[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: SCO's "evidence" (was: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO)

[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: SCO's "evidence" (was: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO)

[Theodore Ts'o]

(Moving this thread over to COF, since we've gotten pretty far afield
from the TUHS list's charter.)

On Sat, Nov 09, 2024 at 04:23:34PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > The Linux Foundation does not exclusively own the copyright on the
> > Linux kernel.  The copyright is jointly owned by all of the
> > contributors of the Linux kernel.  This makes it quite unlike the FSF
> > projects, where contributions to FSF project require a copyright
> > assignment[1].
> 
> That's a myth.  It is the FSF's stated _preference_, but it is a
> negotiable point.  For example, Thomas Dickey negotiated reversion of
> copyright to himself when becoming ncurses maintainer 26 years ago.[A]

In the web site I quoted, the fact that there is an option not to do
the copyright assignment was apparently conveniently ommitted.  And in
the early 1990's, I *personally* tried negotiating to not do the
copyright assignment directy with the FSF, and I was told to go to
heck.  Given that I *had* taken a legal class from the MIT Sloan
School (Legal issues for the I/T Manager), I knew what the word
"indemnify" meant, and there was no way in the world I was going to
sign the damned FSF copyrioght legal paperwork, and I told the FSF so.

The only other alternative was my not contributing to the GNU Project.


The FSF may have since relaxed their poition in the past 30 years, but
it's not something that they've really admitted (again, see the FSF
web page I referenced).  My theory is that the only reason *why* they
relaxed their position was that it would have made GNU even more
irrelevant if they hadn't (e.g., people don't have to contribute to
GCC; if it's more friendly and easier to contribute to Clang.)


> But is it true for less prestigious projects or individual contributors
> with no clout to speak of?

Well, apparently in the early 1990's I didn't have any clout in the
eyes of the FSF.  :-)

Probably for the best, all things considered.


> With respect to the Linux kernel in particular, it seems the GPL _in
> practice_ imposes no obligations.  That was my point.  Little
> enforcement is visible.  As far as "public shaming" goes, I've seen it
> from the FSF and the Software Freedom Conservancy, not from the LF.
> 
> Give me examples of the LF leaning on infringers and getting results!
> I want them!

OK, I see where you are coming from here.  And I think the main isue
is that the goals of the Linux community are quite different from that
of the FSF.  (And note that I say the Linux community, since these
atttudes predate the founding of the Linux Foundation by **years** and
existed across many developers, some of whom, like me, weren't yet
hired by a Linux corporation; I was at MIT, and my day job was TL for
MIT Kerberos and IPSEC working group chair for the IETF as well as
serving on MIT Network Operations.)

The Linux attitude was a focus on the social contract between
*developers*.  If you improve the Linux kernel, we expect that you
contribute those changes back.  So what we care about is the company
that has 9,000 out of tree patches, representing hundreds of engineer
years of SWE investment.  And here, this is where in practce, GPL
social contract becomes self-enforcing.  It is in the interest of the
company who is interested in keeping up with upstream to get the
changes back upstream.

The FSF and Richard Stallman has a much bigger focus on the ability of
users to be able to get the sources for GPL'ed code, make changes, and
then install that changed sources on their hardware.  That's a fine
goal, and I respect that some people might have that as a very strong
policy preference and something that they care about.  It's just that
it's a very different goal than what most Linux kernel developers care
about.  (And again, this wasn't shaped by my employers; I and many of
the people I know had these preferences long before the Linux
companies formed and started hiring us.)

So take for example, the hypothetical someone who makes a tiny change
to the Linux kernel to create a crappy AI gadge in a square orange
box.  Call it, for the sake of argument, the "Squirrel S1".  :-)

As far as the Linux kernel community is concerned, the Squirrel S1 is
irrelevant.  It has no interesting technology that we would care
about, and while it might be sad that a user might not be able to
change the software in the S1, either because the manufacturer didn't
meet their GPL oligations, or the hardware was locked down and the
GPL2 does't have an anti-Tivo clause it it, in my opinion, the
enforcement is self-executing.  If you're a user, and can't make
changes, and you want to, then don't fork over $199 for the Squirrel
S1!

From the FSF's Free Softare perspective, they obviously have a very
different goal.  They believe all users should have the ability to
access the source code and modify software on a Squirrel S1, whether
they want to doit or not, and regardless of whether that might cause
the device to become more expensive.  They believe this is a core user
freedom, that should never be abograted.

I respect those people who have those feelings.  But obviously people
in the BSD camp don't share those priorities --- and in the Linux
kernel community, while we believe the GPL2 is a great way of
expressing the social expectations between developers, we don't
necessarily share the same attitudes as Mr. Stallman.

Could someone who has some copyright ownership try do some vexatious
lawsuits in order to (legally) extort money out of companies who are
infringing the GPL?  Sure; although I'll note that for the targets of
those lawsuits, I'm not so sure that they would see that much
difference between a Patrck McHardy and the SFC.  And at least
personally, the amount of help that I would give a Patric McHardy and
an SFC lawsuit is pretty much the same; zero, and my personal opinion
is that they are not really helpful, since my goal is to have more
companies being *happy* to contribute to Linux; not to feel coerced
and forced to contribute by sullenly dropping a bunch of code to
comply with the GPL and then walking away.

> > So why do companies join the Linux Foundation?  Well, there are a
> > number of benefits, but one very important one is that it provides a
> > way for companies to directly collaborate with funded programs to make
> > improvements to Linux without worrying about anti-trust conerns.
> 
> Are these concerns anything more than notional?

Well, I was at the IBM Linux Technology Center when we were first
working on standardizing ISO/IEC 23360-2:2006.  This was well after
the FTC consent decree was dissolved in 1996, and while a Republican
(George W. Bush) was president --- and I can tell you that it *was*
something that my employer at the time very much cared about.  We got
very clear instructions about what we could and could't do when we
participated with OSDL and Linux Foundation work groups, and we had
madatory training regarding how to not get in trouble with anti-trust
enforcers.

> But I do sympathize with WG14 and the Austin Group; following recent
> developments with C23 and POSIX 2014, it seems that ISO is bent
> on giving them a hard time.  Maybe ISO/IEC, or certain players within,
> are trying to shed some mass, and/or don't see C and Unix as worth
> standardizing anymore.  Old and busted.  What's the new hotness?

ISO/IEC participation has always been heavyweight, and companies are
quite strategic about the understanding the cost benefit tradeoffs of
participating in ISO.  This has been true for years; and once various
European government customers stopped requiring ISO standardization,
IBM and HP pretty quickly stopped funding the standards tech writer
and those of us who were on the US National Body represenatives to
ISO/IEC for 23360.

(And not just the US; the various companies working on the ISO/IEC
23360 effort had carefully made sure that to have their employees in
other country's national bodies, to make sure the fix was in.  This
was not too different from what Microsoft was accused of doing while
standardizing ISO/IEC 29500, although not to the same scale; there
were many more countries' national bodies involved with ISO/IEC 29500.
So when you say "ISO" is giving the Austin Group a hard time, I'd ask
the question, "who on ISO"?  And what company do they work for; or if
they are an independent contractor, which company might be paying them
at the time; and what the agenda of those company(s) might be?)

Am I super cynical about ISO/IEC standards?  Perhaps.   :-)

     	       		  	   	  	   - Ted


P.S.  Obviously, not *everyone* in the Linux ecosystem feels this way.
For example, there are many people in Debian who are much more aligned
with the FSF.  After all, they are one of the few distros that will
use the GNU/Linux terminology demanded by Stallman.

But I have talked to many Linux kernel developers over the past 30+
years, and I think have a pretty good sense of what the bulk of the
"old-timers" priorities have been.  After all, if we had been much
more aligned with the FSF's philosophies, perhaps we would have worked
on GNU/HURD isntead.  :-)