LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 14, 2002

The FSF GPL Compliance Lab

The Free Software Foundation has sent out a press release proclaiming the receipt of a $25,000 donation from MySQL AB. The donation is intended to support the FSF's GPL Compliance Lab. The donation is a good thing, even if it can be seen as a relatively straightforward payback for the FSF's assistance in MySQL's (just settled) lawsuit against NuSphere. But the PR is also interesting in that it is the first public mention we could find of the "GPL Compliance Lab." So we contacted the FSF to learn a little more about it.

The Lab, as it turns out, has existed as an "informal activity" since 1992; it was formalized toward the end of 2001. According to FSF Executive Director Bradley Kuhn:

The Lab's staff includes, beyond a piece of Mr. Kuhn's time to run the whole thing, a "GPL Compliance Engineer" who investigates GPL issues, a half-time clerk to handle copyright assignments, and two lawyers who donate a few hours a week to the project. According to Mr. Kuhn, the demand for the lab's services could easily employ twice as many people; in particular, more lawyer time is needed. But, since the FSF lacks the funds to actually hire a lawyer, it is entirely dependent on pro bono work.

The Lab's staff works on a number of tasks, including the investigation of GPL violations, "diplomatically" working with violators to bring them back into line, helping others (like MySQL) in GPL enforcement efforts, GPL education efforts, and developing new versions of free software licenses. They currently handle about 50 violations every year; most of these are indeed handled with certain amount of diplomacy, since the world as a whole never hears about them. This is certainly the right approach, since, as Mr. Kuhn points out, almost all GPL violations are mistakes, rather than malicious misuses of GPL-licensed code. A quiet approach gets these violations taken care of without backing the violator into a defensive corner.

So why have most of us never heard of the Lab? The answer is resource constraints: the FSF is not exactly overflowing with funds, and has never been able to find the time to set up its own web site. The FSF is not the same thing as the GNU project; while the GNU folks are busy writing software and trying to get past that pesky HURD 2GB filesystem limit, the FSF is working on the broader free software picture. And it is doing so on a shoestring budget.

Bradley Kuhn is hoping that other companies will take a cue from MySQL and make donations to help the GPL compliance effort. He tells us:

He also states that companies which have violated the GPL and been brought back into line by the FSF should donate as well; that seems like a rather harder sell.

There is a serious point here, however. Companies that release code under the GPL do so in the hope that their competitors will not take unfair advantage of that code and distribute proprietary enhancements. As the free software ecosystem grows, an increasing number of companies will surely be tempted to do exactly that. Preventing this sort of behavior requires vigorous enforcement of the GPL's requirements. And that enforcement requires lawyers.

The FSF has been the champion of the GPL since the beginning, and is an obvious focal point for GPL enforcement efforts. But they need a level of funding that allows them to carry out that work. A donations page exists for individuals wanting to help out, and companies with bigger checks will certainly get their phone calls returned quickly. But the FSF may want to consider creating consulting and enforcement services that can be sold to companies that depend on respect for the terms of the GPL. Otherwise, as the market grows, somebody else will.

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Free software in Italy and elsewhere

National governments are increasingly taking an interest in free software as a way to reduce costs, improve security, support local software development industry, and decrease reliance on Microsoft. At least, governments outside the U.S. are interested... Here we take a quick look at recent events in Italy and India which give some hints of where this trend is heading.

The Italian Ministry for Innovation and Technology has announced (in Italian) the creation of the "Commission for Open Source Software in Public Administration," which is charged with evaluating free software for governmental use. This committee is headed by Professor Raffaele Meo, former president of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), and a well-known free software advocate. The scope of its work is to look at the "efficiency, effectiveness, and cost savings" of free software. They are also supposed to evaluate technology trends across Europe and other industrialized countries. The group's final report, due in three months, should advise the government on strategies for the evaluation and choice of free software.

This charge may disappoint hard core free software supporters, since it seems to focus primarily on the economic arguments. The driving force behind the establishment of this committee, however, is a proposed law (in Italian, of course) being pushed by the (opposition) Italian Green Party. This law would require government agencies to prefer free software for their information systems needs. Agencies wanting to buy proprietary software would be required to justify that choice. In situations where "personal or sensitive data" (or data whose disclusure could impact national security) is being handled, use of free software would be mandatory. Public agencies would also be required to keep copies of the source for software they use, and would be required to keep data in open formats.

The long-term direction, thus, is toward strong support of free software as a way of improving security and access to public information - along with the usual economic reasons. Adoption of free software at this level in Italy is still a fairly distant prospect, however; for now, we have to wait to see what this committee has to say, early next year. (Thanks to Davide Barbieri for the tip).

Meanwhile, events in India are worth a look. The country's Department of Information Technology announced last month a new set of initiatives to promote the development and use of Linux there. Linux obviously has a lot to offer a country like India, but the cynical among us need not look too hard for another motivation for this effort. After all, Bill Gates has just taken a trip over there and talked about spending $400 million in the country. The two events are unlikely to be unrelated.

India is an important country for both Microsoft and the free software community. Its software market is relatively small, especially when considering the size of the country as a whole. But India is rich in highly educated software developers. If a substantial portion of those developers were to start working on free software, the results would be felt worldwide. It is an outcome that, for Microsoft, is worth $400 million to prevent.

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LWN Status

This week's exercise in LWN writing about itself looks at European subscriptions, corporate subscribers, and a couple other aspects of how things are going.

The individual subscriber count stands at a little over 2300. New subscriptions have levelled off greatly in recent weeks. The total number of subscribers has yet to decline; if the number of new subscribers remains low, and the number of expiring short-term subscriptions remains relatively high, that could happen before too long, however.

We continue to see a slow but steady trickle of group subscriptions. Subscribers which have given us permission to drop their names include Dell, the IBM Linux Technology Center, NEC, Trustix, Carmen Systems AB, Progeny, The Linux Box Corporation, Boston University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research Library, Bibliotek-Systemer, BitMover, the SAIC Advanced Technologies and Solutions Group, Prosa, Intevation, the Debian Project (funded by HP), and SecurePipe. If your company is not on this list, perhaps it should be; please drop us a note at subs@lwn.net to set up a group subscription.

Our investigations into setting up an European bank account have led us to the conclusion that it's not a viable option for us at this point. Setting up an account requires a "presence" that we don't have, and, even then, it turns out that monetary union has not done much to reduce wire transfer fees across the European Union. Accepting European debit cards that are not part of the Visa or MasterCard networks is not an option available to us.

So it looks a little difficult, still, for European subscribers who do not have credit cards or PayPal accounts. There is, however, one other option we have found: accepting personal checks. It turns out that the costs to us for dealing with European checks (in Euros) is not that unreasonable. So we ask our European readers: how many of you would be willing to mail us a check, for something like EUR 65 to 70, for a one-year "professional hacker" level subscription? Drop us a note (at subs@lwn.net, or as a comment to this article) if you would be interested in that option.

The old "About LWN" page has been replaced with a new LWN.net FAQ with answers to a number of questions. This document is clearly under construction; drop us a note with questions you think we should have answered.

That's about it for this week. Thanks, as always, for supporting LWN.

Comments (15 posted)