MSNBC tells us: “Logged into Windows 2000 as a Restricted User? Then
launching Adobe ImageReady 2.0 may trigger this error: ‘Could
not fully start the application because an unknown error has
occurred'”.

Stallman is passing around this article: “Microsoft describes the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) as an
“open source” license, and says it is against the American Way. To
understand the GNU GPL, and recognize how it embodies the American
Way, you must first be aware that the GPL was not designed for open
source.”The Open Source Movement, which was launched in 1998, aims to develop
powerful, reliable software and improved technology, by inviting the
public to collaborate in software development. Many developers in
that movement use the GNU GPL, and they are welcome to use it. But
the ideas and logic of the GPL cannot be found in the Open Source
Movement. They stem from the deeper goals and values of the Free
Software Movement.

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.

As in “free enterprise” and “free speech”, the “free” in “free
software” refers to freedom, not price; specifically, it means that
you have the freedom to study, change, and redistribute the software
you use. These freedoms permit citizens to help themselves and help
each other, and thus participate in a community. This contrasts with
the more common proprietary software, which keeps users helpless and
divided: the inner workings are secret, and you are prohibited from
sharing the program with your neighbor. Powerful, reliable software
and improved technology are useful byproducts of freedom, but the
freedom to have a community is important in its own right.

We could not establish a community of freedom in the land of
proprietary software where each program had its lord. We had to build
a new land in cyberspace–the free software GNU operating system,
which we started writing in 1984. In 1991, when GNU was almost
finished, the kernel Linux written by Linus Torvalds filled the last
gap; soon the free GNU/Linux system was available. Today millions of
users use GNU/Linux and enjoy the benefits of freedom and community.

I designed the GNU GPL to uphold and defend the freedoms that define
free software–to use the words of 1776, it establishes them as
inalienable rights for programs released under the GPL. It ensures
that you have the freedom to study, change, and redistribute the
program, by saying that nobody is authorized to take these freedoms
away from you by redistributing the program.

For the sake of cooperation, we encourage others to modify and extend
the programs that we publish. For the sake of freedom, we set the
condition that these modified versions of our programs must respect
your freedom just like the original version. We encourage two-way
cooperation by rejecting parasites: 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.

Millions of users, tens of thousands of developers, and companies as
large as IBM, Intel, and Sun, have chosen to participate on this
basis. But some companies want the advantages without the
responsibilities.

From time to time, companies have said to us, “We would make an
improved version of this program if you allow us to release it without
freedom.” We say, “No thanks–your improvements might be useful if
they were free, but if we can’t use them in freedom, they are no good
at all.” Then they appeal to our egos, saying that our code will have
“more users” inside their proprietary programs. We respond that we
value our community’s freedom more than an irrelevant form of
popularity.

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. When Microsoft does something new, its
purpose is strategic–not to improve computing for its users, but to
close off alternatives for them.

Microsoft uses an anticompetitive strategy called “embrace and
extend”. This means they start with the technology others are using,
add a minor wrinkle which is secret so that nobody else can imitate
it, then use that secret wrinkle so that only Microsoft software can
communicate with other Microsoft software. In some cases, this makes
it hard for you to use a non-Microsoft program when others you work
with use a Microsoft program. In other cases, this makes it hard for
you to use a non-Microsoft program for job A if you use a Microsoft
program for job B. Either way, “embrace and extend” magnifies the
effect of Microsoft’s market power.

No license can stop Microsoft from practicing “embrace and extend” if
they are determined to do so at all costs. If they write their own
program from scratch, and use none of our code, the license on our
code does not affect them. But a total rewrite is costly and hard,
and even Microsoft can’t do it all the time. 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.

But defenselessness is not the American Way. In the land of the brave
and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL.

Addendum: Microsoft says that the GPL is against “intellectual
property rights.” I have no opinion on “intellectual property
rights,” because the term is too broad to have a sensible opinion
about. It is a catch-all, covering copyrights, patents, trademarks,
and other disparate areas of law; areas so different, in the laws and
in their effects, that any statement about all of them at once is
surely simplistic. To think intelligently about copyrights, patents
or trademarks, you must think about them separately. The first step
is declining to lump them together as “intellectual property”.

My views about copyright take an hour to expound, but one general
principle applies: it cannot justify denying the public important
freedoms. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “Whenever there is a conflict
between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.”
Property rights are meant to advance human well-being, not as an
excuse to disregard it.

Copyright 2001 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted
in any medium without royalty provide the copyright notice and this
notice are preserved.

For more information about the GNU Project, visit their web site.

OE writes “The PC centric model has shifted as of lately to focusing on small, portable devices. These devices come in many flavors: mobile phones, PDA’s, MP3 players, etc. One thing they all have in common is the need for memory. Many of these devices use a certain type of memory called static ram (SRAM for short). One company has come with a new SRAM that might revolutionize SRAM like Rambus revolutionized DRAM. According to the company the cell consumes several orders of magnitude less dynamic power while performing faster than conventional 6T while getting faster the smaller it gets! This is accomplished using tunnel diodes. Tunnel diodes were discovered in the 1950’s but this is the first time they have been able to be utilized. Here is info on the cell: http://www.national-scientific.com/pdf/tmossht.pdf Here is info on tunnel diodes: http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/udel-udcnflb.ht ml“

Kelly McNeill of OSOpinion writes “”For a moment imagine you run a line of small stores, which are planning to expand. The biggest competitor in your market is Walmart. The question then arises, “How do you compete against Walmart?” That is essentially the situation Transmeta faces. How to compete with the great Chipzilla — Intel? The situation is almost comic if you consider that Transmeta’s Santa Clara headquarters are pretty much right across the street from Intel. The rivalry must be a heated one, but what will the folks at Transmeta do?””

CNet reports that a fiber optic cable breakage has knocked SETI@Home off line from Tuesday morning, and is not expected to be back up until Friday. SETI@Home is the on-line Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, which uses home computers to assist in its search.

– by Jack Bryar –
Open Source Business –
OK, now we’ve been through the 2.4 hype. Get ready for the next Linux
wave. And it’s likely to come from a source we should have
expected.

We’ve been through 2.4 and examined it to death. But now get ready
for next wave of Linux-hype. When it hits we should learn the
following:

• Is developing source code in a somewhat more private environment
  easier and more efficient than the long, painfully drawn-out tweak-fest
  that characterized 2.4’s public evolution?
• Does 2.4 make sense as the core of a mobile operating system?
• Does Linus Torvalds do even better work when he gets paid?

We may all find out all this and more in the next few weeks.
According to Ziff Davis, Torvalds’ employer is getting set to release
source code for its shaved-down, memory- and energy-efficient version of
Linux. According to the report, Transmeta should be posting the
source code for its Mobile Linux operating system to its Web site in the next two weeks or so. Although the exact release date isn’t set, it should be before
they set up the display booth at Hall 13 Germany’s massive CeBIT show in mid-March.

This could be interesting. Admittedly the Transmeta version might
not be exactly Alan Cox embodied
in silicon as one satirical Web site suggested, or LinusTorvalds, the
portable edition, either. But the Transmeta design may be as close as
we’ve gotten to see what Torvalds thinks a stripped down version of the
operating system ought to look like.

Over the last month we’ve been tracking every iteration and
permutation of the tech and business world’s response to 2.4. From my
perspective, I’ve talked about how the kernel’s design now seems
solidly oriented to meet the needs of the big server and back end systems guys.
That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of fixes and patches to meet the
needs of hacker community that gave Linux its first popularity. But it
seemed like the priorities of the new kernel were focused elsewhere.

If the base of Linux enthusiasts felt somewhat left behind, they got
something, at least.

Developers of mini-Linuxes, those systems based on the operating system but shaved down to meet the memory and processor requirements of their equipment,
got even less. In the last couple of weeks between my day job and my
other gigs, I developed a fairly extensive list of appliance and
embedded systems developers working various compacted and embedded
versions of Linux. I was able to spare time to call about half of them.
Most said they’d get back to me. Few did. The one’s I did talk to went
off the record, but their response was essentially: 2.4 is nice and
Linus is to be congratulated and we’ll certainly look at it, and bring
its features to our platform, but there’s not a lot there for
us.

The challenges associated with paring down the kernel to meet the
requirements of mobile devices and computing appliances was taking
these developers in a rather different direction. The code they were
generating was certainly Open Source and recognizably Linux, but 2.4
wasn’t a source of much excitement.

Linux for Transmeta may mark a change in that thinking. For one
thing, the Transmeta chip has been designed for portable, low power
applications, so the chip and the mobile Linux operating system together should be
very compelling to equipment developers who really don’t want to
develop and maintain their own platform. And Transmeta, together with Mobile
Linux, is already being used in Internet appliances being developed by
Gateway and Hitachi among others. Indeed, Transmeta distributed the operating system
to its OEM customers some time back.

But the interesting thing about the Mobile Linux platform was that
it wasn’t exactly open until now. Officials from the company told
Ziff-Davis that, of course, they were always going to release source
code for their platform, but they wanted to wait until they “were
satisfied” that the operating system was sufficiently complete that developers and
third parties could effectively test it and begin to suggest improvements.

“We want to put it out there in a way that’s useful to people,” said
a Transmeta official.

But that represents a rather different than the approach than the
Open Source community has been used to. Typical development work has
almost been painfully open, in an effort to keep the doors open to all
third-party developers. Closing the circle in the manner chosen by
Transmeta may be understandable; commercial applications developers
have taken this approach, and so have some embedded systems developers. But
the result has been to effectively lock other parties out in favor of a
selection of favored OEMs.

Whatever the political implications of that decision, the code
itself is also bound to be interesting, because Mobile Linux is a shaved down
version of the operating system that’s been generated by the company where Torvalds works. Thus the memory management and power consumption strategies
embedded into Transmeta’s version of Linux may be of interest to other
developers of mobile devices, whether they use Transmeta’s platform or
not. And Mobile Linux does run on Intel as well as Transmeta hardware,
and it uses “the standard” Linux kernel.

And memory and power management issues are likely to extend well
past the world of portable devices. As the power consumption of big server
banks begins to be an issue in electricity starved locations like
California, look for an energy-conscious iteration of Linux to play an
important role in servers routers and other back-end equipment. Is this
the center of the next generation of Linux-based equipment?

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the city on February 27th in the middle of a pitch by Bill Gates for Microsoft’s Windows XP. Following the tradition of the crasing Windows 98, and his pie in the face in Europe, Gates is getting used to unscheduled interruptions.

Help Net Security reports a nasty file handling bug in joe (Joe’s Own Editor) similar to one reported last fall, which allows trouble-making users access they should not normally have.

The BBC is reporting on an Israeli company’s claim to have made an artificial intelligence system capable of communicating with the vocabulary of a 16 month old child. Their next goal is the conversation of a 5 year old.

O’Reilly explains what UNIX filesystems are, how they work, and how they are organised. The article is technical and thorough.