Audio of talk: https://archive.org/download/OhioLinuxfest2013/24-Rob_Landley-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Copyleft.mp3 - I did free software before I ever heard of Linux: - My first free download, "The Bard's Tailor", editor for C64 game saves - I was... maybe 14? - freeware/shareware: fidonet, binkleyterm, zmodem, fossil drivers, arj... pkzip->info-zip, pgp->gpg - I did open source long before I ever heard of Linux: - Compute's gazette - WWIV is why I learned C - First encoungered GPL via EMX package for OS/2 ~1993 - It had gcc and extensively hacked up glibc. - 1993 4 SLS disks came across fidonet - When I heard about Linus Torvalds buying the minix source, then writing his own and attracting the established community to follow him instead this story made perfect sense to me. Patch pressure built up until it could ground itself out through a fork. He got a big boost from the established backlog of features people ported. - Notice: no mention of the FSF in this. This was the comp.os.minix community. Linus was using a "no commercial use" license until the 0.12 release. - intellectual property has been a hobby of mine forever - First encoungered GPL via EMX package for OS/2 ~1993 - 1993 4 SLS disks came across fidonet - Attempted to explain marketing to Stallman in 1998, I'm very sorry about the whole "GNU/Linux" thing. - Studying IP law as a hobby for a decade - May 2000 Motley Fool articles bounced drafts off of Stallman by email http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000501.htm - Domain expert in SCO vs IBM case - Spoke to Pamela Jones (of Groklaw) on the phone - In 2008 I spoke on a panel about GPL enforcement with Eben Moglen (coauthor of the GPL), Brett Smith (FSF license enforcement guy), and Samba's Jeremy Allison. - I was big fan of GPLv2. http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005 - The GPL personified "shut up and show me the code". And that's all it did. You show me the code, we're good. - 17 years to understand it. We had our version of bible study. - I was a plaintiff in the first GPL license enforcement lawsuits - Busybox lawsuits - Hall of Shame cleanup through SFLC - In 2008 HP flew me to NYC to speak on panel with GPL co-author Eben Moglen - Plaintiff Lawsuit in france with FSF europe and gpl-violations.org - Harald Welte - inherited "hall of shame", tried to fix it. - I asked PJ about pro-bono legal representation She pointed me at SFLC - SFLC was Eben Moglen's project to give his law students at NYU some real-world experience. It was also him distancing himself from the FSF, he used to run FSF's legal arm, but stopped. - Something like a dozen, lawsuits, not one line of code added to busybox repository. - "free: preventing uses you disapprove of." - good enforcement: opening linksys - out of court very nice forbes article about this I'd reference here if they had internet here, but they don't. - The GPL was synonymous with copyleft. - Copyleft category killer, single standard license. - unique terminal node in directed graph of license convertability - giant pool of compatibly licensed code we could reuse without fear - programmers didn't have to be lawyers. (We're bad at it.) - non-security guys doing security. Cryptography from non-cryptographers. Caring deeply not the same as being good at it: 76% of TOR using 1024 bit diffie-helman keys http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/majority-of-tor-crypto-keys-could-be-broken-by-nsa-researcher-says/ - application devs doing system programming, kernel guys the brilliant user interface of git - Domain expertise is important. - non-IP lawyers messing with IP law. Non non-lawyers. - I _got_ good at it. Spent a very long time doing so. - Domain expert in this _one_ license. - There's no such thing as "the GPL" anymore. - No more universal receiver - incompatible factions - kernel and samba can't share code - implement 2 ends of same protocol, both GPL - QEMU stuck between v2 kernel drivers for devices and v3 binutils/gdb processor definitions. - QEMU's response: LICENSE file - v2 only! v2 or later! tcg subsystem BSD licensed! - GPLv2 or later doesn't help. - Can't accept from either GPLv2 only or GPLv3 or later sources. - No additional enforcability, if they satisfy GPLv2 you can't anti-tivo them. (If they can show the code they used came from old version...) - So its _only_ effect is to provide more donor options. - subtle problems - People send you "GPL" code, could mean 3 things. - LGPLv3 not compatible with GPLv2. - Plan to switch glibc LGPLv3 indefinitely postponed GPLv3 motivations: - anti-tivoization - burning it in ROM is ok? - Do I get the root password to the world of warcraft servers? - international jurisdiction - "trust me, you have no hope of ever understanding this". - individual developer's going to sue somebody in guam? - lotsa taiwanese devs don't speak english. - Real motivation - FSF becoming irrelevant - EGCS - gap with no tar release for years - Geocities, copyright assignment, they rolled to a stop. - BSD is not an existential threat to Linux, but Linux is to GNU. So they redefined success, claimed Linux, and started giving orders - Mepis lawsuit: http://lwn.net/Articles/193852/ - What did the GPL do? - "fear of forking" essay - Prevent your developers from being hired away. - Bill Joy 1982, CSRG/Bill Jolitz 1989, Jordan Hubbard 1997 - Community statement, a flag to rally around. - But we didn't sue nvidia over their binary-only module. - What did the GPL _not_ do? - CATB compared Linus with Stallman. The cathedral was the FSF. - Eric used to maintain the Emacs LISP library. - Tanenbaum/Torvalds debate, minix microkernel, hurd also microkernel. - Microkernels do not work. (Amiga!) - Concept of microkernel incompatible with concept of MMU - Linus just wanted to get something working - Pragmatism vs idealism - echoes of Ken and Dennis Freeware was ubiquitous in 1970's: - Before Unix, OS routinely written in assembly. - Programs tied to specific machine - Programs from vendor, written in house, custom order - Not enough machines to make a market - 50k PDP-8 entire production run, 80k first 2 years of Apple II, - first machine to sell 1 million units: Vic 20. Second, C64. - Apple IPO then-biggest, Steve Jobs Time 1980 - 1981: PC expected 250k units in entire production run, then shut it down once apple destroyed. They got that many _preorders_. - copyright didn't cover software, then didn't cover binaries - "just a number". - Apple vs Franklin - BASIC listings in books and magazines proprietary software started in 1983: Apple vs Franklin decision changed copyright law - IBM's Object Code Only announcement - AT&T breakup - Stallman's Xerox printer experience Microcomputers provided unit volume Proprietary software wasn't defeated by open source, it just ran its course. - There was a gold rush, people trying to get rich making PC software. And then it stopped. - Broderbund? Word Perfect? Quarderdeck? Lotus? Stac Electronics? Digital Research? Realaudio? Borland? Watcom? - Abandonware - Network effects leave one winner in a niche, which gobbles up smaller companies. (May be able to define/defend "niche", as apple has, but only at the expense of interoperability.) Microsoft tried to buy Turbo Tax and was stopped by antitrust regulators. - There's a new gold rush in the smartphone space, but we're already seeing abandonware there. Recapitulating phylogeny but cycling faster. - The BSD guys believe you just have to survive long enough. Internet closed until ~1993 FSF rendered obsolete by Geocities. FSF split community with GPLv3 - savannah - binutils 2.17 retoactively relicensed ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/ - would not shut up - giant kernel thread - busy busy busybox Why is Linux (still) bigger than bsd? - Year headstart due to BSDi/AT&T lawsuit - Cloud of legal uncertainty, ala SCO, delayed adoption. - Alan Cox didn't do BSD because it required floating point coprocessor - Expensive high-end hardware in 1992. Linux ran on low-end stuff a college student could afford. - Came from PC, not minicomputer. Different recruiting pool. - Leveraging minix gave surge of momentum, affected perception. - hot upcoming thing that's moving fast - Modular, no packages important. Swap awk for gawk, xfree86 for x.org... - Lots of stuff ported _to_ linux. Didn't have to be part _of_ Linux. - No unified userspace build tree you have to get patches into. - This was the differnce between distros and free/net/open forks. History of the FSF: - no time to cover: - The word electronics came out of World War II. - 1939 Harvard Mark II, Herman Hollerith. His assistant Grace Hopper invented the compiler. - Transistor, applied to computers by Ken Olsen who founded DEC - Sputnik, led to DARPA, space race, surge in US science education - Integrated circuit: photolithography would give rise to Moore's Law. - 1969, unix, arpanet, moon landing (integrated circuit), microprocessor - 1975 Ken Thompson year off to teach at alma mater (UCB). - 1979: arpanet rebased on BSD unix - 1983: Apple vs Franklin - Linux was in right place at right time: - Linus himself, young and obsessive - Minix userbase, accumulated patch pressure - 386 critical mass, Moore's Law curve - September that never ended, rise of home ISP ----------- Copyright breaks closed, AT&T violated BSD license. - 4 different BSD licenses. Copy BSD into GPL but terms don't apply? Is need to copy additional restriction? BSD developers hired away MJG working to restrict root's ability to load modules to humor windows 8 system requirements