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Free as in Freedom
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)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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 .
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)
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)