Episode 0x11: Corporate Licensing Decisions That Impact the Project's Community

<p> <a href="https://faif.us/cast-media/FaiF_0x11_Licensing-Community-Impact.ogg"><img alt="[Direct download of cast in Ogg/Vorbis format]" src="https://faif.us/static/img/cast/audio_ogg_button.png"/></a> <a href="https://faif.us/cast-media/FaiF_0x11_Licensing-Community-Impact.mp3"><img alt="[Direct download of cast in MP3 format]" src="https://faif.us/static/img/cast/audio_mp3_button.png"/></a> </p> <p> <p><a href="http://danlynch.org/">Dan Lynch</a> (filling in for Karen) and <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn">Bradley</a> discuss a few examples where licensing decisions by companies impacts the health of the software development community.</p> </p> <h3>Show Notes:</h3> <h4>Segment 0 (00:00:36)</h4> <ul> <li>Dan interviewed the <a href="http://twit.tv/floss142">CentOS developers on <cite>FLOSS Weekly</cite>.</a> (00:05:52)</li> <li>Bradley has a <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/03/11/linux-red-hat-gpl.html">blog post that describes RHEL licensing model</a>. <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/03/05/open-core-slur.html">His previous blog post to that one</a>, while mostly off-topic here, has a few points of interest. (00:10:36)</li> <li>Dan Lynch mentioned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smoking_Man">The Smoking Man</a> from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files"><cite>The X Files</cite> television series</a>. (00:17:22)</li> <li>Bradley mentioned that <a href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/">Lennart Poettering</a> is a Red Hat employee working on <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>, which is <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Systemd">now in Fedora</a>, but not in RHEL yet (as far as we know). (00:18:53)</li> <li>Bradley suggested that developers starting projects read Karsten Wade's <a href="http://www.theopensourceway.org/book/"><cite>The Open Source Way</cite></a>, and Karl Fogel's <a href="http://producingoss.com/"><cite>Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project</cite></a>, and Bradley's blog post <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/06/11/develop-in-public.html">about developing in public</a>. (00:22:16)</li> <li>Dan and Bradley briefly discussed copyright abolition. Dan mentioned <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html">Stallman's writing on the Pirate Party's copyright positions</a>.</li> </ul> <h4>Segment 1 (00:32:30)</h4> <ul> <li>Bradley briefly discussed the <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice#History">history of StarOffice</a>, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org">creation of OpenOffice.org</a>. (00:33:40)</li> <li>Bradley explained issues related to the <a href="http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/04/oracle-gives-up-on-ooo-after-community-forks-the-project.ars">LibreOffice fork of OpenOffice.org</a>. (00:37:30)</li> <li>Bradley has talked about how <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/10/16/open-core-shareware.html">proprietary relicensing is very dangerous</a> (00:39:50)</li> <li><a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/LibreOffice">Fedora</a>, <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LibreOffice">Ubuntu</a>, and <a href="http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2011/02/novell-opensuse-114-nears-comp.html">OpenSUSE</a> all switched to LibreOffice as a default. Bradley didn't know at recording time that the <a href="http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/openoffice.org">OpenOffice package in wheezy is a transition package</a> to switch to <a href="http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libreoffice">LibreOffice</a>. (00:41:24)</li> <li>Bradley and Dan mentioned <a href="http://www.robweir.com/blog/2011/06/apache-openoffice.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+robweir%2Fantic-atom+%28Rob+Weir%3A+An+Antic+Disposition%29">a blog post by IBM's Rob Weir</a> that misquotes the FSF to support IBM's positions on the OO.o relicensing issue. (00:58:26)</li> <li>Bradley mentioned the idea that Apache-2.0 work can be relicensed under LGPLv3-or-later, as <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html">he discussed in his blog post about the OO.o relicensing</a> (01:00:45)</li> <li>Dan mentioned Jeremy Allison's <a href="http://www.robweir.com/blog/2011/06/apache-openoffice.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+robweir%2Fantic-atom+%28Rob+Weir%3A+An+Antic+Disposition%29#comment-18413">comment on the aforementioned post on Rob Weir's blog</a>. (01:02:08)</li> </ul> <h4>Segment 2 (01:16:09)</h4> <p>Bradley thanked Dan, on behalf of Karen, for all his work to make <cite>Free as in Freedom</cite> possible.</p> <hr width="80%"/> <p>Send feedback and comments on the cast to <a href="mailto:[email protected]">&lt;[email protected]&gt;</a>. You can keep in touch with <a href="https://faif.us">Free as in Freedom</a> on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by <a href="http://identi.ca/conservancy">following Conservancy on identi.ca</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/conservancy">and Twitter</a>.</p> <p>Free as in Freedom is produced by <a href="http://danlynch.org/blog/">Dan Lynch</a> of <a href="http://danlynch.org/">danlynch.org</a>. Theme music written and performed by <a href="http://www.miketarantino.com">Mike Tarantino</a> with <a href="http://www.charliepaxson.com">Charlie Paxson</a> on drums.</p> <p><a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png" hspace=10 /></a> The content of <span xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Sound" rel="dc:type">this audcast</span>, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0)</a>. </p>