Bradley M. Kuhn sends this: Richard M. Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, and Professor Eben Moglen, general counsel for the Free Software Foundation, today issued statements addressing points raised in yesterday’s remarks by Craig Mundie of Microsoft. Stallman and Moglen focused on the importance of freedom for software users and programmers, how the GPL protects those freedoms, and Microsoft’s attempt to cast such freedoms in an unfavorable light.

Stallman, author of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), stated: “Microsoft describes the GNU GPL as an ‘open source’ license. To understand the GNU GPL, you must first be aware that the GPL was not designed for open source. The ideas and logic of the GPL stem from the deeper goals and values of the Free Software Movement”.

Stallman explained further: “The Free Software Movement was founded in 1984, but its inspiration comes from the ideals of 1776: freedom, community, and voluntary cooperation. This is what leads to free enterprise, to free speech, and to free software.” Stallman started GNU, a project to create a free software operating system, along with the Free Software Movement. He wrote the first GPL-style licenses for the GNU project, and released the first version of the GPL itself in 1989. The current version of the GPL was released in 1991, and today is used by thousands of software projects.

Moglen noted that Microsoft’s confusion about the GPL’s origins is not
surprising. He said that “taking advice on what the GPL means from Microsoft is like taking Stalin’s word on the meaning of the US Constitution. They don’t understand and they’re not trying to understand: “they’re simply trying to scare people out of dealing with a competitor they can’t buy, can’t intimidate, and can’t stop.”

Stallman also addressed the propagating nature of the GPL, saying:
“Whoever wishes to copy parts of our software into his program must let us use parts of that program in our programs. Nobody is forced to join our club, but those who wish to participate must offer us the same cooperation they receive from us. That makes the system fair.”

“Microsoft surely would like to have the benefit of our code without the responsibilities. But it has another, more specific purpose in attacking the GNU GPL. Microsoft is known generally for imitation rather than innovation. Its purpose is strategic–not to improve computing for its users, but to close off alternatives for them.”

“Hence their campaign to persuade us to abandon the license that protects our community, the license that won’t let them say, ‘What’s yours is mine,and what’s mine is mine.’ They want us to let them take whatever they want, without ever giving anything back. They want us to abandon our defenses,” concluded Stallman.

Finally, Moglen added that Microsoft is threatened by the power of free software: “Microsoft, which used to say all the time that the software business was ruthlessly competitive, is now matched against a competitor whose model of production and distribution is so much better that Microsoft stands no chance of prevailing in the long run.”

Stallman’s essay about Microsoft’s attacks on the GPL is available online at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gpl-american-way.htm l. Other comments by Stallman on Microsoft are available online at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft.html. One of Moglen’s essays on the Free Software Movement is available online at
http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/anarch ism.html.

About Richard M. Stallman:

Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU project, launched in 1984 to develop the free operating system GNU (an acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix”), and thereby give computer users the freedom that most of them have lost. GNU is free software: everyone is free to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small.

Today, Linux-based variants of the GNU system, based on the kernel
Linux developed by Linus Torvalds, are in widespread use. There are estimated to be over 17 million users of GNU/Linux systems today. These systems are often mistakenly called just “Linux”; calling them “GNU/Linux” corrects this confusion.

Stallman received the Grace Hopper Award from the Association for
Computing Machinery for 1991 for his development of the first Emacs editor in the 1970s. In 1990 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and in 1996 an honorary doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. In 1998 he received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer award along with Linus Torvalds; in 1999 he received the Yuri Rubinski memorial award.

About Eben Moglen:

Eben Moglen holds a PhD. in history and a J.D. from Yale University. Moglen is currently a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University Law School, and serves as general counsel for the Free Software Foundation.

About the Free Software Foundation:

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software—particularly the GNU operating system (used widely today in its GNU/Linux variant)— and free documentation. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at http://www.gnu.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.

Media Contact: Free Software Foundation
Bradley M. Kuhn
Phone: +1-617-542-5942

NZheretic writes, “The most scathing commentary on Microsoft executive Craig
Mundie speech, comes not from the Open Source ‘zealots,’
but from Ken Wasch, president of the Software & Information
Industry Association (SIIA), who represent a fair sized
chunk of the software industry.” Here’s a list of group members, and the statement’s also at SIIA.net.

From IDG News Service: “File-swapping service Napster is reportedly in
talks with Microsoft to use the software
maker’s music copyright protection
technology. The Los Angeles Times Friday
reported that Napster hopes to use Microsoft’s
antipiracy technology to persuade the music
industry to allow songs it has restricted the
file-trading service from listing.”

In case you’ve been off the grid for the past couple of days, here’s a Reuters report on a Microsoft executive’s speech Thursday. “Microsoft Corp. on Thursday took aim at the Linux operating system and other rival
software that share their basic instruction codes with the public, saying such freely distributed ‘open source’
software poses a threat to commercial intellectual property rights.”

From a column at ZDNet: “I must confess, however, that it’s not entirely clear to me what Microsoft aims to get out of such
pronouncements. Mundie’s treatise comes across primarily like a finer tuned beta of a Microsoft
policy statement, but far short of any kind of coherent strategy.”

ZDNet follows up on reports about Microsoft’s
security hole in IIS 5.0.
“A hacker has announced that time’s up for system administrators who
haven’t patched Windows 2000 Web servers vulnerable to a flaw
revealed by Microsoft two days ago. The hacker — using the handle ‘Dark Spyrit’ — released a program
on Wednesday night designed to exploit the security hole and give
anyone with limited technical knowledge the ability to completely
control a Windows 2000 server running version 5 of Microsoft’s
Internet Information Server (IIS) Web software.”

Oreillynet.com has an article disputing a ZDNet column, which said that Apple isn’t giving back to the Open Source community as much as it’s taking. “Apple has given back exactly what was asked of them by the BSD community. Evan
is asking them to give back more than they have taken.

He wrongly asserts that they haven’t given anything back. The Darwin project is an
open source project started by Apple to allow the source code for the project to be
available to the community. The code they have taken is made available via the
Darwin project. They also have paid developers working on the project, which in my
opinion is giving back to the community.”

InfoWorld reports that the Gartner Group is bearish on quick industry adoption of Microsoft’s .Net plans. Gartner called Microsoft’s .Net marketing campaign “remarkably confusing.”

From ZDNet UK: “Linux NetworX and Ebiz Enterprises have called off their merger, the
second time this week Linux companies have backed off from plans to
join forces.

Ebiz announced in March that it had agreed to acquire Linux
NetworX, which builds low-cost supercomputers made of networked
Linux machines. Ebiz sells a host of Linux products, including
inexpensive PCs, other companies’ servers and software and
doo-dads such as Linux keychains.”

InfoWorld reports on IBM’s deal with a Venezuelan bank to run Linux on a mainframe for its Web serving, firewalling, and Internet domain serving needs.