Segment 0 (00:02:05)

Pam gave us slides, but it's all in one big SVG.

Segment 2 (00:55:10)

• The talk that Bradley mentioned was this talk that Karen gave at Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit 2012; he was unable to find a recording. (57:04)
• Note that most of the time the word source was used in the talk and Karen's comments, it means origin, not source code. (01:05:55)
• Bradley mentioned this Planet Money story about the 5¢ coke. (01:21:37)

Tags: faif, licensing, FOSDEM, trademarks

April 11, 2013

Episode 0x3B: FOSDEM 2013: Should We Embrace App Stores?

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss Simon Phipps' and Amanda Brock's talk from FOSDEM 2013, entitled Should We Embrace App Stores?.

This show was released on Thursday 11 April 2013; its running time is 01:11:25.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:33)

Karen and Bradley introduce the talk.

Segment 1 (00:03:03)

• Simon and Amanda used no slides during their talk.
• Amanda misquotes Bradley at 07:30. Bradley said: An unenforced copyleft is the moral equivalent of a permissive license, not that you give a license automatically not by enforcing. You can listen to FaiF Episode 0x38 to verify.

Segment 1 (00:49:35)

Bradley and Karen discuss the talk.

Tags: licensing, FOSDEM

April 3, 2013

Episode 0x3A: FOSDEM 2013: FOSS Code Goes In And Never Comes Out

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss Gabriel Holloway's talk from FOSDEM 2013, entitled FOSS code goes in and never comes out: The Challenge of Sandboxed Proprietary Cloud Services.

This show was released on Wednesday 3 April 2013; its running time is 01:24:33.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:33)

Karen and Bradley introduce the talk.

Segment 1 (00:05:48)

The speaker's that you hear are:

• Gabriel Holloway, who gives the talk
• Till Jaeger asks the first question.
• A few other questions are asked, but we're unsure who the speakers are.
• Tom Marble, asks a question later.

Unfortunately, Gabe didn't provide us with slides.

Segment 2 (00:52:25)

• Bradley mentioned the Berne Convention on Copyright. (01:07:19)
• Karen mentioned Cooper Union and how they are in danger of running out of money for their full tuition scholarships. (01:10:00)
• Bradley looked but couldn't find the NPR story about terms of use. (01:19:37)

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, FOSDEM, AGPL

March 26, 2013

Episode 0x39: FOSDEM 2013: What is a Derivative Work under European Copyright Law?

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss Till Jaeger's talk from FOSDEM 2013, entitled What is a derivative work under European Copyright Law?.

This show was released on Tuesday 26 March 2013; its running time is 01:13:07.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:31)

Karen and Bradley introduce the talk.

Segment 2 (00:02:41)

The speaker's that you hear are:

• Tom Marble, introduces the talk, and asks one of the questions.
• Till Jaeger, who gives the talk

The slides for Till Jaeger's talk are available.

Segment 2 (00:49:11)

• Bradley and Karen discuss Till's talk.
• Clarence Thomas spoke the first time in the Supreme Court. Bradley said that he said it did not, but apparently he actually said he did not. (59:49)
• Bradley scanned in his Brussels airport train ticket that had his notes on it, where you can read noa push caa. (01:06:40)
• Bradley mentioned the phrase Elvis has left the building. (01:07:15)

Tags: faif, copyright, FOSDEM

March 19, 2013

Episode 0x38: FOSDEM 2013: GPL Compliance Panel

Summary

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss the GPL Compliance Panel from FOSDEM 2013.

This show was released on Tuesday 19 March 2013; its running time is 01:13:02.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:34)

Karen and Bradley have some not-so-witty banter about the FOSDEM 2013 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

Segment 1 (00:07:19)

The speakers on the panel are (in order of appearance):

• Tom Marble, introduces the panel.
• Karen Sandler, moderator.
• Alexios Zavras
• Richard Sands
• Bradley M. Kuhn
• Harald Welte

Segment 2 (01:02:51)

• Bradley mentioned the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, but incorrectly said he didn't have an actual name, which he does (Jeff Albertson) (01:05:30)

February 13, 2013

Episode 0x37: Copyright Assignment Again

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the LWN article, GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance and other issues related to copyright assignment.

This show was released on Wednesday 13 February 2013; its running time is 01:01:15.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:46)

• Bradley didn't want his words compared to the Ayn Rand's quote from an interview with Phil Donahue where she said I'm not going to die, it's just that world will end. (02:54)
• Bradley discussed the reaction to on 0x36 that occurred in this identi.ca thread. (04:20)
• Bradley and Karen discussed the LWN article, GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance. (11:15)
• Bradley pointed out that every other copyleft license allows for relicensing under newer versions automatically (i.e., they have an automatic -or-later ), and Karen asked whether Sun's CDDL does. Bradley checked later, Karen was correct that CDDL's later version clause (Section 4) is similar to the GPL policy. (23:00) However, Fontana wrote to us on IRC to say CDDL's license upgradeability clause is not entirely like GPL's. The GPL states that if no version number is specified, any version can be used. CDDL does not say this; it seems to assume that it will always be clear what version CDDL code will be distributed under, whereas GPL seems to assume otherwise.
• Bradley mentioned the interview he did with The H Online on GPL enforcement. (41:57)

Tags: faif, GNU, GPL, FSF, licensing, copyright

December 18, 2012

Episode 0x36: RMS' Ubuntu Essay and Canonical, Ltd.'s Response

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss RMS' essay on FSF's website, Ubuntu SpyWare: What To Do, and Shuttleworth's Slashdot interview that responds somewhat to RMS' comments.

This show was released on Tuesday 18 December 2012; its running time is 00:39:57.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Karen and Bradley discuss RMS' essay on FSF's website, Ubuntu SpyWare: What To Do (08:50)
• Bradley mentioned how Fab discovered (and discussed on Linux Outlaws 280) how a search for “ter” in efforts to find a terminal window in Ubuntu yields [slightly NSFW] gives results for Rachel Ter Horst DVDs. (09:44)
• Bradley mentioned his blog post about Nokia's problems interfacing with Free Software communities. (14:50)
• Bradley and Karen discuss Shuttleworth's Slashdot interview (18:25).
• Bradley and Karen also briefly mentioned Jono Bacon's comments about RMS's essay and Jono's apology. (19:30)
• Bradley mentioned Shuttleworth's comments during his LinuxCon 2011 keynote. (20:14)
• Bradley mentioned Douglas Rushkoff's article, Teach U.S. kids to write computer code (29:30)

Tags: FSF

December 5, 2012

Episode 0x35: Oracle vs. Google Copyright Decision

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the copyright decision in the Oracle vs. Google case.

This show was released on Wednesday 5 December 2012; its running time is 00:32:38.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley mentioned the BPM for the human heart is to the Bee Gee's song, STayin' Alive. (01:55)
• FaiF's bandwidth is provided by OSU-OSL. Please donate to OSU-OSL. (09:50)
• Bradley and Karen discuss the copyright decision in the Oracle vs. Google case. (12:26)
• Bradley couldn't find quickly a full telling of the windings/SCO font thing, but this blog mentions it (29:34)

Tags: faif, copyright, Oracle

November 22, 2012

Episode 0x34: Medical Devices Update

Summary

Karen gives an update on the advocacy of software freedom for medical devices, while Bradley continually takes the show off-topic.

This show was released on Thursday 22 November 2012; its running time is 00:33:48.

Show Notes

• Bradley mentioned Jimmy Fallon's … And We're Back script.
• Barnaby Jack showed lethal attacks exist on wireless devices. (06:25)
• Karen previously gave a talk about her heart condition on the show. (07:13)
• Hugo Campos, who also works on this issue. (26:08)
• Bradley mentioned the Therac-25 software-related disaster. (29:30)

Tags: faif

October 10, 2012

Episode 0x33: Richard Fontana at LinuxCon North America 2012

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Richard Fontana's LinuxCon North America 2012 talk, The Tragedy of the Commons Gatekeepers.

This show was released on Wednesday 10 October 2012; its running time is 01:13:39.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

Bradley and Karen introduce Richard Fontana's talk.

Segment 1 (02:48)

Richard Fontana's slides are available online, and there is also a well-written summary of the talk available on LWN.

Segment 2 (47:15)

Karen and Bradley discuss Fontana's talk.

September 27, 2012

Episode 0x32: Matthew Garrett on UEFI at LinuxCon North America 2012

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Matthew Garrett's talk, Linux in a UEFI Secure Boot World talk from LinuxCon North America 2012.

This show was released on Thursday 27 September 2012; its running time is 01:05:28.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Bradley mentioned that people at LinuxCon North America 2012 were talking about this article, wherein it states 51% of survey respondents believe [bad] weather can impact cloud computing. Bradley and Karen pointed out all the many ways that it can, such as if your services come via satellite links. (02:10)
• Bradley mentioned Matthew's talk might be best listened to before our earlier FaiFCast 0x2d about UEFI and Restricted Boot, as Matthew's talk is a very good introduction to that material (07:01)

Segment 1 (08:43)

The slides from Matthew Garrett's LinuxCon North America 2012 talk, Linux in a UEFI Secure Boot World are available.

Segment 2 (51:35)

• Karen song a part of one of the OpenBSD songs, E-Railed (OpenBSD Mix). (01:00:35)
• Bradley mentioned Theo de Raadt's comments regarding restricted boot. (01:00:44)

Tags: faif, conferences, Restricted Boot

September 14, 2012

Episode 0x31: GNU Mediagoblin

Summary

Karen and Bradley interview Christopher Allan Webber of the GNU Mediagoblin project.

This show was released on Friday 14 September 2012; its running time is 00:45:39.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:31)

Karen and Bradley introduce the interview.

Segment 0 (00:56)

• Karen and Bradley interview their guest, Christopher Allan Webber of the GNU Mediagoblin project.
• GNU Mediagoblin is licensed under the Affero GPL, but does not require copyright assignment and the developers have no plans to seek a proprietary licensing business.
• Bradley mentioned this dent by Stephen Fry on identi.ca, but that was in fact not his last dent as Bradley said. (21:50)
• GNU Mediagoblin is working on a fundraising video and will start a new fundraising campaign soon.
• Chris discussed this comic about trolls that was part of the slides of Chris' OSCON talk. (27:07)
• Chris mentioned the Open Source Almost Everything essay from GitHub's founder. (28:30)
• Karen mentioned Mike Linksvayer's talk in FaiF 0x2E. (39:00)

Segment 1 (43:36)

GNU Mediagoblin will be launching a fundraising campaign soon. Check back here for details later!

Tags: faif, GNU, copyright, AGPL

August 28, 2012

Episode 0x30: GNOME Press Comments

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss recent coverage of GNOME by the technology press, and more generally issues and concerns with the technology press.

This show was released on Tuesday 28 August 2012; its running time is 00:56:31.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:44)

• Bradley couldn't find support for his claim about in the can, and Karen may be right.(01:15)
• Bradley mentioned that the GNOME Foundation negative press recently is akin to what Harry Reid did by stating rumors regarding Romney's taxes. (05:03)
• Karen mentioned the Debunking Handbook that Germán Póo-Caamaño mentioned to her. (06:30)
• Bradley mentioned the quote I do not think [that word] means what you think it means from The Princess Bride. (13:30)
• Karen mentioned the GNOME 15 year Anniversary Site. (17:22)
• Bradley mentioned Dave Neary's GNOME census, and quoted numbers from the census. (21:30)
• Bradley discussed Eazel, a company co-founded by Andy Hertzfeld. (23:03)
• Karen mentioned GNOME's Outreach Program for Women, in which Conservancy participates. (25:34)
• Karen mentioned an article that came out on the same day as this audcast. (30:30)
• Bradley mentioned that some research by evolutionary biologists suggests language may have developed for gossip (38:48). Bradley couldn't find evidence easily online for the 80% is gossip claim on the audcase, but did find an article talking about 65% of human communication is gossip.
• Bradley mentioned the television series, The Human Animal. (39:17)
• Bradley mentioned a thread he recently posted in on the BusyBox mailing list. (50:32)
• Bradley mentioned that there are many cognitive psychological biases. (51:11)

Tags: faif, gnome

August 14, 2012

0x2F: OSCON and GUADEC 2012

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss OSCON and GUADEC.

This show was released on Tuesday 14 August 2012; its running time is 00:39:53.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Bradley represents FSF on the GNOME Advisory Board. (02:20)
• Bradley points out it's very dangerous when you can buy voting rights of a 501(c)(3) by paying money, such as the structure of OSI. Karen notes that contribution-based membership works very well for GNOME. (03:50)
• Bradley is concerned about the future of OSI's license list now that votes in OSI are for sale. (04:30)
• Bradley received an O'Reilly Open Source Award at OSCON 2012. Bradley blogged an acceptance speech for the award. (08:50)
• The Python award and the Perl White Camel award is also given at OSCON. (12:35)
• Karen mentioned FLOSS Foundations, and asked if there was a meeting at OSCON. Bradley mentioned it had been primarily rolled into Jono Bacon's CLS conference. (15:10)

Segment 1 (17:56)

• Bradley wrote in a post about the GUADEC 2010 conference to note how welcoming the community was. Karen described GUADEC 2012 as very similar in nature. (21:25)
• Karen mentioned her husband Mike had a similar reaction to GUADEC 2012 that Bradley had to GUADEC 2010. (23:50)

Tags: faif, OSCON, conferences

July 17, 2012

Episode 0x2E: FOSDEM 2012: Linksvayer on Public Policy & CC 4.0

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Mike Linksvayer's FOSDEM 2012 talk, Creative Commons 4.0 licenses and other opportunities for FLOSS/free culture legal/policy intersections from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Tuesday 17 July 2012; its running time is 00:59:30.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

Bradley and Karen suggest that you use the slides below when listening to Mike's talk.

Segment 1 (05:51)

Mike Linksvayer's slides for this talk are available in PDF format and in ODP format.

Segment 2 (33:43)

Segment 3 (34:25)

A special licensing message from Mike Linksvayer.

Segment 4 (35:09)

• Karen mentioned Bradley's favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life.
• Bradley mentioned Asheesh Laroia, who appears to never blogged about his CC/credit-card-thief freenode confusion story. (48:00)
• Bradley mentioned Fontana's Copyleft.next project . (50:00)
• Bradley mentioned the ST:TNG episode, Unification, Part II, although he kept calling it Reunification during the episode. Please don't write in to complain; he realized the error after recording. (54:39)

Tags: faif, Creative Commons, FOSDEM

July 5, 2012

0x2D: FSF's Restricted Boot Paper

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss FSF's announcement of FSF's white paper on Restricted Boot, which critiques Red Hat's approach to restricted boot for its Fedora distribution and Canonical, Ltd.'s approach to restricted boot for its Ubuntu distribution.

This show was released on Thursday 5 July 2012; its running time is 00:42:22.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

• Karen mentioned it's useful that FSF avoids preloaded names. Bradley used FSF's criticism of the term “intellectual property” as an example of why it's important to avoid biased terminology. (02:22)
• Karen suggested that listeners may want to read FSF's white paper on Restricted Boot. (04:00)
• Bradley suggested also reading the Fedora statement and both Canonical, Ltd. statements. (04:37)
• Bradley and Karen mentioned the many blog posts Matthew Garrett made about UEFI are worth reading in sequence to learn more about this issue. (13:21)
• Bradley mentioned that FSF collaborated with the EFF on the broadcast flag issue. (25:40)
• Alan Cox made some critical posts toward Matthew and the Red Hat policy. (20:50)
• Bradley mentioned this Ancient Aliens from the History channel. (39:15)

Tags: faif, FSF, Restricted Boot

June 19, 2012

0x2C: FOSDEM 2012: Laurent's Open Licences before European Courts

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Philippe Laurent's FOSDEM 2012 talk, Open Licences before European Courts from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Tuesday 19 June 2012; its running time is 00:44:07.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

Karen and Bradley mention there is one talk remaining after this one from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

Segment 1 (03:04)

Philippe's slides are available from faif.us. Note: the slides are licensed differently than the show: they are CC-By-SA-3.0-Unported (rather than -USA).

Segment 2 (32:22)

• Bradley mentioned FSF France's involvement with the AFPA case. (37:30)

Tags: faif, GPL, copyright, conferences, FOSDEM

June 5, 2012

0x2B: Deb Nicholson of OIN

Summary

Karen and Bradley interview Deb Nicholson of Open Invention Network, GNU MediaGoblin and Open Hatch.

This show was released on Tuesday 5 June 2012; its running time is 00:48:12.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Karen announced her pregnancy. (01:50)
• Bradley will be at OSCON, Karen might be, and Karen will be at GUADEC. Bradley will be at LinuxCon North America and LinuxCon Europe. (03:00)

Segment 1 (04:40)

• Deb Nicholson was previously on the show as Episode 0x25: FOSDEM 2012 Patents Panel. (06:00)
• Deb mentioned Linux System Definition, which is the OIN-published list of things that OIN members license their patents to each other on. (07:12)
• Deb and Bradley are debating Bradley's comment regarding Deb's points on the panel on 0x25. If you go back to listen to 0x25, the context for the comment they're debating starts around 38:00 in 0x25. (19:20)
• It's possible etymology of the verb “to harp” may indeed come from the musical instrument, not harpy. (31:00)
• Karen mentioned The Ada Initiative. (32:52)

Segment 2 (38:54)

Bradley and Karen talk about plans for upcoming shows.

Tags: faif, GNU, patents

May 29, 2012

0x2A: Conservancy's Compliance Project

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss Software Freedom Conservancy's announcement regarding its coordinated license compliance program.

This show was released on Tuesday 29 May 2012; its running time is 00:32:53.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

Karen and Bradley discuss Software Freedom Conservancy's announcement regarding its coordinated license compliance program.

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, non-profit, copyright

May 22, 2012

0x29: Richard Fontana at Linux Collaboration Summit 2012

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Richard Fontana's Linux Collaboration Summit 2012 talk, The Decline of the GPL, and What To Do About It.

This show was released on Tuesday 22 May 2012; its running time is 01:19:27.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

Karen mentioned a legal summit where Richard and Karen spoke; the same event where the organizers said having Bradley speak would be the same as having the caterers speak.

Segment 1 (04:46)

Fontana's slides for this talk are available on Fontana's website.

Note that this talk is a longer version of Ricahrd Fontana's FOSDEM 2012 talk, The (possible) decline of the GPL, and what to do about it from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

Segment 2 (57:24)

Bradley and Karen discuss Fontana's talk.

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, copyright, Richard Fontana, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Oracle, conferences

May 8, 2012

0x28: FOSDEM 2012: Loic Dachary

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Loïc Dachary's FOSDEM 2012 talk, Can for-profit companies enforce copyleft without becoming corrupt like MySQL AB? from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Tuesday 8 May 2012; its running time is 00:56:01.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

Bradley and Karen discuss FOSDEM again.

Segment 1 (10:10)

Unfortunately, we don't have Loïc's slides.

Segment 2 (32:03)

Bradley and Karen comment on Loïc's talk.

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, FOSDEM

April 25, 2012

0x27: FOSDEM 2012: Randal's Legal Hygiene

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Allison Randal's FOSDEM 2012 talk, FLOSSing for Good Legal Hygiene: Stories from the Trenches from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Wednesday 25 April 2012; its running time is 01:04:56.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

Bradley talked about the #faif IRC conversation regarding hot milk recipe and its copyright. (01:54)

Segment 1 (07:10)

Allison's slides are available from faif.us.

Segment 2 (35:00)

• Karen and Bradley discussed the insanely complicated poster that Eclipse developers have to put on their walls to know how to accept patches (37:40)
• RMS's GNU Project essay talks about the Qt problem. (39:16)
• Bradley mentioned Chris Hertel's appearance on Linux Outlaws.(44:25)
• Karen mentioned The Scientific American article entitled Secret Computer Code Threatens Science. (54:00)
• Bradley mentioned Roland McGrath (56:44)

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, conferences, FOSDEM

April 13, 2012

0x26: FOSDEM 2012: Meeks on Copyright Assignment

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Michael Meeks's FOSDEM 2012 talk, Risks and Benefits of Copyright Assignment from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Friday 13 April 2012; its running time is 00:47:19.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

Bradley and Karen introduce Michael's talk.

Segment 1 (01:56)

Michael's slides are available from faif.us and from his blog post on the talk.

Segment 2 (26:47)

• Bradley mentioned GNU Mediagoblin as an example of a true upstream multi-copyright-holder AGPLv3'd project. (28:10)
• Bradley mentioned that LibreOffice is “wealthy” as well by Michael Meeks standards, given their successful fundraisers. (29:38)
• Bradley mentioned the Desktop Summit panel that he and Michael were on and Karen moderated. (34:06)
• Bradley and Michael co-authored (with Vincent Untz) the GNOME Copyright Assignment Guidelines. (35:30)
• FSF was previously supportive of MySQL AB back in 2002, but Michael also used to support the Sun JCA. (38:20)

Tags: faif, licensing, copyright, FOSDEM

March 29, 2012

0x25: FOSDEM 2012 Patents Panel

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Panel on Patents, moderated by Karen Sandler, with Ciarán O'Riordan, Benjamin Henrion, and Deb Nicholson from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Thursday 29 March 2012; its running time is 00:48:59.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• This American Life issued a retraction of the story we mentioned on 0x24. This American Life released a transcript or mp3 of the audio of the retraction. (02:21)
• Karen and Bradley introduce the panel.

Segment 1 (03:58)

This is the recording of the panel. Some of the questions aren't completely audible, but Dan did a pretty good job boosting it in places.

Segment 2 (32:21)

• IBM's amicus brief in Bilski clearly shows that IBM is pro-software patent. (33:48)
• The Linux System Definition which defines the only patents available for licensing by OIN licensees, was unilaterally updated recently without consulting the Free Software community.
• Keith Bergelt of OIN will speak at Linux Collaboration 2012 on the Legal track, which Bradley is chairing (35:29)
• OIN is a for-profit company. (37:54)
• IBM has attacked Free Software projects with patents, such as TurboHercules (39:22)
• IBM is the largest software patent holder in the world. (44:27)
• Red Hat refuses to grant a patent license for patent use in Free software, they have only a weak promise that allows them to sell of patents to others who may enforce against Free Software projects, or which could be revoked. (46:26)

Tags: faif, licensing, Richard Fontana, IBM, patents

March 13, 2012

0x24: App Store Panel

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Panel on Application Stores, moderated by Richard Fontana, with Giovanni Battista Gallus, Bradley M. Kuhn, and Hugo Roy from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Tuesday 13 March 2012; its running time is 00:47:28.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

Karen and Bradley introduce the panel.

Segment 1 (02:15)

This is the recording of the panel. Some of the questions aren't completely audible, but Dan did a pretty good job boosting it in places.

Segment 2 (35:04)

• Bradley mentioned This American Life, Episode 454, that covered issues of labor that is abused to build our electronics. You can read a transcript or download an mp3 of the audio. (43:27)

Tags: faif, conferences, FOSDEM

February 28, 2012

0x23: Is Copyleft Being Framed?

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss John Sullivan's talk entitled Is Copyleft Being Framed? from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Tuesday 28 February 2012; its running time is 00:56:19.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Dave Neary wrote an article based on his FOSDEM talk, and we're trying our best to fix the audio and have a FaiFCast of his talk, but it may not be salvagable.

Segment 1 (06:35)

• Follow along with John's slides from his FOSDEM talk.

Segment 1 (37:23)

• John referenced the source Black Duck numbers for which there is no methodology posted (38:30)
• Bradley mentioned Chris DiBona's keynote at OSCON 2010. (39:14)
• John mentioned the FLOSS Mole project in his talk. (42:50)

Tags: faif, conferences, FOSDEM

February 14, 2012

0x22: Elder's Methods of FOSS Activism

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Ambjörn Elder's talk entitled Methods of FOSS Activism from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Tuesday 14 February 2012; its running time is 00:44:44.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

Bradley and Karen summarize some of the logistics of FOSDEM.

Segment 1 (08:08)

You can follow along with Ambjörn's slides for his talk while you listen.

Segment 2 (24:04)

• Bradley mentioned Terry Bollinger's report, Use of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense. (26:13)
• Karen quoted the USA DoD in her Killed by Code paper. (28:04)
• EFF has engaged lobbyist in the past on some issues. (29:58)
• Bradley mentioned Noam Chomsky's point regarding concision. (35:32)

Tags: faif, conferences, FOSDEM

January 31, 2012

Episode 0x21: Inspirational Conference Talks

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss Jacob Appelbaum's talk at Linux Conf Australia 2012, as well as other conference talks.

This show was released on Tuesday 31 January 2012; its running time is 00:38:58.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley spoke at SCALE, but the talk was very similar to the talk given on 0x18. (07:15)
• Karen's talk at LCA was a longer version of the talk from 0x15 she gave at OSCON. Listeners should write in if they want Karen's longer talk to be a show (07:30).
• Bradley will try to record some of the talks from the Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2012 (07:55)
• Bradley mentioned the Red Dwarf episode, Legion where Rimmer says: Thank you for listening. Oh, additional: sorry to take up your valuable time. Sorry. Thank you. Sorry. Bye. Bye. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (12:12)
• Bradley asked if the crickets in Australia sang Jump Around, since Karen said they jump around (15:45)

Segment 0 (18:51)

• Karen liked Jacob Appelbaum's keynote at Linux Conf Australia 2012 (19:20)
• Bradley mentioned Harald Welte's blog post about running his own email server (23:45)
• Bradley mentioned Ken Thompson's bug (34:03)

Tags: faif, security, conferences

January 17, 2012

Episode 0x20: Gender Inequality in Software Freedom Community

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss issues of gender inequality in the software freedom community and technology generally.

This show was released on Tuesday 17 January 2012; its running time is 00:47:17.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

• Bradley and Karen discuss issues of gender inequality in the software freedom community and technology generally.
• Bradley wrote a blog post a while back noting that issues of gender inequality are technology-sector-wide, as shown on PDF page 10 of this study. However, Bradley incorrectly remembered the study: in fact, all levels of academic computer science are (23:19)

• Karen got a 5 on our Calculus AB exam, even though her teacher told her only boys were good at math. Bradley also got a 5 on the Calculus AB exam. (27:06)
• Bradley believes that Stand and Deliver. (29:37)
• Bradley is sure there is no Calculus in Good Will Hunting (30:08)
• Bradley mentioned that S05E11 of American Greed contained an rsync output on a Debian system and Python DBUS binding C code as “code cracking examples” (31:00)
• Miguel de Icaza had a cameo in the file Antitrust. (33:27)
• Bradley mentioned that Craig Mundie keynoted OSCON (38:55)
• Bradley mentioned the USENIX/Freenix to Perl Conference to OSCON history (42:50)
• Karen mentioned the GNOME Marketing Meeting at FOSDEM 2012. (43:27)
• Karen is speaking at Linux Conf Australia on 19 January 2012,Bradley is speaking at Scale 10x, the 2012 Southern California Linux Expo (44:16)

Tags: faif, gender

January 8, 2012

Episode 0x1F: Toward Better Legal Discussion Fora

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the various private Free Software legal fora and consider if a more open community for discussion might be better, and also discuss the just-ended CFP for the FOSDEM Legal and Policy Issues Dev Room.

This show was released on Sunday 8 January 2012; its running time is 00:37:57.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Bradley and Karen were discussing the NYS charities filing requirements for auditing and limited review, as can be seen NYS CHAR-500 instructions, on page 5 of 6, §V(6) . (03:02)
• Bradley and Karen mentioned the old show, SFLS 0x19, where they discussed Conservancy's FY 2008 Form 990. (03:27)
• Bradley mentioned he still works at a cow-orking facility (04:15)
• Bradley mentioned that various charity rating sites like Charity Navigator and GuideStar. (05:58)
• Bradley mentioned Lawrence Welk (09:50)
• Bradley is speaking on GPL enfoircement at SCALE 10x.
• keynoting on Thursday 19 January 2012 at Linux Conf Australia 2012.
• Bradley doesn't like the Chatham House Rule. (20:30)

Tags: faif

December 16, 2011

Episode 0x1E: Our Non-Profits Considered

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss recent debates about the value of non-profit organizations for Free Software.

This show was released on Friday 16 December 2011; its running time is 00:44:33.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Fontana (and other Red Hat employees) pointed out some imprecision in what Bradley said in Episode 0x1D about Debian non-free. (01:07)
• A call for participation has been announced for the Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2012. Please submit a proposal by 30 December 2011 (04:30)
• A recent debate about non-profits started, initiated by a blog post called Apache Considered Harmful. (12:55)
• Karen and Bradley briefly mentioned that some now believe that Considered Harmful Considered Harmful (13:16)
• A long thread on this issue occurred on the FLOSS Foundations mailing list (13:45)
• Bradley made an official Conservancy Blog post about the value of non-profits for Free Software (14:17)
• Sourceforge became proprietary software in 2001, as is well-described in this by The Sourceforge proprietarization debacle is well described in an article by Loïc Dachary. (19:19)
• Bradley mentioned FaiFCast Episode 0x11, which discussed the OpenOffice.org/Apache/LibreOffice situation. (44:35)
• Bradley pointed out that this debate conflates a lot of different issues, and tried to list all the conflated questions here:
  • Should a non-profit home decide what technical infrastructure is used for a software freedom project? And if so, what should it be?
  • If the projects doesn't provide technological services, should non-profits allow their projects to rely on for-profits for technological or other services?
  • Should a non-profit home set political and social positions that must be followed by the projects? If so, how strictly should they be enforced?
  • Should copyrights be held by the non-profit home of the project, or with the developers, or a mix of the two?
  • Should the non-profit dictate licensing requirements on the project? If so, how many licenses are ok?
  • Should a non-profit dictate strict copyright provenance requirements on their projects? If not, should the non-profit at least provide guidelines and recommendations?

Tags: FSF, non-profit, Richard Fontana

November 29, 2011

Episode 0x1D: Stefano Zacchiroli, Current DPL

Summary

Karen interviews Stefano Zacchiroli, who is the current Debian Project Leader. Karen and Bradley discuss their thoughts on that interview.

This show was released on Tuesday 29 November 2011; its running time is 00:38:51.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Karen interviewed Stefano Zacchiroli, who is the current Debian Project Leader. (02:59)

Segment 1 (03:58)

• Stefano was inspired by a professor at his university to get involved with Free Software, because you can study the sources. (04:50)
• DPL reelection is in April each year. (08:40)
• Stefano discovered that some Debian derivatives weren't distributing source packages. He's helped them get into compliance, although Stefano hesitates to call it enforcement. (12:40)
• Stefano mentioned that many Debian contributors begin contributing upstream to Debian after contributing to derivatives of Debian first. (15:20)
• Stefano thinks the adoption of Free Software on the desktop is shrinking, and many users are using proprietary software “cloud” services. (19:00)
• Stefano thinks that GPL is not enough to defend our software freedom, and that AGPL can do it but it came a bit late. (20:20)
• Stefano is concerned about companies like Google that can reimplement an entire software system merely to avoid copyleft. (20:40)

Segment 2 (21:04)

• Bradley mentioned that moving a package to non-free is a powerful tool that Debian has to deal with licensing situations (21:40)
• Bradley noted that the Debian ftpmasters make decisions about licensing, but it has not been historically well documented. It seems that fact is now well documented. (27:30)

Tags: faif, GPL, Debian

November 11, 2011

Episode 0x1C: Adam Dingle of Yorba

Summary

Karen interviews Adam Dingle of Yorba, and Bradley and Karen briefly discuss the interview.

This show was released on Friday 11 November 2011; its running time is 00:51:23.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• The interview is with Adam Dingle of Yorba.
(02:30)

Segment 1 (02:45)

• Yorba was founded in January 2009. (04:01)
• Yorba applied for 501(c)(3) status nearly two years ago and the application is still pending in the queue (the same delay queue we discussed in Episode 0x13. (28:30)
• Adam mentioned Yorba's donation page. (30:13)

Segment 2 (41:08)

• Karen mentioned that Yorba's response to the IRS should be published soon. (41:35)
• Bradley mentioned Cat Allman's Fundraising 101 talk from OSCON. (43:30)

Tags: faif, non-profit, Form 1023

October 25, 2011

Episode 0x1B: Two Executive Directors

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss their jobs, particularly fundraising, and plans for future shows.

This show was released on Tuesday 25 October 2011; its running time is 00:31:47.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• The Google Summer of Code Program is large philanthropic program by Google for students to write Free Software in the summer.
• Bradley gave a talk about non-profit organizations at the Google SoC Mentor Summit 2011
• Karen mentioned the GNOME Women's Outreach Program, which coordinates with the SoC, and the Season of KDE. (09:36)
• Conservancy's Amarok, Mercurial and PyPy projects are all currently doing fundraising programs (14:38)
• Bradley will give two talks at LinuxCon Europe this week. (15:15)
• Karen will attend the Ubuntu Developer Summit. (20:20)
• Karen will speak in Latvia later this year. (24:20)
• Richard Fontana discussed RMS' quote about Jobs on identi.ca (26:27)

Segment 1 (29:28)

• We'll try to record some talks/interviews at upcoming events.

Tags: faif, non-profit

October 11, 2011

Episode 0x1A: Comments on Jobs

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the various news and comments on Steve Jobs' death and his legacy, and their own thoughts on the issue.

This show was released on Tuesday 11 October 2011; its running time is 00:52:17.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Bradley still hasn't made the blog post he keeps saying he'll make about one year at Conservancy. (01:30
• Bradley mentioned the character Cat from Red Dwarf's obsession with “shiny things” in the episode Waiting for God. (20:23)

Segment 1 (21:12)

• Karen mentioned Paula Rooney's article Steve Jobs: an open source pioneer? You bet, which Bradley pointed out was a pure link-bait. (21:20)
• Bradley mention Andy Rooney has retired (32:10)

Segment 1 (33:40)

• Bradley mentioned RMS' comments on Steve Jobs' death (34:09)
• Bradley mentioned the gawker article that was critical of Steve Jobs
• Bradley mentioned a comment that discussed how RMS' lack of tact can help software freedom. (40:43)

Tags: faif

September 28, 2011

Episode 0x19: GNOME 3.2 and Other Topics

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the GNOME 3.2 release, Karen interviews Jos Poortvliet, Bradley complains about identi.ca web interface and they discuss together UEFI “secure” boot, and the PyPy Python 3 campaign.

This show was released on Wednesday 28 September 2011; its running time is 00:48:46.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:40)

• Bradley wrote a blog post about how GNOME 3 is not for him.

Segment 1 (07:14)

• Karen interviewed Jos Poortvliet

Segment 2 (21:04)

• Bradley mentioned Shaun McCance's post to desktop-devel about response bias, which he posted on user survey thread. (25:04)
• Karen mentioned that GNOME 3.2 has been released with new features, such as better window resizing. (28:57)
• Bradley pointed out that gnats was one of the earliest Free Software bug tracking systems. (30:37)

Segment 3 (31:53)

• Bradley mentioned that he feels like the unfrozen caveman lawyer when trying to use identi.ca now. (32:54)
• Bradley mentioned Matthew Garrett's blog post about UEFI so-called “secure” booting. (37:36)
• PyPy is trying to raise funds to support Python 3 on PyPy. (41:20)

Tags: faif, novell, gnome

September 13, 2011

Episode 0x18: 12 Years of Compliance: A Historical Perspective

Summary

Bradley and Karen play a speech recording of Bradley's presentation at OSCON 2011, entitled 12 Years of FLOSS License Compliance: A Historical Perspective.

This show was released on Tuesday 13 September 2011; its running time is 00:57:19.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Bradley mentioned that time travel requires special verb tenses according to the Douglas Adams' book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. (01:48)
• Bradley gave a keynote at Ohio Linux Fest 2011 (01:58)

Segment 1 (05:02)

• This segment is a recording of Bradley's OSCON 2011 talk, entitled 12 Years of Copyleft License Compliance: A Historical Perspective. The slides are available on Bradley's website so you can follow along during the talk if you like.
• There is a live denting identi.ca thread from Bradley's talk. (03:50)
• Bradley wrote a blog post about a minor GPL violation in the Emacs codebase. It has since been fixed.
• RMS mentioned the NeXT/Objective C GPL violation in his essay, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism.

Segment 2 (52:35)

• Bradley will be speaking at the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2011 and at LinuxCon Europe 2011. (55:05)

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, copyright

August 30, 2011

Episode 0x17: Contributor Agreements Considered Harmful

Summary

Bradley and Karen play a speech recording of Richard Fontana's presentation at OSCON 2011, entitled Contributor Agreements Considered Harmful.

Note: this show and the slides from Richard Fontana are licensed under CC-By-SA-3.0 USA. This will be the new license of the show for this and future episodes.

This show was released on Tuesday 30 August 2011; its running time is 01:03:49.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• This show is a recording of Richard Fontana's talk Contributor Agreements Considered Harmful. (03:13)

Segment 1 (03:34)

• Richard Fontana has made his slides from his talk available on his website.
• Bradley live-dented Fontana's talk from OSCON.
• Richard Fontana references Michael Meeks' essay, Some thoughts on Copyright Assignment (29:55)

Segment 2 (45:17)

• Bradley and Karen were on a panel discussion on copyright assignment at Desktop Summit. (45:33)
• Bradley mentioned that Mark Shuttleworth's obsession with cadence had a similar weird effect on a different debate. (58:30)
• Karen has done some pro bono work for PubPat, and also Question Copyright (01:01:30)

Tags: novell, copyright, Richard Fontana

August 16, 2011

Episode 0x16: Legal Basics for Developers

Summary

Bradley and Karen play and comment on a talk recording of Aaron Williamson's and Karen's presentation at OSCON 2011, entitled Legal Basics for Developers.

This show was released on Tuesday 16 August 2011; its running time is 00:53:53.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley mentioned the birthday attack when explaining to Karen how likely it might be that the number of the show might match the number of the day. (01:38)
• This show is a recording of Aaron and Karen's OSCON 2011 talk, Legal Basics for Developers. (02:20)

Segment 1 (05:53)

• The slides for the Legal Basics for Developers are available to follow along with the recording (05:53)

Segment 2 (49:36)

• Richard Fontana gave at a talk at OSCON as well, which was recorded, and Karen and Bradley have asked for his permission to play it. (50:45)
• Bradley asked folks to ping Richard on identi.ca to ask him to allow us to use his audio on the oggcast. (51:05)

Tags: faif, copyright

August 2, 2011

Episode 0x15: Karen Keynotes OSCON

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss Karen's OSCON keynote and her 2011 O'Reilly Open Source Award, as well as other happenings from OSCON.

This show was released on Tuesday 2 August 2011; its running time is 00:36:27.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley and Karen just returned from the 2011 O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention (OSCON). (00:45)
• Karen received one of the 2011 O'Reilly Open Source Awards. (Video of the award ceremony is online.) (03:05)
• Karen now has a blog called GNOMG. (05:03)
• Karen's wrote a blog post about winning the 2011 Open Source Award. (03:47)
• Karen now has a redirector to her blog via gnomg.org. (05:42)
• Listener Michael Dexter let Bradley stay at his house for part of the time of OSCON, and Bradley later shared a room with listener Richard Fontana. (06:40)

Segment 1 (10:22)

• Karen keynoted at OSCON, entitled Software Freedom: From my Heart to the Desktop. (10:22)
• Bradley had a live-denting thread of Karen's keynote at OSCON 2011.
• Karen's 2011 OSCON keynote is available YouTube. You can also hear the audio on the show itself, but if you prefer video, use the preceding link. If you watch instead of listen, just skip the audio in the oggcast up to Segment 2 below:

Segment 2 (24:49)

• Bradley mentioned conferences can be ephemeral on his blog about GUADEC 2010. (28:25)
• Bradley and Karen are about to go to the Desktop Summit. (29:15)
• Bradley, Michael Meeks and Mark Shuttleworth will be on a panel on copyright assignment moderated by Karen. (29:25)

Tags: faif, OSCON

July 19, 2011

Episode 0x14: Free as in FOAM

Summary

Karen and Bradley briefly discuss and play Bradley's keynote at the Sixth Annual OpenFOAM Conference.

This show was released on Tuesday 19 July 2011; its running time is 01:04:03.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

• Bradley spoke at the Sixth Annual OpenFOAM workshop. (01:42)

Segment 1 (03:20)

• Follow along with Bradley's slides from his talk at the Sixth Annual OpenFOAM Workshop (03:22)
• The sources for the slides is available.

Segment 2 (53:12)

• Karen and Bradley discussed the talk.
• Bill Gates' arrest in New Mexico (Bradley incorrectly said Nevada) is discussed in Gates' Wikipedia entry. (55:20)
• Bradley mentioned the made-for-TV movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley. (56:26)

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, copyright

July 5, 2011

Episode 0x13: Torts and 1023s

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the USAmerican legal system in regard to torts, and the current delays from the USA IRS on 501(c)(3) non-profit applications (i.e., Form 1023s).

This show was released on Tuesday 5 July 2011; its running time is 00:39:49.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:48)

• Billy Crook wrote in to make a good joke about 0x12 being the last episode available in other RSS feeds. (Don't forget the right RSS feed is at faif.us.)
• Karen calls tortes delicious pastries.
• Bradley saw a documentary called Hot Coffee, which discussed the idea of tort deform. (03:35, 05:45)
• Bradley mentioned that Karl Rove, George W. Bush's political operative, was involved in early tort “reform”. (06:54)
• Brendan Scott is a lawyer in Australia, who has published about GPL enforcement and writes a blog about legal issues related to Open Source and Free Software (11:58)

Segment 1 (12:50)

• Bradley talked about 501(c)(3) status and Form 1023s in his interview on FLOSS weekly. (13:50)
• Around 2010, applications for Free Software non-profits' 501(c)(3) status started to be delayed, according to independent evidence that Karen and Bradley have collected from the IRS and the community of non-profits. (16:20)
• Form 1023s are the applications you file with the IRS (17:15)
• As far as we know, no applications have been refused yet for a Free Software non-profit, but there seem to be extremely long delays. (18:40)
• Bradley mentioned a blog post from the Executive Director of CASH Music, where he talked about their Form 1023 being delayed. (19:10)
• Karen has confirmed with IRS agents that this process of applications does not impact existing non-profits currently. (21:00)
• Bradley pointed out that COBOL jobs are still very prevalent. Bradley even found a website dedicated only to COBOL jobs. (36:18)
• After we recorded, Simon Phipps posted a blog post quoting Bradley about the issue
.

Tags: faif, non-profit, tort, Form 1023

June 21, 2011

Episode 0x12: Karen's New Job; Supreme Court on Patents

Summary

Karen announces her new job, and Bradley and Karen discuss the recent USA Supreme Court decisions on patents.

Be sure to make sure you're subscribed to feeds available on faif.us if you haven't already!

This show was released on Tuesday 21 June 2011; its running time is 00:54:31.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• If you have not moved your RSS feed already away from softwarefreedom.org, and to faif.us, you should do that now! Here's links to the ogg RSS feed and mp3 RSS feed. New FaiF shows won't appear on softwarefreedom.org.
• Karen is now the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. (04:30)
• Bradley served on the GNOME Foundation Executive Director Hiring Committee, but resigned when Karen became a serious candidate. (05:13)
• Karen will continue as General Counsel of Question Copyright, and pro-bono counsel to Software Freedom Conservancy, and will also continue pro bono on some matters for SFLC. (06:30)
• Bradley has been working on GNU Bash. (07:34)
• Berlin's Tegel airport is closing soon. (14:40)
• Bradley mentioned that he incorrectly said in 0x11 that Red Hat doesn't provide sources publicly for RHEL. The RHEL SRPMS are actually on Red Hat's FTP site. (18:20)
• There are various identica threads on the RHEL issue from 0x11.(18:47)
• Bradley has previously explained the history of the term “punditocracy” in episode 0x0A. (27:46)

Segment 1 (28:58)

• Bradley and Karen discuss the USA Supreme Court decision in the Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S. A. case, on which SFLC submitted an amicus brief, which was previously discussed in FaiF Episode 0x05. (29:55)
• Bradley and Karen discuss the USA Supreme Court decision in the Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership case, on which the EFF submitted an amicus brief. (40:11)

Tags: licensing, patents, gnome

June 7, 2011

Episode 0x11: Corporate Licensing Decisions That Impact the Project's Community

Summary

Dan Lynch (filling in for Karen) and Bradley discuss a few examples where licensing decisions by companies impacts the health of the software development community.

This show was released on Tuesday 7 June 2011; its running time is 01:24:34.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:00:36)

• Dan interviewed the CentOS developers on FLOSS Weekly. (00:05:52)
• Bradley has a blog post that describes RHEL licensing model. His previous blog post to that one, while mostly off-topic here, has a few points of interest. (00:10:36)
• Dan Lynch mentioned The Smoking Man from the The X Files television series. (00:17:22)
• Bradley mentioned that Lennart Poettering is a Red Hat employee working on systemd, which is now in Fedora, but not in RHEL yet (as far as we know). (00:18:53)
• Bradley suggested that developers starting projects read Karsten Wade's The Open Source Way, and Karl Fogel's Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project, and Bradley's blog post about developing in public. (00:22:16)
• Dan and Bradley briefly discussed copyright abolition. Dan mentioned Stallman's writing on the Pirate Party's copyright positions.

Segment 1 (00:32:30)

• Bradley briefly discussed the history of StarOffice, and the creation of OpenOffice.org. (00:33:40)
• Bradley explained issues related to the LibreOffice fork of OpenOffice.org. (00:37:30)
• Bradley has talked about how proprietary relicensing is very dangerous (00:39:50)
• Fedora, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE all switched to LibreOffice as a default. Bradley didn't know at recording time that the OpenOffice package in wheezy is a transition package to switch to LibreOffice. (00:41:24)
• Bradley and Dan mentioned a blog post by IBM's Rob Weir that misquotes the FSF to support IBM's positions on the OO.o relicensing issue. (00:58:26)
• Bradley mentioned the idea that Apache-2.0 work can be relicensed under LGPLv3-or-later, as he discussed in his blog post about the OO.o relicensing (01:00:45)
• Dan mentioned Jeremy Allison's comment on the aforementioned post on Rob Weir's blog. (01:02:08)

Segment 2 (01:16:09)

Bradley thanked Dan, on behalf of Karen, for all his work to make Free as in Freedom possible.

Tags: faif, novell, commercial, licensing, copyright, LGPL, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Oracle, IBM

May 24, 2011

Episode 0x10: Linux License Violations

Summary

Dan Lynch (filling in for Karen) and Bradley play and discuss Matthew Garrett's talk GPL Violations: What Are We Doing? (aka Linux License Violations) from the Linux Collaboration Summit 2011.

If you want to listen to only the off-topic parts of this oggcast, please download the FaiF 0x10 Off-Topic Remix.

This show was released on Tuesday 24 May 2011; its running time is 01:24:10.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• FaiF Producer Dan Lynch is filling in for Karen as co-host this week. (00:43)
• Karen got married on the day Dan and Bradley recorded the oggcast. (01:03)
• Dan is also known as the co-host of Linux Outlaws, host of Rat Hole Radio, and occasional co-host of FLOSS Weekly. (02:05)
• Bradley mentioned Dick Van Dyke's admission (06:56)

Segment 1 (08:05)

• This segment is Matthew Garrett's talk GPL Violations: What Are We Doing? (aka Linux License Violations) from the Linux Collaboration Summit 2011.
• Matthew Garrett released the slides from his talk which you can follow along with during the talk.

Segment 2 (51:29)

• Bradley mentioned that Matthew is particularly interested in the GPL violations on Android/Linux devices that he's found. (52:57)
• Bradley mentioned Greg Kroah-Hartman's GPL enforcement against Microsoft, which Bradley also blogged about a few years ago. (55:51)
• Dan asked Bradley about DMCA usage in GPL enforcement. Bradley explained that there is a process called DMCA takedown that Matthew was discussing. (57:30)
• Dan and Bradley discussed the Linux Foundation Open Compliance Program. (1:05:05)
• Bradley mentions that he is completely opposed to criminal penalties for copyright infringement, and mentioned his ACTA commenting blog post. (1:12:13)
• Bradley and Dan discussed the Sony DVD rootkit. (1:15:17)
• Karen's wedding invitation got some press since it was a working record player. (1:16:58)
• Karen and Mike's wedding song is at the end of the oggcast, but you can also download the song from the wedding website. (1:21:08)

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, copyright

May 10, 2011

Episode 0x0F: Why Samba Switched to GPLv3

Summary

This episode is a recording of Jeremy Allison's talk, Why Samba Switched to GPLv3 from the 2011 Linux Collaboration Summit, with some commentary from Bradley and Karen on the talk.

This show was released on Tuesday 10 May 2011; its running time is 01:00:51.

Show Notes

Ironically (or perhaps appropriately), Bradley was at Samba XP with Jeremy the day this show was released. So, there he wasn't able to get show notes together in detail for this show.

However, Jeremy's slides from the talk are available (in PDF), and also ODP format. So, you can follow along with it in the talk.

Also, you may be interested to read Bradley live-dent'd Jeremy's talk, so the discussion there might be useful to read as well.

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing

April 26, 2011

Episode 0x0E: Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement

Summary

This episode is a recording of Richard Fontana's talk, Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement from the 2011 Linux Collaboration Summit, with some commentary from Bradley and Karen on the talk.

This show was released on Tuesday 26 April 2011; its running time is 01:02:48.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Bradley is still recovering from a rhinovirus which he didn't take care of and also made him sicker, which explains the problems with his voice. In fact, the coughing in the background during Fontana's talk is all Bradley. He apologizes. (00:50)
• This show is Richard Fontana's Linux Collaboration Summit 2011 talk, Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement. (03:24)

Segment 1 (03:48)

• Richard Fontana's slides for his talk, Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement are available on his website. (04:29)
• Bradley was live-denting Fontana's LCS talk. (04:31)
• Richard Fontana is the purveyor of the disturbing group on identi.ca. (04:30)
• Fontana makes reference to a Bradley's blog post on switching back to Debian from Ubuntu. (05:55)
• Fontana pointed out that the GNU Manifesto deals a lot with how Free Software is completely compatible with many business models. (12:30)
• Fontana pointed out that many of the relationships between companies in Free software have great variability in level of transparency. (16:00)
• In the background, you hear Bradley saying something. He's giving Josh Berkus credit for the phrase throw code over the wall, a phrase which both Fontana and Bradley now use regularly. (32:28)

Segment 2 (48:25)

• Fontana made an interesting analogy to commissioned art and its similarity to FLOSS. (50:33)
• Fontana noted later on identica that he does support non-profit as solution to entanglement problem. (54:48)
• Bradley mentioned the 60 Minutes story about Mortenson's Central Asia Institute (CAI). (55:30)
• Fontana now talking about GE/NBC relationship, but Bradley was surprised that Fontana didn't mention Ben Bagdikian's book, The Media Monopoly. (18:26, 56:30)
• Bradley was glad that Fontana called proprietary relicensing illegitimate. Bradley points out that sometimes community members, including himself, have too easily forgiven business models on the edges of software freedom. (25:13, 30:50 58:30)

Tags: faif, GNU, licensing, non-profit, Richard Fontana

April 12, 2011

Episode 0x0D: NDAs

Summary

This episode is a recording of Karen's talk, Sign on the Dotted Line: NDAs and Free and Open Source Software from the 2011 Linux Collaboration Summit.

This show was released on Tuesday 12 April 2011; its running time is 00:42:44.

Show Notes

Segment 1 (01:33)

You can download a copy of Karen's slides from the talk if you'd like to follow along.

Here's a listener donated transcription of one of the questions:

[23:14]
[indistinct] Signed up [indistinct] At Google you can opt out. Some of the people are You cannot actually [indistinct]

[29:53] On some NDAs you can have sections that say you are not allowed to use open source software and not allowed to write open source software, but the company is hiring you to do exactly this.

[30:12] In NDAs. I'm a consultant, and so I get a lot of NDAs on my desk. I know at least 5 large semiconductor companies who have this paragraph inside that forbid you to look at open source software and its clear that open source software is a clause for the death penalty when they're hiring you as a consultant to write drivers in the Linux kernel.

Tags: faif

March 29, 2011

Episode 0x0C: Disturbing Debates

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss two debates going on in the free and open source software community. One recent and seemingly inflated, and one long and confusing.

This show was released on Tuesday 29 March 2011; its running time is 00:43:18.

Show Notes

Segment 1 (03:12)

• Bradley wrote a blog post about the Bionic issues that were raised. (03:44)
• On the old oggcast, Karen and Bradley discussed the Android/Linux system and Bionic specifically. (04:09)
• Karen mentioned an old oggcast where permissive vs. copyleft licensing was discussed. (06:19)
• Jake Edge wrote an LWN article that discussed Bionic (07:58)
• Bradley mentioned Raymond Nimmer's blog that started the debate (10:52)
• Bradley also mentioned Edward Naughton's blog post and paper on Bionic. (11:38)
• Raymond Nimmer is not David Nimmer, who is known for writings on copyright (18:10)
• There is now an disturbing group on identica, which is more disturbing than a tag about disturbing. (19:15)
• Joe Brockmeier did some research on Edward Naughton's ties to Microsoft. (20:05)
• Karen mentioned a paper on deep legal analysis of header files and on originality requirements in copyright (24:40)

Segment 2 (26:07)

• Karen wanted to clear up some confusion about the discussion last episode about the “Open Source” and “Free Software” terminology.

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, mobile, copyright

March 15, 2011

Episode 0x0B: Free Software Project Non-Profit Existence

Summary

Bradley and Karen have an introductory discussion on how non-profit governance interacts with Free Software projects and what issues are important for developers who want their project to have a non-profit existence.

This show was released on Tuesday 15 March 2011; its running time is 00:34:42.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Bradley and Karen began the discussion by commenting on this blog post by Andy Updegrove about non-profit governance. (01:50)
• Bradley and Karen tend to agree that non-profit settings are better places to foster and help Free Software development. (03:40)
• Bradley mentioned that Roland McGrath wrote GNU C Library (and other GNU programs) while working as an employee at the FSF, and many of those programs are now often maintained by Red Hat (or other company's) developers, under the auspices of the GNU project, as overseen by the FSF. (04:50)
• Corporate form and organization questions should be secondary to project leadership ones. (09:50)
• One of the most important things is to have an organization in a place where people are willing to do the work to keep the organization going. (20:10)
• Enthusiasm to keep the organization running is the most important resource for running the organization. (22:26)

Tags: faif, non-profit

March 1, 2011

Episode: 0x0A: Windows Mobile Windows Phone 7 Series Application Store

Summary

Bradley and Karen discussed the Windows Phone 7 Application Store terms and conditions which prohibit GPL'd and other copylefted software in the application store.

This show was released on Tuesday 1 March 2011; its running time is 00:38:13.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Karen and Bradley discussed the Microsoft Phone Marketplace agreement, which was heavily covered in news and blogs. (02:50)
• Karen quoted directly from the § 1(l) from the Windows Phone Marketplace Application Provider Agreement (03:20)
• Bradley credited Jello Biafra with coining the term “punditocracy”, but it seems to have been first used by Charles Reynell in The Economist in 1989 and popularized by Eric Alterman in his 1992 book, Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy.
• Bradley mentioned the brouhaha about the order of succession after Regan was shot in 1981. (Bradley incorrectly said 1980 on the show.) (09:47)
• Karen and Bradley previously discussed the Apple Online Store agreement on FaiF Episode 0x03.
• Bradley mentioned that the arm port of Windows 7 isn't even done (21:30)
• According to a Canalys study quoted on Wikipedia's Smartphone entry, RIM is only 14% of the market now, when it was previously much larger. Symbian is still the largest, surprisingly. (25:21)
• K-9 Mail is a fork of the last Free Software version of Google's Android Mail application. (30:21)
• Bradley compared what's happening with Android to the history of X Windows (31:40)
• Bradley joked about the naming length controversy for the Windows Phone 7. (33:00)
• Steve Ballmer strangely kept saying: The operating system is called Windows while talking to market analysis back in July 2010. (36:04)

After the show was recorded, there was an announcement that Microsoft would allow employees to build their own companies writing Windows 7 Series Windows Mobile applications.

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing, microsoft, mobile

February 15, 2011

Episode 0x09: Copyleft, -or-later, and Basics of Compatibility

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss types of copyleft generally and introduce the basics of license compatibility and -or-later clauses.

This show was released on Tuesday 15 February 2011; its running time is 00:41:57.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:38)

• This show discusses copyleft and basic issues of license compatibility (04:09)
• Karen mentioned an episode of the old Software Freedom Law Show, Episode 0x08, where Bradley and Karen discussed selecting a FLOSS license and what the various options are. (04:45)
• license compatibility 06:28
• Bradley incorrectly said that the original Emacs license didn't have the word General in it. However, the other explanations appear to be correct. There's a useful history page that someone wrote about the history of GPL. It appears the non-general GNU copylefts existed from 1984-1988. (06:57)
• Karen noted that the Library GPL was renamed to the Lesser GPL which happened in 1999. (09:30)
• Bradley mentioned that when he and RMS worked on the GNU Classpath Exception, Bradley suggested it be called the Least GPL. (10:38)
• GPL doesn't have a choice of law clause. If another copyleft does, it surely is incompatible with the GPL. (14:17)
• AGPLv3 § 13 and GPLv3 § 13 explicitly make themselves compatibility with each other, which Bradley calls compatibility by fiat. (15:40)
• Karen mentioned that the Mozilla Public License § 13 has a section about multiple licensed code (16:50).
• Bradley mentioned that Mozilla Firefox uses a combinatorial license: (GPL|LGPL|MPL), which is a disjunctive tri-license. (19:00).
• Bradley mentioned that the old Software Freedom Law Show Episode 0x17 discussed compatibility of permissively licensed software and copylefted software. (20:22)
• Apache Software License 2.0 was likely the first FLOSS license to have an explicit patent licensing provision (23:40)
• Bradley and Karen discussed the fact that -only vs. -or-later are options with the GPL, while they are not with other copylefts, such as CC-By-SA. (30:11)

Tags: faif, GPL, licensing

February 1, 2011

Episode 0x08: Strictly Commercial

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss non-commercial-only commons licenses, particularly the CC-By-NC license, and how they compare to Free Culture and Free Software licenses, and why some authors pick NC licenses instead of Free Culture/Software ones.

This show was released on Tuesday 1 February 2011; its running time is 00:49:32.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Listeners seeking a show on how to select a Free Software license, differences between copyleft and non-copyleft, and how they interact with copyright are encouraged to listen to episode 0x08 of the old Software Freedom Law Show which covered these topics. Please write in again if that show doesn't cover your questions on the issue. (02:10)
• Bradley reminisced about the crass “Brian and O'Brien” show on Baltimore's B-104 Gary Huddles who was notorious locally in Baltimore because he was implicated in Maryland's version of the 1980s Savings and Loan scandals. (03:30)
• Karen mentioned that freedomdefined.org is the source for the Free Culture definition that defines what licenses are Free Culture licenses. (12:54)
• Bradley suggested listening to some of the old versions of RMS' Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks. In fact, there is an audio recording of the one at MIT on 19 April 2001 that Bradley attended, and an audio recording of the one that Bradley heard at Cardozo Law School. There is audio of the Q&A session, wherein RMS engages in that discussion Bradley mentioned with Free Culture activists. (10:10, 14:04)
• Bradley mentioned that Linus Torvalds switched to GPL for Linux because he realized non-commercial restrictions weren't appropriate. (Search the string GPL on that link to find Linus' answer on that.) (19:00)
• Karen mentioned that Creative Commons did a study considering what people understand commercial vs. non-commercial to mean. (20:43)
• Karen and Bradley discussed the text of CC-By-NC. (23:00)
• Karen mentioned various CC-By-SA licensed derivatives that had been made from Sita Sings the Blues. (38:24)
• Bradley discussed the Harry Potter Lexicon case and Karen mentioned the so-called IP Colloquium discussion on it. (44:30)
• Bradley mentioned Memory Alpha, which is a CC-By-NC wiki regarding Star Trek, which is tolerated by Paramount. (45:20)

Tags: faif, Creative Commons, commercial, licensing

January 18, 2011

Episode 0x07: Revoked?

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss a few corrections from previous shows, and then discuss misunderstandings about the GPL regarding “revocation” of the GPL.

This show was released on Tuesday 18 January 2011; its running time is 00:44:54.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Bradley issued a correction regarding FaiF 0x06. Christopher Allan Webber mentioned that FSF sometimes accepts copyright assignments in cases where the entire code base is not assigned. (02:40)
• Karen issued a correction regarding FaiF 0x04 about women being hired to be at the party, but in fact that was not the case, despite being mentioned in this article.
• Karen's paper on Medical Devices was linked to from a ZD Net UK blog. (05:48)
• Bradley mentioned this Android bug regarding mis-sent SMS, which was widely covered in the press. Apparently the bug has been resolved upstream, somewhat disproving Bradley's point. (08:40)

Segment 1 (12:19)

• Bradley is quoted in an article about revocation of the GPL (12:35).
• The story was originally covered on slashdot. (13:17)
• The WinMTR site now says: By popular request, WinMTR will be available under GPL v2. (19:50)
• Karen mentioned the FSF's GPL FAQ. (29:27)
• Bradley mentioned the four rationale documents. There's also one for AGPLv3 draft 2 and LGPLv3 draft 2. (30:13)

Tags: faif, GPL

January 4, 2011

Episode 0x06: GRUB, Zulu Foxtrot Sierra

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the inclusion of ZFS GPLv2-or-later code inclusion into GNU GRUB.

This show was released on Tuesday 4 January 2011; its running time is 00:47:58.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley and Karen discussed the inclusion of ZFS code now included in GRUB, as the GRUB Project announced and was covered at LWN by Jonathan Corbet.
• It's not mandatory that GNU projects have assignment to the FSF. The GNU Maintainer's guide discuss the requirements when items are assigned to FSF. (14:40)
• FSF requires that the entire codebase be assigned once GNU project maintainers choose to assign copyrights. Conservancy's policy on copyright assignment differs here; Conservancy will accept partial copyright assignment. (16:07)
• Bradley mentioned the COBOL front end to GCC that is not in the main GCC codebase because it is not copyright assigned to FSF. (17:40)
• Bradley and Karen discussed the Squeak relicensing last call. (25:49)
• Bradley posted a comment to Corbet's article. (32:30)

Final (45:45)

• The calendar Bradley was thinking of was the International Fixed Calendar, which Wikipedia confirms, with a sourced link, was used by the Eastman Kodak Company from 1928 to 1989.

Tags: faif, GNU, GPL, FSF

December 21, 2010

Episode 0x05: Inducing Fryers

Summary

Bradley and Karen welcome special co-presenter and guest, Aaron Williamson, to discuss the OpenBSD email regarding purported FBI backdoors. In the main segment, they discuss the amicus brief filed by SFLC (where Aaron and Karen work) in the Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB USA Supreme Court case.

This show was released on Tuesday 21 December 2010; its running time is 00:54:59.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Aaron brought up a message forwarded to the OpenBSD developers list by Theo de Raadt. This story has been covered widely online. (02:50)
• Aaron mentioned that Glyn Moody wrote a blog post about what issues about “Open Source” security this raises. (04:06)
• Bradley mentioned the gnuftp/Savannah site crack that occurred in 2003 and its security implications. Those seeking more information on this can read the slashdot coverage, Savannah forum posts, the CERT advisory and even the missing files still on the GNU FTP site. (05:21)
• Bradley again mentioned Thompson's hack which he loves to mention when security issues come up (06:26).
• Karen mentioned SFLC's medical devices paper, Killed by Code: Software Transparency in Implantable Medical Devices, which she loves to mention. (08:23)
• Bradley mentioned the Debian/Ubuntu OpenSSL bug that occurred in mid-2008, which was widely discussed online. (10:18)
• Bradley mentioned a case in 2000 where the FBI was able to open a mobster's PGP mail merely by getting his passphrase. (12:49)
• Bradley offers an even-money bet that there are no FBI-inserted bugs in OpenBSD. (13:46)

Segment 1 (14:18)

• The canonical page on Wikipedia for what Karen and Bradley are on FaiF says they are presenters, rather than hosts. (15:06)
• Aaron and Karen's organization, the Software Freedom Law Center, announced that they filed an amicus brief in the Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB case. (16:30)
• Despite the beliefs of a Jeopardy! contestant last month, “Maria” is Sonia Sotomayor's middle name. Antonin Scalia's middle name is “Gregory” (17:20)
• Bradley again reviewed the issues of classical vs. church pronunciations. (19:20)
• Bradley asked Aaron if what was being sold in this case was equivalent to the Cornballer as introduced on the television show, Arrested Development. (20:30)
• Bradley mentioned that on FaiF 0x02, they discussed the issue of how higher courts consider issues of law more than the detailed facts of the case. (23:30)
• RMS's speech, The Danger of Software Patents, is available as a transcript and audio (ogg) (35:22)
• Aaron mentioned Newegg's brief, which is a reseller. (40:50)
• Aaron mentioned the SCOTUS blog summary which included links to other amici briefs. (41:01)
• Bradley referenced Don's staff answer to their boss, Don, in the Kids in the Hall movie, Brain Candy. (45:57)

Final (54:16)

• Aaron, Karen and Bradley are discussing the alternative lyrics to the Stars and Stripes Forever. (54:20)

These show notes are Copyright © 2010, Karen Sandler and Bradley M. Kuhn of Free as in Freedom, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC-By-SA-3.0 Unported).

Tags: faif

December 7, 2010

Episode 0x04: Conference Behavior and Novell Sale

Summary

In this episode of Free as in Freedom, Karen and Bradley discuss in the first segment recent press coverage of sexist attitudes at Free Software conferences, and in the second segment, discuss the public filings related to the Novell sale.

This show was released on Tuesday 7 December 2010; its running time is 00:58:16.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:40)

• Karen and Bradley discuss an article called The Dark Side of Open Source Conference, which was covered some in the tech press, in press outside of technology. Deb Nicholson wrote a blog post about it, as did Valerie (the original article's author. (01:06)
• Bradley mentioned his blog post where he discussed issues of gender equality across all Computer Science, not just the Free Software community. (05:29)
• Karen mentioned Kirrily “Skud” Robert. (10:27)

Segment 1 (32:18)

• There was an announcement that Novell will be sold (32:15)
• Karen mentioned that Andy Updegrove blogged twice on the subject (32:30)
• Karen talked about the 8K filing that Novell made regarding the purchase. (34:30)
• Karen mentioned a post on groklaw. (42:43)
• Bradley mentioned that the OIN patent license is incredibly narrow and not particularly useful, because the definition of the “Linux system“ is so narrow, and because OIN is a pro-patent, for-profit company that doesn't have the interest of Free Software at its heart. (45:30)
• Karen disagrees with Bradley's comments on OIN and thinks his characterization of the patent pool is a serious exaggeration. (46:00)

These show notes are Copyright © 2010, Karen Sandler and Bradley M. Kuhn of Free as in Freedom, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC-By-SA-3.0 Unported).

Tags: faif, novell

November 23, 2010

Episode 0x03: i Don't Store

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss the debates regarding Apple's online store restrictions that make it impossible to distribute GPL'd software via Apple's store. Then, they discuss question the usefulness of the term “Open Core”

Note: Bradley's audio was too low compared to Karen's on this episode. We're still sorting out our recording issues, and apologize for this. This is completely Bradley's fault: don't blame Producer Dan. :)

This show was released on Tuesday 23 November 2010; its running time is 00:45:04.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:34)

• Karen mentioned first Brett's statement on the VLC mailing list, although that is toward the end of the story that was covered last month. (05:30)
• Bradley mentioned that the story started with FSF's enforcement regarding Apple's distribution of GNU Go in Apple's application store. (05:54)
• Don't confused GNU Go (the game) with Google Go (the programming language). Bradley pointed out that Google did assign some of its copyright on the language Go, for the GCC frontend for the Go language. (06:51)
• Bradley mentioned that the game Go has been around thousands of years, although according the Go Wikipedia entry, it's been around for approximately 2,500 years. (08:21)
• Bradley pointed out that the primary goal of GPL enforcement is to get compliance, not to get companies to cease distribution, but sometimes the companies prefer to cease distribution rather than complying with the license. (09:57)
• There was disagreement in the VLC community about the enforcement action (11:50). There's an original thread on the VLC mailing list that discussed this (12:35), and then Brett's response on that list. (13:25)
• GPLv2 requires in § 6 that you cannot impose terms that restrict the downstream more than GPL otherwise does. (15:40)
• FSF made a statement that linked this issue to the DRM issue, which caused some confusion. It's our view that what Apple is doing against GPL software is part of their initiative to put DRM (both for software and more traditional content) onto devices. (17:20)
• Bradley mentioned that Apple lawyers have a pathological hatred of GPL, which he believes comes directly down from Steve Jobs, who began his dislike of GPL when he tried, while at NeXT, to distribute a proprietary front-end for GCC for Objective-C. (RMS discussed the story briefly in his essay Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism.) (23:45)

Segment 1 (27:40)

• Bradley has decided that the term “Open Core” is so confusing that it's now useless.
• The Gnus IMAP backend is being rewritten, and Joel Adamson mentioned that he's using Emacs development mainline and the new IMAP implementation is working well. (29:58)
• Alexandre Oliva started a project called Linux Libre, to remove proprietary software from Linux. (31:31)
• There is a file called WHENCE in Linux that is a long list of proprietary software included inside Linux. Fontana linked the WHENCE file on identi.ca (31:02)
• Alexandre made an announcement calling Linux an “Open Core” project. (32:56)
• Bradley mentioned that Alexandre appears to have been convinced that Open Core is a problematic term in this context (during this identica conversation). Alexandre seems to be favoring the term “Free Bait” now. (35:16)
• Karen mentioned Nina Paley's intellectual pooperty cartoon. (38:39)
• Bradley mentioned the softer side of Sears marketing campaign, which was used as a cruel joke by Cordelia in the pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to make fun of Willow's clothes. Sears apparently dropped the campaign in 1999. (40:23)
• Join us on #faif on freenode and the !FaiFCast group on identi.ca (43:47)

Tags: faif

November 9, 2010

Episode 0x02: The Needs of the Few

Summary

Karen and Bradley discuss Stormy Peters' departure from the GNOME Foundation, an issue of deep confusion regarding copyright licensing, and references to Spock in a recent court decision.

This show was released on Tuesday 9 November 2010; its running time is 00:39:56.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley confirmed the entire show is licensed CC-By-SA 3.0. (02:30)
• Stormy Peters is leaving the position of GNOME Foundation's Executive Director. (04:10)
• The GNOME Advisory Board is a group of for-profit and non-profit organizations that meet regularly to give advice to GNOME Foundation. (04:34)
• Stormy is going to a job at the Mozilla Foundation. (09:10)
• You don't have to be a developer to become a member of the GNOME Foundation. (09:57)
• Bradley mentioned that he did an FSF booth at COMDEX Chicago in early 2001 (which Bradley incorrectly called CES Chicago in the recording). (12:20)

Segment 1 (15:43)

• A LiveJournal post introduced an interesting issue of copyright confusion. (16:30)
• Karen mentioned there was discussion in other fora other than the original LiveJournal post, such as on the NY Frunch (Free Culture Lunch) mailing list and, since then, on NPR. (17:24)
• Bradley mentioned Fanzines, wondering if there are still fanzines. (18:57)
• Karen pointed out that both copyright infringement and plagiarism were at issue here. (20:25)
• Bradley is quite upset about the idea that people confuse public domain with FaiF licensing or any other actual license terms. (21:00)
• Karen notes that if you don't see a license, you have to assume it's all rights reserved. (23:10)
• Bradley described a Slashdot story that linked to a Techdirt article. (30:29)
• A footnote in the concurrence is what mentions Star Trek (33:03) .
• Bradley mentioned a mediocre novel he read in the 1990s called Brain Storm by Richard Dooling. (33:26)

Tags: faif

October 29, 2010

Episode 0x01: Free of Annoying Buzz

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the new license of their show, multi-platform Free Software projects and conferences Bradley attended this month.

This show was released on Friday 29 October 2010; its running time is 00:46:13.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:32)

• All recordings for the first 0x01 attempt had an annoying audio buzz. (01:18)
• The Free as in Freedom oggcast is now licensed CC-By-SA 3.0 Unported (03:10)
• Karl Fogel is Executive Director of Question Copyright. (03:35)
• Karen mentioned the Free Culture definition. (08:22)
• Larry Lessig presented to an FSF Members Meeting using Mac. (09:22)
• Bradley and Karen argued about whether or not OpenOffice.org and/or Firefox run better on non-GNU/Linux systems than on GNU/Linux. (18:00)
• Bradley and Karen argued about whether or not otherwise proprietary company control of Free Software causes problems by default. (21:10)

Segment 1 (27:00)

• Lara Moy got Ubuntu running on her Mac hardware. (27:30)
• Bradley attended the jQuery Conference Boston 2010 (28:30)
• Bradley was at the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit. (36:26)

Tags: faif

October 6, 2010

Episode 0x00: Goodbye and Ahoy Hoy

Summary

Bradley and Karen announced that the Software Freedom Law Show is over. Karen and Bradley announced a new show, called Free as in Freedom, that will not be affiliated with any specific organization (although Bradley and Karen keep all their various affiliations themselves. :).

This show was released on Wednesday 6 October 2010; its running time is 00:32:32.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:28)

• Bradley mentioned OsamaK is not happy at Bradley and Karen for not having a new oggcast for a month. (00:45)
• Bradley no long works at the Software Freedom Law Center. He now works full time at the Software Freedom Conservancy. (02:00)
• Bradley thinks everything related to FLOSS should be called “Software Freedom”. (03:10)
• Karen and Bradley mention that many people in the software freedom world are involved in multiple organizations. (04:00)
• Karen is an officer and lawyer to Software Freedom Conservancy. (04:30)
• Conservancy provides non-profit infrastructure and services. (05:10)
• Conservancy helps software freedom projects focus on development, and aggregate projects into one place. (06:20)
• Conservancy will be expanding its service plan now that Bradley is full time. (06:46)
• Conservancy will try do copyright assignment in a community-focused way, only if the developers want it. Conservancy will also do more GPL enforcement than previously. (07:20)
• Bradley mentioned that Matthew Garrett has been doing some GPL enforcement, and Bradley thanked him for it publicly. (07:50)
• Karen thinks we'll see more enforcement over time, by more people. (08:14)
• Bradley wants to help Conservancy's member projects do more fundraising for initiatives to fund software development activity. (08:40)
• Bradley mentioned that Matt Mackall is doing Mercurial development funded through Conservancy. (09:20)
• As of earlier this year, Bradley is a volunteer director of the FSF, and now has additional volunteer work that he needs to do, while Conservancy (his former volunteer work) becomes his day job. (11:09)
• Bradley mentions that once you start doing something in the software freedom world, it's hard to stop once people start to rely on your work. (12:30)
• Conservancy handles a lot of “boring” but essential stuff for developers to continue in their project. (14:20)
• Bradley mentioned that his early volunteer work at FSF was also doing the boring stuff, and indeed a lot of his work has been willing to do the boring stuff (15:30)
• Karen mentions that no one fights over the work that just needs to get done. (16:30)
• Bradley discussed the fact that for-profit corporate control of projects is dangerous, and one of the things Conservancy and similar non-profits offers is an opportunity to have a non-profit with the public interest at heart in the center of their community. (17:39)
• Bradley mentioned the LibreOffice by the Document Foundation (18:03)
• Karen points out that for-profit and non-profit go hand-in-hand. But, Bradley argues that steward of a FLOSS project should always be an NGO. Karen agrees. (19:00-19:30)
• Bradley doesn't really believe that there are projects that would “never happen” without a for-profit company starting it. Karen disagrees.
• The Software Freedom Law Show is over This is the last episode of the Software Freedom Law Show. (21:10)
• Karen will make sure that the SFLC RSS feeds remain valid. Bradley points out that there are new RSS feeds for both the mp3 version and the ogg version of the new show, Free as in Freedom (21:33, 22:41)
• The new show is basically just the Karen and Bradley show, now named Free as in Freedom, hosted on faif.us. (23:43)
• Bradley mentioned that everywhere he's ever worked, he always had root on most of the boxes. He doesn't know what it's like to work somewhere and not have root. (27:50)
• Karen got in trouble at her first law firm job for installing software on computers. (28:21)
• Dan Scott sent a gift to Bradley and Karen Soap with 20-Ds in them.

Tags: faif