"Microsoft must stop polluting the downstream with patent encumbrances.  Period.  Full stop."

- Matt Assay (Microsoft's dilemma: The importance of the downstream)

I just took the Subway (the "T" here in Boston) home from work and ran into Richard Stallman.  I saw the big RMS beard flowing and I flagged him down.  The next train was running late so we got to chat for a while about GPLv3 adoption and some other Free Software issues.

It's pretty cool to have a conversation with somebody who has influenced my life and ideals so very strongly.

It wasn't the first time I had met him, but it was the longest and most pleasant conversation I have had with him.

Good stuff!

O'Toole's Corollary of Finagle's Law: “The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum”

(no i didn't take his freakin picture today :)

Sometimes music is treated as art, not as a vehicle for hoarding money and restricting consumers.

This is exemplified by the copyright policies of certain performers.  Here are my favorite policies from some influential acts:

Grateful Dead's Mp3 Policy:

"The Grateful Dead and our managing organizations have long encouraged the purely non-commercial exchange of music taped at our concerts and those of our individual members. That a new medium of distribution has arisen - digital audio files being traded over the Internet - does not change our policy in this regard."

Woody Guthrie's Standard Copyright Notice:

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do."

awesome.

RIAA Lawsuits - Expert Witnesses Fund

(and tax deductible)

The Free Software Foundation just released the final version of the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AFDL).  This license covers software that is hosted on a computer network (SaaS - Software as a Service).  The regular GNU GPL only covers software distribution, so you are able to run modified GPL code on a network server without releasing your modified source code.  The GNU AFDL prohibits this and ensures source code for hosted software is made available.

from FSF:

"The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today published the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (GNU AGPLv3). This is a new license; it is based on version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3), but has an additional term to allow users who interact with the licensed software overa network to receive the source for that program."

It will be interesting to see which projects adopt this license and what its effects will be.  I can imagine that commercial companies would be very hesitant to use AFDL code.

The FSF just posted this:

A Quick Guide to GPLv3

A very nice high level overview of the current GPL and what it means.

There are lots of resources available online to learn about Free and Open Source Software.

If you want to understand the essence and ideals of this movement, a great start would be to read the following 4 books. After reading these, you will have a good grasp of the history and philosophy of freedom in the technology world.

• Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software (full text online)
• Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman (full text online)
• Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (full text online)
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

"Open Source"

In the words of Inigo Montoya [The Princess Bride]:  "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means, what you think it means."

A few months back, Radview Software announced that they are releasing an open source version of WebLOAD, their web performance and load testing tool.  I was very excited about this and thought it was a fantastic move that would have a big impact in the test tool market.  I am a performance engineer and a huge Free/Open Source Software advocate, so I love to see companies in the space that interests me most come around to embrace openness.

In their press release, Radview stated:

"WebLOAD Open Source, licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL) version 2, is based on WebLOAD, the company's flagship product that is already deployed at 1,600 sites. Immediately available for free download and use, WebLOAD is a commercial-grade open source project with more than 250 engineering years of product development."

Ok cool.. they used the GPL and opened up the whole shebang.  Wow, this company actually "gets it"... right?

Umm.. not quite.

If you look through the source code that is available for WebLOAD Open Source, you will notice that only code for a small subset of the product is available.  In actuality, WebLOAD Open Source is a partially proprietary tool which is marketed as Open Source Software.  The software has significant limitations in functionality and scalability.  The source code which needs to be modified to remove these restrictions is not distributed.  So what we are left with is a crippled version of the tool.

In a recent post to the WebLOAD OS Forum, someone asked to see the source code for "proxynator", which is the recording feature in WebLOAD.

The response from the Forum Admin (Amir Shoval, a Radview employee) was this:

"Currently the source code for the proxynator is not available as part of the open source code of WebLOAD."

This is in direct contradiction to what their website states:

"WebLOAD Open Source introduces a unified script authoring environment for recording, editing and debugging."

When further probed about this, he stated the following:

WebLOAD Open Source is dual licensed:
  1. the WebLOAD Load Engine is totally open sourced and hence is licensed under the GPL
  2. but the complete WebLOAD is still licensed under a proprietary license, which grants free usage in WebLOAD Open Source.

wait.. wait.. WHAT?
I thought the press release said "licensed under the GNU Public License", and "WebLOAD Open Source is a fully functional, commercial-grade performance testing product"?  Nowhere on their website or marketing materials to they talk about this dual licensing and limited availability of source code.

Now, if we look at the End User License Agreement (EULA) that applies to WebLOAD Open Source, it gets worse:

2. License Restrictions. This License does not permit you or any third party to:
(i) modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble (except to the extent that this restriction is expressly prohibited by law) or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of all or any portion of the Software;
(ii) modify, translate or create derivative works of all or any portion of the Software;
(iii) copy the Software (other than a single copy solely for back-up or archival purposes);
(iv) rent, lease, sell, offer to sell, distribute, or otherwise transfer rights to the Software;

OK... so we have an "open source" product that is actually dual licensed, where a large portion of the toolset is proprietary.  And furthermore, by accepting the EULA, you give up all of your rights that were granted under the GPL.  Huh?

So... to reiterate, WebLOAD Open Source is *not* open source.  A subset of it is open source: the [crippled] load engine.  Contrary to what their press release and website says, it contains proprietary components that are released in binary form with no source code.  It is rather disappointing to see a company jump on the bandwagon of open source without respecting the freedom that is supposed to come with it.

In conclusion: Is WebLOAD Open Source currently Open Source?  No
Will WebLOAD Open Source actually become Open Source?  Well.. that's up to Radview

Hey, I'm all for Freedom.  I applaud Radview for any of the code they released under the GPL.  But lets be fair, if you want to call your product open source and reap any benefits that come along with that... you gotta walk the walk.

Earlier this week, SCO finally lost the infamous Linux copyright infringement case against IBM.  The judge ruled Unix copyrights belong to Novell, not SCO.  A lot of people have forgotten about this case; but when it was originally filed, it really spooked a lot of Free software developers and Linux advocates.

After the ruling, Wall Street punished SCO's stock price accordingly.

5-Day stock price chart for SCOX:

Ouch.  Decimated.  I'm actually surprised it didn't get hammered more... Time to short this rag?

Microsoft launched a new site which is intended to be the "gateway for information about open source engagements and activities across Microsoft."

From the FAQ:

"What is the Microsoft position on intellectual property (IP) and open source?

Intellectual property (IP) serves a vital role in maintaining a healthy cycle of innovation in the IT industry. IP concepts—including copyright, trademark, patent, or public domain—are useful for developers to define terms of use that enable their project or business to thrive, regardless of what development model they choose."

Sorry, but patents do *not* "serve a vital role in maintaining a healthy cycle of innovation in the IT industry".  Restricting ideas actually does the exact opposite.

So... I'm glad to see Microsoft taking steps towards Free software, but as of now they still don't really "get it".

It's Official...

From the FSF press release:

"On Friday, June 29, at 12 noon (EDT), the Free Software Foundation will officially release the GNU GPL version 3.  Please join us in celebration as we bring to a close eighteen months of public outreach and comment, in revision of the world's most popular free software license."

GPLv3 has been a long time coming.  This is a big moment in Free Software.

Michael Tiemann (President of the Open Source Initiative):

"When is the OSI going to stand up to companies who are flagrantly abusing the term 'open source'?"
The answer is:  starting today.

Read more:  Will The Real Open Source CRM Please Stand Up?

Jonathan Schwartz (CEO of Sun Microsystems) posted an excellent article describing Sun's stark choice of how to re-invent itself.  They stepped towards Free software and embraced Open Source.  Microsoft is taking a much different stance.  They are asserting patent claims over many pieces of the GNU/Linux system.

Jonathan gives some great advice in his Free Advice for the Litigious:

"No amount of fear can stop the rise of free media, or free software (they are the same, after all). The community is vastly more innovative and powerful than a single company. And you will never turn back the clock on elementary school students and developing economies and aid agencies and fledgling universities - or the Fortune 500 - that have found value in the wisdom of the open source community. Open standards and open source software are literally changing the face of the planet - creating opportunity wherever the network can reach."

Can you hear us *now*?

OK, this is huge news: www.webload.org

The commercial performance/load test tool market is dominated by large proprietary commercial vendors (HP/Mercury, Borland/Segue, etc). Radview has a nice product called WebLOAD that competes in the space.

As of this morning, Radview announced they have released WebLOAD OS, an open source version of WebLOAD. It is full-on GPL licensed (no fake open source). I already browsed their source tree. They have a Subversion repository.. code is in C and C++,

The Open Source performance/load test tool market doesn't offer many choices. Currently the most popular tools are JMeter and OpenSTA. 

This will be exciting. I wonder how well Radview will deal with the community on this. Though if it's not good, GNU GPL certainly allows forking :)

more to come...

I posted some pics of the latest OLPC prototypes a few weeks ago.  Well... I got to see them 2 weeks in a row; so here are some more pics of the machine up close.

... Seems the whole "hand crank" idea is gone.  There is now a pullchord on the external power supply with a 10:1 ratio (1 minute of pulling = 10 mins of computing) for manually recharging power... The keyboard is tiny and soft feeling.  The screen is small but is very viewable in direct light without backlighting (which is probably the #1 power drain on laptops).

OLPC rocks!

Me geeking out:

Old school meets new school...
Gerald J. Sussman (yes, the MIT Scheme guy) playing with the latest OLPC prototype:

Closeups:

.. these machines run a scaled down version of Fedora Linux that is loaded with Python applications.

-Corey

For posterity...

Professor Michael Wesch:

teaching the machine.
the machine is us.

we'll need to rethink a few things...
copyright
authorship
identity
ethics
aesthetics
rhetorics
governance
privacy
commerce
love
family
ourselves

- The Machine is Us/ing Us

The Free Software Foundation's annual Associate Members Meeting is always an inspiring event for me.  It serves as a sort of State of The Free Software Union; where members gather to discuss ideas and listen to speakers.  Most of the FSF Board of Directors were there to speak.

I attended the meeting today (Saturday 03/24/2007) for the 4th time in the past 5 years.

It was held at MIT (Cambridge, Massachusetts):

I arrived during Joshua Ginsberg's (FSF Senior System Administrator) speech on “FSF Systems Administration”.  He gave an overview of some of the systems and internal work going at the FSF offices. Some highlights:

• FSF now runs LinuxBIOS on new Tyan servers for FSF and GNU Project resources.  They will be contributing documentation and information to help others install a Free BIOS.
• New and much improved FSF network infrastructure and connectivity for FSF/GNU hosted resources.
• FSF is switching from Zope to Django (both Python powered!) for web application development...  Lots of new stuff coming soon, including contributions back to the Django community.

Next up was Brett Smith, the new GPL Compliance Engineer at the Compliance Lab.  One thing Brett mentioned was that GPL license violations are pretty much kept secret and not disclosed to the community.  FSF prefers to negotiate with violators and talk them into compliance behind closed doors.  I'm not sure I agree with this practice.  I asked Richard Stallman about this during his Q&A Session... stating that I thought this information should be released to the public.  I don't see it as an overly aggressive move and I think publicly outing companies that are GPL violators would be a good way to give exposure to Free Software and help curb future violations.  RMS doesn't quite agree with my standpoint, but he asked some FSF staff to explore generically publicizing more types of violations.

Next was Gerald Jay Sussman, speaking about "Robust Design". Gerry was the author of my first Computer Science book, the venerable Wizard Book (SICP), and one of the authors of Scheme (a programming language dialect of LISP).  I was able to thank him for the pain and enlightenment his texts brought me during my CS studies.

Gerry is a complete madman when he gives presentations.  Forget the powerpoints and fancy presentation gear... he just slings around old school projector slides at blazing speed.  Admittedly, the stuff he talks about is far over my head.  I'm just a lowly computer programmer.  This guy has been at MIT since 1964 studying the cutting edge of computer science, mechanics, and electrical engineering. Watching him ease through functional programming and Scheme code is a little intimidating, but the entertainment value alone is worth it.

OK.. now the person most people came to see speak... the GNU Project founder, FSF President, former MIT AI Lab hacker, Emacs/GCC/GDB author, Chief GNUisance, and St. Gnucius himself... Richard Stallman:

RMS was in a surprisingly jovial mood. He is usually sorta moody and prone to outbursts.  I saw him shout at, and absolutely berate Larry Lessig a few years ago in front of a large audience at an FSF meeting.  However, today he was in fine form and gave his speech "Free Software and Software Patents".  He delivered well and really punched home the point about the absurdity of patents when applied to software.

After RMS was Eben Moglen, FSF Chief Council, Columbia Law Professor, and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center.  Eben is my favorite speaker.. bar none.  He speaks with passion and insight that is truly inspiring to watch.  He gave his "After GPLv3" speech.  It was an update on the current state of the GPL revision process.  Stallman and Moglen are leading the massive effort to complete GPLv3.  I am very thankful that people like Eben Moglen are on the front lines protecting our freedom.

Eben Moglen:

Bruce Perens was in attendance: 

He seems to have taken a very strong interest in the GPLv3 recently.

... and of course there were the obligatory FSF activist signs:

RMS listening to Moglen's speech:

Now... everyone... go join the FSF and become an Associate Member.
... or at least continue your Free Software hacking and advocacy.

Goldberg... out!

RMS has been on the "GNU/Linux" naming convention rant for years; urging people to give the GNU Project and the legions of contributors credit they deserve.  Afterall, the bulk of Free Software OS userland is made of GNU contributions.

One might think that a company like Sun Microsystems wouldn't grok this concept, since most GNU/Linux distributions themselves don't.

However, some folks at Sun definitely get it:

Tim Bray - Director of Web Technologies (talking about Ian Murdoch joining Sun):

"As of this weekend Ian wasn’t even on the payroll yet and was already in in a peppy little email debate over when to say “Linux” and when to say “GNU” and when to say both."

Simon Phipps - Chief Open Source Officer:

"the combination of the GNU operating system pioneered by Richard Stallman with the inclusive development delivered around the Linux kernel by Linus Torvalds has brought a new life and energy to the extended family tree of Unix. The popularity of GNU/Linux bears testament to the vision and skill Stallman and Torvalds exhibit."

I was at the BarCamp2 "unconference" today at MIT's Stata Center and got to see the OLPC machine  ... very cool.

Chris Ball had a prototype on hand.  Chris heads One Laptop Per Child's performance testing work.  I was able to chat with him for a bit and take some pics:

One thing that struck me was the size of the laptop. It is really very small.  The keys are much smaller than typical laptop keys (designed for children's hands).

Chris with the laptop:

This project fascinates me.  I can't wait for the abundance of future hackers.

In his article: "Joe Barr rips proprietary software vendor a new one", Joe does exactly what the title states  :)

His article was a response to an earlier piece by Roger Greene (CEO of Ipswitch), where Roger says some very confused/uninformed things about Open Source software.

One thing Joe didn't rip was this excerpt from Roger Greene:

"The open source community claims bugs can be fixed faster for open source software than commercial software because hundreds, if not thousands, of people are looking at the code daily and can help with fixes. [ ... ] Even when those individuals generously offer their time for free, can you really afford to wait for one to agree with you on the urgency of action if your network is down?"

Huh?

That is a very odd and misleading way to look at it.  Open Source gives you the ability to modify the code yourself.  You don't have to wait for anyone.  You can hire a freelance developer or consultancy to fix it on the spot.  If you find a problem in a proprietary vendor's software, can you do the same?

No.. proprietary software puts you at the mercy of your vendor.