Editor’s note: I contacted RMS and asked him to comment on the licensing story we posted Thursday. That night, I received an email from him. It is published here, unedited. — TG“It is misleading to describe the GNU GPL as ‘open source licensing’,
because it was not developed by the Open Source Movement. I wrote it
as part of the Free Software Movement.

“The Free Software Movement was founded in 1984 to promote the freedom
to share and change software. The GNU/Linux operating system, in
which the kernel Linux is typically used, is also mainly the work of
the Free Software Movement. We stand for principles of freedom,
cooperation, ethics, and community.

“The Open Source Movement was founded in 1998 to advocate similar
practices but in a less firm and less deep way. They explicitly say
that they do not see the issue as a matter of principle, just one of
practical convenience, and this is the main difference between the two
movements. In addition, they aim primarily for the support of
business, while we aim primarily to convince individuals to insist on
their freedom. For more explanation, see the page
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html.

“The Open Source Movement gets a lot of publicity nowadays, with the
result that people often think they have absorbed or replaced the Free
Software Movement. Media articles labeling our work as ‘open source’
often feed this confusion; every week I get mail from someone
addressing me mistakenly as a fellow ‘open source developer’. There
must be thousands of people who support the Open Source Movement
because they think I do.

“The open source people have a right to promote their views, but we
would like our work to promote our views. The Open Source Movement
does include the GNU GPL in its list of recommended licenses, but
please describe it as a ‘free software license’, so that people will
not get the wrong idea of where it comes from and what its purpose is.

“This is not just a side issue — the purpose of the Free Software
Movement is crucial to understanding what is wrong with the criticism
of the GPL in the article. Someone in the Open Source Movement might
respond quite differently to this issue because he would have
different basic goals.” —RMS

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Wired.com reports on a new round of browser wars between Netscape owner AOL and Microsoft: “There’s even
an interesting twist: This time the combatants have adopted
each other’s battle strategy.

On Wednesday, at the Internet World Fall 2000 trade show,
America Online released version 6.0 of its online service. AOL 6.0
packs a plethora of new and — since the service has always
been targeted to Internet beginners — surprisingly sophisticated
features.”

More followup on stories that Microsoft has been cracked and its source code stolen. Reuters on ZDNet: Microsoft President and CEO Steve Ballmer said Friday the break-in was not damaging, although the crackers may have gotten access to “key programs.” Meanwhile, Slashdot readers comment on the break-in. One says: “It’s just about the software which comes with NT and Microsoft sells for NT and everybody uses on NT.
An equally stupidly-designed UNIX mail reader would be equally bad. But most UNIX systems don’t use
such software.”

Chimpzilla will be spilling the beans on its latest weapons in the
battle against you-know-who on Monday at a lavish bash at the
Paris Ritz. Plans for moving to DDR memory and details on
upcoming SMP Athlons will be announced in what cynics might
describe as a spoiling tactic coming just a month before Intel debuts
the Pentium 4. From The Register.

ZDCOUK reports: A half-dozen companies at Internet World are banking on
3D becoming mainstream. But will Web surfers suffer
through the long downloads and plug-ins?

Forbes.com reports that Microsoft’s Chief
Executive Steve Ballmer said on Friday the future of the Internet was in
making the Net’s various websites, services and hardware devices work
seamlessly together.

Trade-show keynote speeches are a sure soapbox for vendors to
dis their competitors. But not since the days of OS/2 versus
Windows have barbs been flying as they have recently in the
database space. From
ZDCOUK.

Wired.com reports that heady topics will swirl at this weekend’s Camden Technology Conference. How heady? “The definition of what it means to be human is going to become even more slippery over the next 20 years,” suggests one organizer.

From Linux.com: After deploying the basics of LDAP from the first part, now you dive into practical usage
of LDAP in the wild. Some of the biggest ISPs authenticate everything they can against
their LDAP trees, starting with RADIUS (Remote Authentication DIalin User Service),
going over to the complete employee index, up the authentication of the firewalls and
SecureID cards. Each of these LDAP trees are big. Searches take time before matches
are returned. A service like RADIUS runs fast into a timeout, so think about this before
you plan your LDAP tree.

dotcomma has an interesting contest to create a program that converts standard English to the Slavic-accented language used by Pitr in the User Friendly comic strip. The winner gets a User Friendly “Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell” book, signed by author Illiad. For more information, visit the challenge information page. –atom