Summary: Another new round of GPL scare, courtesy of OpenLogic
YAWN. It’s happening again. Firms that monetise fear of something (be it cyberwar, Windows security problems*, water/oil poisoning, or even GPL violation) are once again putting exaggerative press releases out there.
OpenLogic Survey Shows Enterprises Unknowingly Risk Violation of GPL
OpenLogic, a provider of enterprise open source software support and governance solutions for hundreds of open source packages, today announced the results of a survey that shows many companies are unaware that they may be distributing open source software, and thereby triggering critical “copyleft” provisions of open source licenses. Under copyleft provisions, companies may be required to open source code that they have written and combined with the open source program.
We have already given many examples (e.g. [1, 2]) where OpenLogic and Black Duck do this sort of thing. It’s how they get clients; it’s not a victimless act when the reputation of the GPL is at stake. Both OpenLogic and Black Duck happen to have gotten connections with Microsoft (OpenLogic’s CEO is from Microsoft [1, 2] and Black Duck’s founder is from Microsoft). █
“Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”
–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
_____ * Anti-virus software companies sometimes exaggerate the threats of GNU/Linux, when in fact it is Windows that contains back doors to crackers. The following new report relates to an incident which was mentioned before in a separate post.
Hi-tech criminals are “escalating” attacks on an unpatched bug in the Windows XP help and support system.
Microsoft said it had seen more than 10,000 machines hit by the attack that, so far, it has not found a fix for.
Summary: Harald Welte remarks on GPL violations at Apple; ACCESS leaves the GNOME Advisory Board
SINCE the end of May we have been posting about half a dozen items about Apple’s hostility towards the GPL, which it excluded/removed rather than comply with. One of the well-regarded figures that publicly supported the FSF’s action against Apple was Harald Welte, whose second post on the subject ought to explain why Apple took a disappointing route that demonstrates its general approach.
So yes, by removing the software that was distributed in violation of the GPL terms, Apple has done legally the right thing: Reduce the danger/risk of committing further (knowing) infringement.
The FSF (and probably the Free Software community in general) of course want something else: For Apple to alter their app store terms in a way that would enable software authors to have Apple distribute their GPL licensed software in it. While this might be possible very easily with small modifications to their legal terms and to the implementation of the app store, it is probably not quite easy to make a legal claim and try to force this upon Apple.
Anyone always has the choice to either distribute GPL licensed software compliant with its license terms – or not distribute it at all. If Apple prefers the latter, this is very unfortunate (and you might call it anti-social or even anti-competitive) but something that they can very well do.
In better news, an Apple proponent/former employee and Internet bully/troll lost impact in the GNOME Foundation after he had repeatedly smeared the FSF and also took Apple’s side (not that the two events are related). Here is a compilation of messages of interest.
Xavier Bestel had made a comment to a gnome member regarding their choice of OS and E-mail client. The person promptly fired back with an anti software freedom tirade and blurted out insider info from ACCESS as to why they pulled out on funding. This is the same person identified by RMS as “a troll like enemy of the free software movement”. Normally I avoid mentioning this individual but the information is far too important. It’s public information that anyone can access.
Let me be very frank with you, Xav: this sort of behavior was definitely a contributing factor to ACCESS’ leaving the Advisory Board this past January, and for our lack of sponsorship for GUADEC this year and last. It was a directly contributing factor to my rescinding my offer to provide media training for potential GNOME spokespeople at GUADEC this summer.
Summary: The Federal Trade Commission is opening a formal investigation into Apple’s practices now that its Hubris-like offences make it akin to a dangerous cult, not just a technology company
THE parasitic nature of Apple is a subject that we last discussed two days ago, having previously provided several concrete examples [1, 2, 3]. Here is another new example of Apple ‘leveraging’ (exploiting) Free software to build its proprietary Web browser, which contains other bits of code that Apple ‘leveraged’ from Free software projects (namely from KDE).
Apple Safari’s new “make web go away” button is based on an open source project distributed under the Apache 2 license.
The Safari Reader – which debuted yesterday with version 5 of the Apple browser — is built using the source code for Readability, an Apache project from Arc90 Labs. In the wake of the browser’s release, Arc90 praised Apple for including a tool that mimics its own — a tool that strips a webpage of its ads and site branding, reducing to text and core images — and only later did the outfit realize that Steve Jobs and cult had actually dipped into its code.
What does Apple give in return? And will the original project accept Apple’s contribution at all?
“Apple would rather remove app than leave open-source license,” says the headline of this new post. That’s how extremely hypocritical Apple can be.
Games, both free and paid, are perennial favorites in mobile app stores. So it was no surprise that GNU Go — the free, GNU-based version of the ancient and popular game of Go — was available as a free download in the Apple iTunes store. Until recently.
It disappeared as a direct result of a complaint from the Free Software Foundation that Apple’s Terms of Service violate the software’s license.
GNU Go is licensed under GPLv2. Section 6 expressly prohibits any “further restrictions” on the license, which allows anyone to copy, distribute or modify the software. But the App Store’s Terms of Service do just that, restricting where the downloads can be installed.
Apple is sort of banning the GPL rather than simply complying. What does that say about Apple? There are many horror stories coming from Apple’s “app” stores, where Apple is essentially abusing its power and removing anything it does not like (the customers are not involved in these decisions).
“Apple bans competing ads from the iPhone” says the headline of another new article:
Apple has tweaked its developer terms and conditions to explicitly lock out in-application advertising services that might compete with its own iAd service.
The new terms, picked up by All Things Digital, spell out the rules. Applications may not collect statistical information for advertising, or any other reason, without Apple’s written permission – and you can be clear that Google, Microsoft and/or Opera need not apply.
There are other examples like that. Many examples. Apple blocks software for competitive reasons. Apple’s bad attitude when it comes to HTML5 is also worth a mention. Apple is working against Theora and against WebM, instead promoting a patent troll and a cartel while pretending that HTML5 is Apple’s own turf. The vanity is astounding.
According to other breaking news, the FTC will investigate Apple for this type of behaviour, which includes a frivolous lawsuit against Linux (Android).
The Federal Trade Commission will open an investigation into whether Apple is illegally using its position in the mobile software market to harm competitors, according to several published reports.
On Friday afternoon, both Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal reported that the FTC had opened a formal probe.
With the recent spillage of 114,000+ subscribers personal information, the FBI has opened an investigation:
The problem is that the scope of the investigation is into who took the information and responsibly disclosed it, not into the circumstances which AT&T and Apple provided, making the theft easy, obvious, and repeatable. (Luckily the people that took it were not out to do damage, or it would have been done already.)
In a rush to get a product to market, a typical proprietary software company puts little or no thought into security. After all, it’s not their personal information at stake, it’s the personal information of the persons crazy enough to trust the software that’s impossible to audit. And in DMCAT&T’s case, the network it travels across which is monitored by government spooks as well as criminals.
Here are some other reactions [1, 2], including the involvement of the FBI. Rather than raid the houses of journalists and crackers, the FBI ought to consider raiding Apple’s headquarters and AT&T too. Just because Apple is a big company doesn’t mean that it’s on the right side of the law. █
Summary: Developers increasingly favour Free software, which means no Apple, a suppressor of the GPL
THE Eclipse Community Survey came out a few days ago and we posted some links about it yesterday. Few people pointed out the absence of Mac OS X in this survey. It’s a nice reminder of the fact that GNU/Linux is ahead of Apple in many areas, one of which is development (depending on the type). To quote some more articles about the survey (ones which we didn’t post before):
That’s really significant, because for many free software applications, historically people have tended to develop on Windows, and then deploy on GNU/Linux. If the developers are moving to GNU/Linux on the desktop – as this survey suggests – maybe the tide is beginning to turn there, at least among that particular community (well, it’s a start…).
The primary takeaway from the results is the shift in how engineers are choosing to develop and deploy. Linux, especially Ubuntu, has taken market share from Windows on an ongoing basis, and is now used by just shy of one third of respondents as their developer desktop, up from 20 percent in 2007.
In 2007, 20% of users said that Linux was their development operating system, but by 2010, that had increased to 33%, with Windows dropping from 74% to 58% in share. Linux continues to be the most popular deployment platform for Eclipse developers with 46% saying it is their primary target platform.
The confidence and comfort associated with developing on Linux, reflected in the growing number of developers who say they prefer the OS to alternatives, are also leading indicators of Linux’s adoption in the enterprise. Linux use has been growing among enterprise users for a decade, but we’re at a proverbial tipping point. The collision of technology maturity, a new generation of developers and IT professionals, and a new economic reality are putting Linux in a position to experience faster growth than other OSes in the enterprise.
In other news of interest, Apple gets flak for its disdain or ‘allergy’ to real software freedom (not the BSD-type freedom, which to Apple means that “oh! We can have all of this decent code and stuff without paying”). Here is the the comprehensive coverage from LWN.
Smith followed up the original post with a more detailed explanation on May 27. In it, he says that the particular license violation that FSF bought up with Apple was section 6 of the GPLv2, which states that a redistributor of the licensed program may not impose further restrictions on the recipients to copy, distribute, or modify the program. Apple’s App Store terms of service do impose several restrictions, such as limiting usage of the program to five devices approved by Apple.
With the exception of Apple worshippers (with employment history at Apple) who masquerade as something else, the GNU/Linux community was on the FSF’s side. In general (or statistically speaking), GNU/Linux users are not terribly fond of Apple. The options from Apple are “not Microsoft” but they are not “not proprietary”.
One might point out that you can certainly work with GNU Go and test out modified source on your own iPad. All you have to do is join Apple’s developer program, which is not really too much of a big deal.
But the FSF doesn’t really see this as freedom. First, developers in Apple’s program can only redistribute software to others under Apple’s terms. The GPL insists that redistribution not attach any additional restrictions to derived works. And secondly, a user who develops a modified version of GNU Go may or may not be able to distribute it – they are subject to Apple’s capricious approval process. Again, this is a limitation on their freedom.
As it stands right now, the Apple iPhone/iPad ecosystem is not going to work with code published under GPLv2 or GPLv3. This is a shame, and it would really be nice to see Apple do something to remedy the situation. Free software has been very good to Apple, and in many cases, Apple has given back to the movement. But the current situation is such a blatant slap in the face to free software that every one of us can feel the sting.
Apple is so hot right now that everything it unveils flies off the shelves, sending its share price higher. The question longer term however, is whether its “closed” strategy of development can continue to deliver the goods — and the buzz — as open-source operating systems such as Android offer slick new applications and growing competition.
Poor Apple has gained market share among the world’s wealthiest population, but can it maintain such a lead as Linux continues to advance? Apple’s aggressive reaction (suing Linux) says that Apple is afraid. Linux is not a company that Apple can compete with. Linux represents people’s perpetual desire to control their digital destiny. Apple cannot deliver this. Instead it combats people’s natural desires, teaching them that choice is bad and “free” means shoddy and inadmissible. █
Summary: New video outlines an ongoing pursuit for compliance from Samsung, which is part of Microsoft’s patent racket
Our reader Ryan Farmer (“DaemonFC”) has been on the case for several weeks now and finally he got Samsung to admit that it’s violating the GPL licence.
Summary: Why the next version of your Web browser, media player or GNU/Linux distribution will probably contain VP8/WebM code; Apple and MPEG-LA continue to be the main barriers to VP8/WebM adoption
OUR last post ended with a word of warning about Microsoft patents that prevent access to one’s own videos, assuming that they are encoded using Microsoft’s own formats. The lesson to be learned from all this is that software patents which cover video compression are unacceptable and dangerous to society. This is why Ogg Theora/Vorbis and VP8/WebM are so important. The latter is currently being implemented/deployed in GNU/Linux, which already supports Ogg in all its varieties.
All in all, the Linux community has made a lot of progress implementing support for WebM in two short weeks. Given that few content providers are supporting the codec yet (Google-owned YouTube being the major exception), free-software users are ahead of the curve on this issue. And that’s definitely the right side of the curve to be on.
The Open Source Programs Manager from Google writes to inform everyone about necessary changes to the WebM licence. In his own words:
You’ll see on the WebM license page and in our source code repositories that we’ve made a small change to our open source license. There were a couple of issues that popped up after we released WebM at Google I/O a couple weeks ago, specifically around how the patent clause was written.
There used to be the issue of patents and GPL incompatibility. This is resolved. It’s all rather lovely, “but still no patent indemnification,” claims Florian Müller. Brett Smith from the FSF is more satisfied than that. “Google just updated the WebM license to make it GPL compatible,” he writes. Being a key GPL person, Smith also published the official statement from the FSF:
A couple of weeks ago Google announced their WebM project, which provided a free software implementation of their VP8 video codec and a license to exercise the patents the company held on the software. (This after we appealed to them to do just that a couple of months prior.) The license they chose was unambiguously free: a three-clause BSD license combined with a patent license based on one found in the Apache License 2.0. Unfortunately, the interaction between the copyright license and the patent license made the result GPL-incompatible. Based on the concerns of developers writing GPL-covered software, Google publicly stated that they would take some time to review the WebM license and try to address the community’s concerns. Today, they released a revised license, and it is GPL-compatible.
Google has also eliminated the incompatibility with the GPLv2 and GPLv3 licences that existed in the original language, which means that it will be possible for WebM to be readily incorporated in the GNU environment and in GNU/Linux.
By removing that part of the custom licence, what is left is a “three clause” BSD licence which is an OSI approved form of open source licence. Simon Phipps, the OSI board member who pointed out the original problem, was “pleased to say that project is now fully open source” in his blog where he congratulated Google on the “timely and welcome” correction of its “licencing and community-relations error”.
“Google open codec wins OSI love after patent shield rethink,” reportsThe Register.
Google has rejiggered the license on its open-source VP8 video codec after complaints that it wasn’t really open source.
Ars Technicaemphasises compatibility with the BSD licence.
Google is adopting the BSD license for WebM in order to address a licensing conflict. When Google opened up the VP8 codec and announced the launch of the WebM project during the Google I/O conference last month, the actual license under which the code was distributed was not an official open source software license. It was a custom license that had not yet been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the organization responsible for maintaining the open source definition and validating licenses.
Google’s custom license posed some problems because it included clauses that made it incompatible with GNU’s General Public License (GPL), the most widely-used open source software license. It was a minor technicality, but one that would have broadly precluded adoption of WebM in many popular open source software applications. Fortunately, Google has rectified the conflict and has found an acceptable way to harmonize its licensing terms with the GPL.
[...]
To avoid the resulting incompatibility with the GPL, Google decided to use a standard BSD license instead for the software copyright and draft a separate set of terms for the WebM patent grant.
“Using patent language borrowed from both the Apache and GPLv3 patent clauses, in this new iteration of the patent clause we’ve decoupled patents from copyright, thus preserving the pure BSD nature of the copyright license,” wrote DiBona. “This means we are no longer creating a new open source copyright license, and the patent grant can exist on its own.”
There’s open as the rest of the world thinks of it and there’s Apple open, which is what Steve Jobs wants it to mean. Jobs is very keen to dismiss Flash as a proprietary product, which it is, although iPhones and iPads also run proprietary operating systems.
[...]
Google is going down a different path entirely. Last month, it released VP8, a genuinely open compression format designed to handle multimedia on the web and not be beholden to proprietary software. Unlike Apple, the company does have a genuine commitment to openness. Having said that, there is a debate as to whether VP8 is quite as open as it appears to be – and whether it differs much from H.264.
But the difference is that Google is, I believe, genuinely looking top open standards, while Apple is a law unto itself.
Separately, writes Florian Müller to us, “I’ve commented once again on WebM. As you can see in case you read this, I don’t take the same position as FSF/OSI. Their concern is to push for a “free” codec no matter what. My concern is whether early adopters of WebM would be exposed to too much of a risk and whether Google should do more to protect them. All of that is independent from the fact that I’d prefer to see software patents abolished, which would spell the end for MPEG LA and anyone pursuing a similar “business model”.” Here is the blog post which raises fair points.
Google’s WebM initiative is somewhere in the middle between a true act of generosity and an IBM-style scheme:
* There’s no reason to assume that Google wants to hurt the FOSS cause in any way with WebM, especially not in any IBM-like way. I don’t put it past Google to have that intention elsewhere: they might do anything, including the use of patents, to destroy an open source search technology that could adversely affect their core business. However, in this particular context of video codecs, I don’t think they intend to cause harm. I do believe them that they want more competition in this case.
* What Google does do — and what I believe the FOSS community must approach cautiously — is to shift most of the risk to others while keeping most of the benefits to itself. Businesses like to do that, but FOSS developers and users shouldn’t lose sight of the risks just out of excitement over the idea of getting a seemingly “unencumbered” codec.
Google will retain control over WebM despite open-sourcing program code and publishing specifications
A common misconception about open source and “free” specifications is that this would make something such as the WebM project independent from a single vendor or a group of vendors. Some think this puts “the community” in charge.
There are lessons to be learned from Android. Google has not yet done anything which substantially reduces trust. Control is not the main issue here; the main issue is probably patents. There’s an urgent need to get past them. █
Since our announcement yesterday that we were pursuing a compliance case involving GNU Go in Apple’s App Store, we’ve received a lot of questions about the details of the conflict between the GPL and Apple’s terms of service. For those of you who are interested, we’re providing those details here.
Let’s start by making sure everybody’s on the same page: in order to use the App Store, you have to agree to the iTunes Store Terms of Service and/or the App Store Terms of Service. You can confirm this yourself just by reading the documents: they say as much in their all-caps preambles. The two documents are pretty similar; this post will give section numbers from the App Store Terms of Service, but the same language appears in the iTunes Store Terms of Service and so our analysis applies identically to it. You can read both those documents on Apple’s site, and we have a copy of that page as it exists today to provide this commentary.
Killing an app because it has a GPL license and your store policies conflict with the GPL is a base strategy. The Free Software Foundation made a political complaint. Apple acted in the way of a base politician — if the other side hates it then it must be good.
It is disappointing that Apple took this route. The company could accommodate copylefted software, but chooses not to. The question is whether Apple’s disdain for openness is going to cost it any significant business.
Apple is “leveraging open source” or to avoid euphemisms and put it more bluntly (as we did in our IRC channel this afternoon), Apple is just exploiting free (as in “free beer” in its own eyes) code. █
From: Chris DiBona <cdibona@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 26 May 2010 09:42:16 -0700
Wed, 26 May 2010 09:42:16 -0700
Please hold off on submitting this while we determine certain compatibility issues internally at google. We’ll engage with osi in a couple of weeks, likely as not. I would also point out that we’re uncomfortable with make license proliferation worse and in the event we do submit it, we will want a couple of changes to how OSI does licenses.
1) We will likely want a label explicitly deterring the use of the license.
2) We will want the bod list archives open for any discussions of webm. We are not comfortable with OSI being closed.
This might sound strident, but I think that OSI needs to be more open about its workings to retain credibility in the space.
Chris
–
Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
Google’s Open Source program can be found at http://code.google.com
Personal Weblog: http://dibona.com
An anonymous reader adds: “It turns out that libvpx, Google’s VP8 library, isn’t compatible with the GPLv2. Google is apparently aware of the problem and working on a solution…”
At the end we expect Google to make the necessary tweaks and make everyone happy. Well, everyone except the patent trolls (MPEG-LA) which Apple and Microsoft harbour.
But Nero, represented by Winston & Strawn, alleges that MPEG LA has abused its monopoly power. Nero claims that MPEG LA has not lived up to the commitments it made to the Department of Justice when it was previously investigated by antitrust enforcers. (The DOJ issued a letter to MPEG LA on June 26, 1997, stating that it was “not presently inclined to initiate antitrust enforcement action” over the licensing arrangement.)
Earlier this month, MDB Capital Group–an IP-focused investment bank that promises to help investors understand “the hidden value of intellectual property assets and future technological leadership”–held what it billed as its first annual “Bright Lights” intellectual property conference, bringing together IP-centric speakers from a variety of small and medium-size companies.
The Prior Art attended the opening panel, which included the heads of two of the largest, and most litigious, patent-holding companies—Erich Spangenberg and Paul Ryan, the CEO of Acacia Research Corp., the largest publicly traded patent-licensing company.
The panel also included representatives from consultancy ipCapital Group and RPX Corp., which buys litigated patents in order to strike deals between NPEs and operating companies, as well as IP guru Marshall Phelps. (Phelps is something of a legend for building IBM’s legendary $2 billion patent-licensing operation; most recently, he helped Microsoft build up a patent-licensing operation before leaving the company last year.)
Under the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), an applicant receiving a ruling from the Office of First Filing (OFF) that at least one claim in an application filed in the OFF is patentable may request that the Office of Second Filing (OSF) fast track the examination of corresponding claims in corresponding applications filed in the OSF. PPH will leverage fast-track examination procedures already available in the OSF to allow applicants in the OSF to obtain corresponding patents faster and more efficiently.
“Great,” Groklaw remarks sarcastically, “More patents, issued faster. I think they are traveling in the wrong direction.” Patents are devalued when almost everything become patentable. The number of patents granted is not indicative of “success” or “innovation”; it’s indicative of revenue for the USPTO and for patent lawyers. We ought to learn from Wall Street’s bubbles. █
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