Episode 0x03: i Don't Store

Karen and Bradley discuss the debates regarding Apple's online store
restrictions that make it impossible to distribute GPL'd software via
Apple's store. Then, they discuss question the usefulness of the term
“Open Core”

Note: Bradley's audio was too low compared to Karen's on this
episode. We're still sorting out our recording issues, and apologize
for this. This is completely Bradley's fault: don't blame Producer
Dan. :)

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:34)

Karen mentioned first Brett's
statement on the VLC mailing list, although that is toward the end of
the story
that was covered last month. (05:30)

Bradley mentioned that the story started with FSF's
enforcement regarding Apple's distribution of GNU Go in Apple's
application store. (05:54)

Don't confused GNU Go
(the game) with Google Go (the
programming language). Bradley pointed out that Google did assign
some of its copyright on the language Go, for the GCC frontend for
the Go language. (06:51)

Bradley mentioned that the game Go has been around thousands of
years, although according the Go Wikipedia entry,
it's been around for approximately 2,500 years. (08:21)

Bradley pointed out that the primary goal of GPL enforcement is to get
compliance, not to get companies to cease distribution, but sometimes
the companies prefer to cease distribution rather than complying with
the license. (09:57)

There was disagreement in the VLC community about the enforcement
action (11:50). There's an original
thread on the VLC mailing list that discussed this (12:35), and then Brett's
response on that list. (13:25)

GPLv2 requires in § 6 that you cannot impose terms that restrict
the downstream more than GPL otherwise does. (15:40)

FSF made
a statement that linked this issue to the DRM issue, which caused some
confusion. It's our view that what Apple is doing against GPL software is
part of their initiative to put DRM (both for software and more
traditional content) onto devices. (17:20)

Bradley mentioned that Apple lawyers have a pathological hatred of
GPL, which he believes comes directly down from Steve Jobs, who began his
dislike of GPL when he tried, while at NeXT, to distribute a proprietary
front-end for GCC for Objective-C. (RMS discussed the story briefly in
his essay Copyleft:
Pragmatic Idealism.) (23:45)

Segment 1 (27:40)

Bradley has decided
that the term “Open Core” is so confusing that it's now
useless.

The Gnus
IMAP backend is being rewritten, and
Joel Adamson mentioned that
he's using Emacs
development mainline and the new IMAP implementation is working
well. (29:58)

Alexandre Oliva started
a project called Linux Libre,
to remove proprietary software from Linux. (31:31)

There is a file
called WHENCE in Linux that is a long list of proprietary software
included inside Linux. Fontana linked the WHENCE
file on identi.ca (31:02)

Alexandre made
an announcement calling Linux an “Open Core” project.
(32:56)

Bradley mentioned that Alexandre appears to have been
convinced that Open Core is a problematic term in this context (during
this identica
conversation). Alexandre seems to be favoring the term “Free
Bait” now. (35:16)

Karen mentioned Nina Paley's intellectual
pooperty cartoon. (38:39)

Bradley mentioned the softer
side of Sears marketing campaign, which was used as
a cruel joke by Cordelia in the pilot
of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer to make fun of Willow's
clothes. Sears apparently dropped
the campaign in 1999. (40:23)

Join us on #faif on freenode and the !FaiFCast group on identi.ca (43:47)

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Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.

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