Free Software Linux

The Mozilla Foundation has announced its process for updating the Mozilla Public License.  While Mozilla's substantive goals for the new version of the MPL (which will probably be numbered 2.0) are quite different from the FSF's objectives in drafting GPLv3, Mozilla is adopting some of the features of the GPLv3 process, including a series of public drafts accompanied by rationale documents, the use of a collaborative commenting system,

• Law

As if you didn’t already have enough reasons to avoid doing business with Apple, here’s one more—read The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (local copy of the agreement PDF).

Creative Commons depends on a lot of free software to scale our activities on the web. One of the most important pieces is CiviCRM which we use to manage our contributions and contacts. CiviCRM has been on an amazing trajectory since we first started using it in 2006: new releases continue to bring functionality our users ask for, and the developers and community have been great to work with.

Since 1988, the Office of the United States Trade Representative has released an annual Special 301 Report which “examines in detail the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights” for every country in the world. The intention is to classify countries that either encourage or turn a blind eye to intellectual property piracy and countries can be put on a “Watch List” or “Priority Watch List”. This designation can then be used to pressure countries during trade negotiations.

Since 1988, the Office of the United States Trade Representative has released an annual Special 301 Report which “examines in detail the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights” for every country in the world. The intention is to classify countries that either encourage or turn a blind eye to intellectual property piracy and countries can be put on a “Watch List” or “Priority Watch List”. This designation can then be used to pressure countries during trade negotiations.

The Brazilian federal government has launched a new version of their portal, offering more than 500 online services to Brazilian citizens, built entirely with free software. The new design and layout looks great and, in honor of the release, NXS is providing a translation of the press release about the launch. Translated from Portal Brasil: um novo conceito de comunicação (March 5, 2010) by North-by-South:

The Brazilian federal government has launched a new version of their portal, offering more than 500 online services to Brazilian citizens, built entirely with free software. The new design and layout looks great and, in honor of the release, NXS is providing a translation of the press release about the launch. Translated from Portal Brasil: um novo conceito de comunicação (March 5, 2010) by North-by-South:

On January 25th, SourceForge.net published a post on their official blog explaining that they were denying SourceForge services and site access to users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited people from those countries from accessing their website but they only began enforcing the condition a week before posting the blog entry.

On January 25th, SourceForge.net published a post on their official blog explaining that they were denying SourceForge services and site access to users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited people from those countries from accessing their website but they only began enforcing the condition a week before posting the blog entry.

I used to be what is sometimes called a "Free Software purist". "Free" here refers to "free as in freedom" according to Richard Stallman's Free Software Philosophy. As such I was opposed to all proprietary software licensing. If a program doesn't come with a license that allows you those "four freedoms" (to run, modify and share both unmodified and modified versions of the program as you wish) then using it meant you don't care for your freedom and are choosing to be a "slave" to the developer.

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Prof. Eben Moglen, head of the Software Freedom Law Center, gives another must-not-miss talk on software freedom with hosted services (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other third-party services run on behalf of their users), colloquially known as “the cloud” (a purposefully vague reference to hosting services somewhere else, a virtual place that contains your data). What are the social and civic consequences of letting these services watch as you place your information (email, calendaring, private chats, etc.) into these services? How do we in the free software movement rise to the challenge of services users don’t control?

Last Thursday the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) released its second issue on-line in HTML and PDF format. This was not on the front of Slashdot or The Register, but it was one of the more significant developments so far this year in Free Software governance.  IFOSS L. Rev.

• Law

Introduction

BitTorrent is the most popular filesharing protocol on the Internet today. BitTorrent users typically obtain pieces of the data they want and share pieces of the same data with others. By cooperating in this fashion, almost everyone who wants a copy of the data gets what they want.

Yes, as many of you have read recently, Canonical has created a deal with Yahoo! to provide the default search for Firefox in the Lucid release. I decided that I would sit back and parse not only the information that Canonical has put out, but also the information I am reading on the web, Twitter, Identi.ca, and mailing lists. To be honest, I was actually surprised that a large scale attack or a FUD campaign never started over this, and I feel there just might be a turning point in all of this. Before I go on, let me throw a bit of a disclaimer in here as to hopefully not provide a lash back against either Canonical or Ubuntu.

Disclaimer

For a long time now, NXS/San Francisco folks have begged, pleaded and cajoled our local government to follow the example set by Latin America to mandate a switch to free software whenever the taxpayers are footing the bill.

After all, this is San Francisco! We have more free software user groups than many small countries!

Well, finally, San Francisco has taken a small step towards our goal of a free software government. It isn’t exactly what we wanted … but it sure does come close.