Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Linux Foundation and OIN Speak About Licensing/Law in Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle



Summary: Commentary about the Linux Foundation's activities as of late

TThe Linux Foundation's Web sites have been full of news and PR recently. There were some major events and also a new force for promotion. Scholarships were being granted [1,2,3], a paper was released about the Long-Term Support Initiative [4,5], several happenings in New Orleans were being noted [6,7], technical articles were published (e.g. [8,9,10]), and future events were being announced (e.g. for the car industry [11]). There are several other examples [12,13,14], but the latest interesting news may come from the UK.



"Amicable communication with the Linux Foundation can help correct what this marketing-led organisation sometimes says."The LinuxCon Europe conference, which takes place in Edinburgh right now (this week), covers issues associated with licensing, including the GPL [15]. OIN speaks out (lawyers) and so does Mr. Zemlin, who is a branding/marketing person. They actually make some reasonable points and they don't overuse propaganda terms like "intellectual property" (at least based on the report from IDG, which also tried to explain how to choose a Free software licence a few weeks ago [16]). A few weeks ago the Linux Foundation finally paid a small tribute to the GNU project, congratulating it on its 30th anniversary. Linux owes its success to the GPL, the GNU project which includes GCC, and of course the philosophy of GNU, which surely attracted many developers.

What's noteworthy here is that despite our criticism of the Linux Foundation (most recently for revisionism) there are many good things to be said as well. Amicable communication with the Linux Foundation can help correct what this marketing-led organisation sometimes says. If terms like "cloud" or "intellectual property" ever take over the message of "Linux" (GNU/Linux), then we are losing credibility.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Training Scholarship Winner Nam Pho Uses Linux for Science
    As a first-generation Vietnamese-American, Nam Pho says he learned to make the most of limited resources and opportunities in many facets of his life. When it came to computing, this meant dealing with secondhand hardware. He built his Linux skills through frustrating, but educational, attempts to get old computers up and working again.


  2. Training Scholarship Winner Andrew Dahl is an Aspiring Kernel Guru
    Linux Foundation Training scholarship winner Andrew Dahl is relatively new to the Linux community but he’s already jumped in to help on the XFS file system, fixing bugs and reviewing a small number of patches. As a file system engineer at SGI, he works on NFS, XFS and SGI’s CXFS (Clustered XFS.) But in his spare time he likes to dabble in Qt application development and fix kernel bugs he finds on his current hardware.


  3. Scholarship Winner Sarah Kiden Will Use Linux Training to Help Others


  4. New Paper Available: Economic Value of Long-Term Support Initiative
    The Linux Foundation today is releasing a new paper that reports on the value of the Long-Term Support Initiative (LTSI), which is a common Linux kernel base for embedded products and is maintained by the Consumer Electronics Working Group at The Linux Foundation.

    The paper reports the value of LTSI is $3 million per version. The authors of the paper arrived at the economic value of LTSI based on the methodology originally used in a highly-regarded study by David A. Wheeler and that was later used in a 2008 Linux Foundation study that estimated the value of Linux. Details of the methodology and results as applied to LTSI are on pages 5 and 6 of the report.



  5. Quick Guide to Get Ready for LTSI 3.10


  6. Excited for LinuxCon New Orleans, in GIFs


  7. LinuxCon Luncheon Connects Women in Technology
    One of the highlights of my time at LinuxCon and CloudOpen this year in New Orleans was the first-ever women in open source luncheon held the very first day of the conference. It was a real pleasure and an inspiration to see women from all backgrounds and levels of experience with Linux and open source come together to talk about their skills and interests in technology.


  8. Managing the Transition to High-Availability Linux for Mission-Critical Workloads
    High-availability (HA) Linux is increasingly being used to help companies meet market demands for fast-paced R&D and shorter product cycles. The medical industry, for example, is using server clusters to model the effect of drugs, conduct gene sequencing and develop personalized medication. Large telcos, banks and stock exchanges, ISPs and government agencies also rely on HA Linux to ensure minimal service disruptions in their mission critical workloads.


  9. Linux Kernel 3.11 Release Boosts Performance, Efficiency
    Linus Torvalds released the 3.11 “Linux for workgroups” kernel on Monday with many new features and fixes that improve performance and lower power consumption. Changes are also in keeping with recent industry trends toward the energy-efficient ARM architecture and the use of solid state drives (SSD).


  10. Brandon Philips: How the CoreOS Linux Distro Uses Cgroups


  11. Linux Foundation Announces Keynotes and Program for Automotive Linux Summit Europe Technology Leaders From Intel, Jaguar Land Rover, PSA Peugeot Citroen and more discuss Linux and open source development in the car industry


  12. Will Intel's Quark Run Linux?
    Intel left plenty of room for speculation yesterday at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) when it announced a low-power, small-footprint processor family called the Quark. One of the biggest questions is whether it will support advanced platforms like Linux.


  13. TrueAbility Aims to Remake How Linux IT Professionals are Hired
    A GitHub account may be one of the best ways for open source developers to showcase their technical skills to potential employers. But system administrators and DevOps engineers who don’t code, don’t have an easy equivalent for proving their skills in, say, spinning up a secure server.


  14. Citrix's Mark Hinkle: Users Will Drive Innovation in Linux, Tech
    After more than 20 years of development, Linux is the largest, most successful collaborative project in the world. More than 10,000 developers from more than 1,000 companies have contributed to the Linux kernel since tracking began in 2005, according to the foundation's latest annual development report. It powers servers, mobile devices, stock exchanges, cars, appliances, air traffic control towers, the space station, genomics research... the list goes on and on. So, what's next?


  15. Open source needs more tech-savvy lawyers, Linux Foundation says
    To avoid legal difficulties when managing intellectual property for open-source projects, more tech savvy lawyers are needed, according to the Linux Foundation.

    Educating lawyers, however, is not the only solution, argued other open-source insiders at the LinuxCon Europe conference in Edinburgh this week.

    [...]

    Having lawyers with a better understanding of the technology involved in open-source projects would indeed be a way to overcome legal difficulties, said Deb Nicholson, community outreach director of the Open Innovation Network (OIN).

    “I would agree that having more tech savvy lawyers that understand open-source legal issues would be good,” Nicholson said. “Smaller companies are desperate to find someone who can advise them,” she said, adding that even if they can pay them, finding an attorney who understands the issues can be difficult.

    [...]

    While public licenses such as Creative Commons, the GNU General Public License or other free and open-source software licenses have emerged as relatively easy-to-use standardized copyright agreements, more work can be done to make licensing easier, according to Maracke.


  16. How to Choose the Best License for Your Open Source Software Project
    Getting the right license for your open source project can mean the difference between success and failure for your software.




Recent Techrights' Posts

Project 2030 to Cover How "Project 2025"-Styled Anti-Media Zealots From America Targeted Techrights and Tux Machines
The common denominator is also their attacks on women
Brett Wilson LLP Failed to Meet Deadlines Set by Judge 7 Months Earlier, Tried to Ruin Our Holiday, Then Had the Audacity to Ask Us for Over 3,000 Pounds for Its Own Lateness
As a matter of principle we will never respond to assassin while we are on holiday
Americans Attacking British Sites Only Months After They Leave America
We find it kind of funny if not ironic that this site, originally an American site, got legal harassment only from Americans and only months after it had moved to the UK
Despite Losing Over a Quarter Million Dollars a Year Software in the Public Interest (SPI) Gives Helping Hand to Libreboot
SPI's financial state depends a lot on its public image or its reputation
If You Want to Know the Future, Listen to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Andy Farnell
We're sure the FSF will have plenty of its own output
 
Brett Wilson LLP Seem to Have Had Only One Litigation Client in 2025, He Was Previously Charged, Just Like the Serial Strangler From Microsoft (Whom They Now Represent)
Karma is superstition, regulators are not
On Claims That After Bluewashing Red Hat Will Increasingly Become an Indian Company
Discussed this week (long and detailed)
Slopwatch: Google Helps Plagiarism and Sends Traffic to Ripoff Artists
That Google as a company helps spamfarms is noteworthy
Links 18/09/2025: A Taliban Ban on Internet Access and Troubled US Job Market
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/09/2025: Computer Literacy and Accessing Alhena's Database
Links for the day
Links 18/09/2025: US War on Media (Truth Banned, Cancel Culture by the Hard Right), NYT Chief Executive Warns Cheeto is Deploying ‘Anti-press Playbook'
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 17, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Slopwatch: Fake Articles, Fake Text, Fake Images, Negative Slant on "Linux"
Google News has lost its value; the signal-to-noise ratio has fallen off a cliff
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Relax-and-Recover on Proxmox and New Smolweb File Transfer Service
Links for the day
Fact: EFF Got Corrupted by Corporate Money. Microsoft Lunduke (Political Noise): The Issue With EFF is, It Kills Babies.
Microsoft Lunduke - as usual - finds a way to make it about abortions
Pacing Publication Up a Bit
The news cycles have gotten rather light and slow
Links 17/09/2025: Power Outages, Digital Controls, and Attacks on the Mainstream Media (by Insecure and Corrupt Dictators)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Flashing LineageOS and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Long COVID Study, "Exposing Pegasus", and Chatbots Exposing Sensitive Data
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Secret Settlement for Internet Archive and Google’s LLM Slop Summaries Attracting Lawsuits
Links for the day
The True Cost of 'Generative Models'
Funded and promoted by the companies that profit from the waste
'Big Slop' Attacks Contemporary Information/Knowledge and Creative Works, 'Big Copyright' (Cartel) Attacks the Old
Someone at IA will hopefully "blow the whistle" on what they actually agreed
Why We Find It Difficult to Trust Rust
A comparison between C/C++ and Rust
Slop Nihilism is Funded by Big Oil
Eventually human civilisation will destroy itself
Watching the OSI: Our Series Will Carry on Irrespective of the Chief's 'Resignation'
the OSI isn't even the real guardian of the term "Open Source"
Professor Eben Moglen Recovering From Open Heart Surgery
From his public pages (this is not secret)
Just What LibreOffice Needs? Another Language? (Rust)
what's all this concern about memory safety?
Many Microsoft Managers Are Leaving
"Hey hi" chaff or chaff about "hey hi" cannot eternally distract from the difficulties inside the company
There Are Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs, But Google News is Infested With Slopfarms
It contributes a lot to misinformation and it encourages plagiarism
Tomorrow, Microsoft's Tim Anderson's 'The Register MS' Offshoot Will Have Been Inactive for 2 Months (There's Also a Slop Problem)
We've already caught The Register MS using LLM slop for articles
Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Leaves Microsoft After Nearly 30 Years
And not retiring
Even Windows Users Are Having Problems With "Secure Boot"
When it comes to security - Microsoft strives for the very opposite
Another Competition Crime of Microsoft, Long Facilitated and Advocated by a Bad Actor, Who is Funded by a Third Party to Commit Extortion Against People Who Have Correctly and Repeatedly Warned About It for Over 13 Year
We must always go back to the core issues
3 More Reasons to Replace Mozilla Firefox With LibreWolf
Thankfully there are de-enshittified versions of Firefox
USA Not a Place for Free Speech
In America, as in the US, the attacks seem more enhanced or advanced these days
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Links 17/09/2025: Google Layoffs in "Hey Hi" (AI), Perplexity Hit With More "Hey Hi" (Plagiarism) Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Reclaiming Things in a Digital Age and Moon Phases in CGI
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News is Slop, Google News is Plagiarism, Google News is Dying
Google is off the rails
Links 16/09/2025: "The Censorship Alarm Is Ringing in the Wrong Direction" and ASRock Does Microsoft E.E.E. on GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Serious "Breach of Confidentiality of Personal Data" in Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the EPO
Yes, the same EPO that routinely uses "data protection" and "GDPR" as a pretext for hiding or covering up its corruption and white-collar crimes (it even uses that as an excuse for refusing to obey courts' orders)
Adrienne Rockenhaus Says Her Husband Was Arrested for Running Tor and Denied Basic Rights in the United States
the US seems to be getting "russified" in its approach towards Tor
This is What Happens When Microsoft Canonical Lets Decisions on Ubuntu be Made by a Youngster From the British Army (Where He Did Mass Surveillance)
"Is Ubuntu Compromised?"
Back Doored Windows Giving GNU/Linux a Hard Time (Under the Guise of 'Security')
Is this complication intentional? Most likely, yes
Links 16/09/2025: Science, Security, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/09/2025: Command-line Options in POSIX Shell and Introducing Acre 0.9
Links for the day
Microsoft 'Secure' Boot Versus Dual Boot With GNU/Linux
they're meant to assume everything is OK
Links 16/09/2025: While Oracle Pretends to be Rich It's Firing About 70 MySQL Workers, "Oracle's Revenge" (Faking Demand With "AI")
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Just Published a New Web Page About "Secure Boot Update Process" (Microsoft Also Admits Issues; PCs Can Stop Booting)
Why was this page issued and published only hours ago?
Microsoft Lunduke: I Spread Hate and Then I Receive Hate
Cry us a river, Microsoft Lunduke
"Use Wayland" Isn't a Bugfix for X (X11 is Still Necessary)
They tell us X is "dead" and we must all be herded into Wayland ASAP
"Disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot. Wipe and Start Over."
At least they didn't say, buy a new computer...
The Oracle Ponzi Scheme
Oracle isn't doing well, but it's nowadays fashionable to say "clown" and "hey hi" to prop up one's stock, even based on nothing at all
The New Head of OSI is an "Hey Hi" (AI) Obsessed Person
when Bryant says "AI" that doesn't mean AI
Taking Out the Battery, Opening Up Your Computer, Just Like a "Normie" Would
At this stage, any person who still says "enable Secure Boot" is misguided or persuaded by companies that sell rootkits
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers and Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News (Fake 'Articles' About "Linux" Spreading FUD)
searching for "Linux" today yields a lot of FUD
"Governments, local authorities, schools and hospitals can lead by example by procuring only Free Software"
Crossposted from Tux Machines
Cindy Cohn Leaving the Electronic Frontier Foundation While Its Co-founder John Gilmore, Whom She Apparently Helped Oust, Will Celebrate 40 Years of the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
EFF has been busy hoarding GAFAM money, whereas the latter is where all the real activism is done
The Reach of Techrights Has Broadened
We nowadays cover a broader range of issues
"Google is Googlebombing KDE's Project Banana"
So is Google googlebombing KDE's Project Banana? You decide.
Complicating Things for No Actual Benefit, Just Added Risk and More Difficulties Adding GNU/Linux and BSDs
Watch what it's like for people who wish to use BSDs
Some Very Large IRC Networks Are Growing
IRC will turn 38 next year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 15, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 15, 2025
Links 16/09/2025: Autumn Party, RPG Planet, and Optical ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day