Leading items

Engage with government - or ignore it?

There is no doubt that much of what is going on in legislative systems worldwide is hostile to both free software and the larger principles of fair use of ideas and copyrighted works. Laws like the DMCA or the upcoming UK copyright law ban the writing of programs which provide "unauthorized" access to legitimately purchased materials. Proposed laws like the CBDTPA (seen defined as "Consume, But Don't Try Programming Anything") could outlaw broad classes of free software outright. There is clearly cause to worry. But what should we do about these threats?

Columnist Dan Gillmor tells us to get involved and pressure government for better laws:

Mr. Gillmor tells us that we need to "reeducate" Congress and press technology companies to be more assertive about the rights and needs of its customers, rather than those of big media. With enough political pressure, our rights can be preserved.

Before going off to pressure Congress (or Parliament, or whatever), though, it is worth taking a look at another view. Declan McCullagh, who has covered Congress and technology for years, has recently posted a column questioning the value of the political path:

His suggestion, instead, is to take the classic cypherpunk approach: write code.

He has a point: had Phillip Zimmermann not written PGP when he did, the battle for the right to use strong encryption may well have been lost a decade ago.

In general, the wide diffusion of technology makes it harder to outlaw or control that technology. In 1990, it might just have been possible to pass a CBDTPA-like law which would have made the distribution of free operating systems impossible. In 2002, Linux and *BSD are everywhere, serving many critical functions; outlawing them is not a practical possiblity. Hackers should, indeed, be creating and distributing code. Getting that code out where it can not be recalled is an important activity for the defense of our freedom.

But wouldn't it be a nicer world if free software hackers did not need to fear arrest and incarceration for releasing the wrong code? Wouldn't it be better if copyright law were to swing back toward the longstanding values of fair use, first sale, and compromise between control and the free exchange of ideas? To claim that the only worthwhile work is writing code is to see the future as a sort of guerilla war against an entrenched copyright regime. This does not sound like a fun future, and it should not be seen as inevitable.

Sustained political effort can yield results. But success requires engaging and interest and support of a large number of people. Governmental representatives can easily ignore the noise from a small group of concerned programmers; they need to hear from a wider constituency before they will pay attention. Somehow we need to get Aunt Tillie worried about copyright law. That is going to be a difficult task, but it's an important one.

Comments (10 posted)

The Digital Software Security Act

One example of engagement with government is the Digital Software Security Act (DSSA), which is proposed for enactment in the state of California. This bill is strongly supported by Red Hat, to the point that CTO Michael Tiemann is leading a march to the San Francisco city hall on August 15. The law may look good at a first glance, but it is not clear that this is really the best way to promote the free software cause.

The DSSA is strict and unambiguous in its requirements. If a given software package does not come with source, and the ability to modify and redistribute that source, the state of California would not be able to buy it. If no suitable open source package exists for, say, the management of mineral rights or the operation of automated tollbooths, then state would simply have to do without. Chances are, some of the operations of the state of California would be adversely affected by this law.

The proposed law is extreme, and its chances of passage are minimal. Which is just as well. Imagine the backlash that would result once people figured out that, since nobody has gotten around to creating a SourceForge project for welfare case management, tracking of health insurance complaints, or the secure creation of drivers licenses, the state would no longer be able to perform those functions. This law would not last long.

More generally, free software is supposed to be about choices and freedom. That includes the freedom to choose software that does not necessarily meet the Open Source Definition. There are situations where a mandate of openness makes sense for governments: file formats for the storage of public data and electronic voting software come readily to mind. It is certainly in the interests of governments - and the governed - to use free software in situations where that software can do the job. But a heavy-handed law that requires the use of free software in all situations - even where such software does not exist - is excessive and counterproductive. World Domination is best achieved through better software and respect for freedom, not by legislative fiat.

Comments (8 posted)

LinuxWorld

The LinuxWorld Conference & Expo is happening without LWN's presence this year - but they seem to be getting along just fine without us. Our coverage is thus less that it might other wise be. Thanks to Russell Pavlicek, we do have reports from the first and second days at the event.

Beyond that, there are a few things of interest that have come out of this LinuxWorld iteration, including:

• The Free Standards Group has announced that three distributors (MandrakeSoft, Red Hat, and SuSE) have won "LSB-compliant" certification for their distributions. Actual implementation by the distributors was an important part of the whole Linux Standard Base process, so this is good news.

• Sun has jumped into the business of selling commodity PCs with Linux installed. This has proved to be a difficult living for many, but it's possible that Sun's experience will be different.

• Dell's announcements show clearly where that company thinks money is to be made with Linux: large clusters and migration from proprietary Unix.

• By the end of September, we're told, we'll see the Xandros 1.0 and UnitedLinux beta releases.

• Oracle has joined the GPL community by releasing its "cluster filesystem" for Linux. The company seems to think that the Linux platform is important enough to be worth improving.

See this week's Linux in Business page for more LinuxWorld press releases than you would ever really want to see. The Linux business world has changed, but LinuxWorld still seems to be its meeting place.

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SourceForge goes to DB2

Among the many announcements from LinuxWorld this week is this one from VA Software stating that the SourceForge software would be adapted to work with a number of proprietary IBM products, including the DB2 database manager and WebSphere. VA and IBM will also cooperate in the marketing of each other's products. Oh, and, incidentally, OSDN (owned by VA) has announced that SourceForge.net will be converted over to run DB2 exclusively.

This arrangement does not lack its good features. SourceForge becomes more interoperable and gains a new marketing channel. No details have been released, of course, but it is reasonable to expect that IBM will help support SourceForge.net's continued existence as part of this deal. Given the obvious cost of running a facility like SourceForge and the number of free software projects which depend on it, this is good news for the free software community.

The fact remains, however, that SourceForge is moving steadily away from free software. The site itself has not been pure free software for some time, and is now becoming a showcase for IBM's proprietary applications. There has not been a release of the SourceForge site code - the free part - since November, 2001. References to "open source" are most rare on the VA Software web site. Even the VA Software products FAQ shows an interesting emphasis:

"Also runs" is better than nothing...

Almost exactly one year ago, Eric Raymond posted a message on how SourceForge wasn't really going proprietary:

Given that, it is interesting to note that Mr. Raymond's name has been quietly dropped from VA's Board of Directors page.

We are, thus, in a position where a large portion of the free software community's work is hosted on a site owned by a company that no longer sees free software as part of its mission. The concentration of projects onto a single site (any single site) has been a cause of concern for some time; now it makes the community's position look truly precarious. SourceForge is still useful to VA as a demonstration of the scale on which its software can work. But it's an expensive advertisement which is increasingly being turned to the interests of those who are paying the bills. SourceForge remains a valuable contribution to the free software community, as it has been for years. But the need for alternatives (beyond Savannah and Berios, which are a good start) is more urgent than ever.

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LWN status update

There is relatively little to report on the status of LWN since last week - despite the fact that we have been as busy as ever. Here's what's going on:

• Our disagreement with our credit card clearing company is heading toward resolution - slowly. A small portion of the money given as donations (and advertising payments) to LWN has found its way into our bank account; we're working on getting the rest. Meanwhile, however, we lack the ability to accept credit card payments - something we have to fix before subscriptions can start.

• Implementation of site code for the handling of subscriptions is proceeding - slowly. When writing code that does things like charge money to credit cards, it's best not to be in too much of a hurry.

Thanks yet again for your support. We'll do our best to keep you informed as things happen.

Comments (5 posted)