Re: A single unified license
RMS said:
>GPL 3 is not at the stage to ask for public comments.
Rumor has it that it will contain loads of stuff which Debian considers
non-free. This is a *problem*.
The FDL public comment period resulted in *no* significant changes due
to the public comments.
RMS has declared that he has the final word on anything the FSF does,
and refuses to give out the names of anyone else involved [1].
Getting information about his reasons for decisions about the
controversial parts of the FDL has been like squeezing blood from a
stone [2]. (It took about a year to get the information that he
considered invariant sections acceptable because he classed them as
'packaging restrictions'.)
The FSF is set up as a charitable corporation, which means its board is
self-perpetuating. It is currently run as RMS's personal autocratic
fiefdom [3], and there's really no chance of that changing without
RMS's assent given a self-perpetuating board. (Unless he dies, of
course.)
Previously, developers were willing to assign their copyrights to the
FSF because they trusted RMS/the FSF to preserve the freedom of their
code.
After the FDL fiasco, I no longer trust him to do that. I am waiting
for a definitive legal opinion from the FSF on whether I can relicence
my *own* contributions under a more permissive license (such as the GPL
v.2). (I do not appear to get that right from my copyright
assignment papers.) If that right is absent, I will have to cancel my
current copyright assignment to the FSF, in favor of a disclaimer
(since putting my work in the public domain is far better than
allowing it to be made proprietary by the FSF).
--
If we can anticipate consistent behavior from the FSF, we will see the
following:
1. The GPL v.3 will be presented "for public comment". It will contain
unacceptable non-free provisions with no good explanation.
2. The comment period will contain lots of complaints about this.
3. The final version of the GPL v.3 will be released, with no change in
the non-free provisions, and no explanation as to why.
At this point, it will be necessary for free software developers to do
the following:
a) Discourage "version 2 or later" licensing in favor of "version 2"
licensing
b) Encourage the forking of all FSF-copyrighted projects
I would personally start a fork of GCC.
Forking and relicensing is a slow, tedious process. Accordingly, if the
FSF is planning to release a non-free GPL v.3, we want to start the
process as soon as possible; waiting simply gives them a head start at
subverting free software. On the other hand, if the GPL v.3 will be
just *fine*, we don't *want* to cause the trouble caused by forking and
relicensing.
What free software developers want are reassurances that the FSF is *not*
planning to cause this nightmare scenario by making a GPL v.3 which is
unacceptable to Debian. We have *no* such reassurances. The recent
past leads us to be very suspicious.
The "no information coming out" attitude from the FSF means, sadly, that
we must believe the worst: that the FSF is planning to subvert free
software with the GPL v.3, and that RMS is trying to hold off on
supplying information as long as possible so as to leave the opposition
scrambling to catch up, as it is with the FDL.
I will be starting the following projects:
1. Informational website with reasons to avoid the GNU FDL, and how to
do so.
2. List of free software developers who oppose the GNU FDL.
3. Project to create free (GPL) manuals for GCC, and eventually other
projects with FDL'ed manuals. (This is partly awaiting the FSF's legal
opinion on relicensing of one's own contributions, since if we definitely can,
I just need to collect the contributions of willing developers and then
fill the gaps.)
I'll need help with all of these. :-(
[1] Personal communication.
[2] Archives of debian-legal.
[3] In addition to the evidence above, all requests for licensing
changes on FSF projects must go through RMS personally, which can be
testified to by many GCC developers.
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