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Could Google Chrome be death blow to Firefox?
Although Google has been an ardent supporter of the Mozilla team it appears that the online giant has decided to take on Microsoft with a full portfolio of web applications... Continued »
September 5th, 2008
The Linux laptop goes to school
The best way to see how a Linux laptop really works is to let someone else try it out.
Someone else, in this case, is my daughter Robin (right). She did her first review for me when she was 3. I sat her on my lap in front of a huge PC and she checked out some learning software.
She has gotten bigger, and the computers have gotten smaller. She had never seen Linux before, but within five minutes with the Asus EeePC 900 she had found several games, including one called Tux Typing, which is under the Learn menu.
The game taught me something important about the keyboard I complained about yesterday. It’s really designed for four-finger typing. Keep the others out of the way and you can move along at about 30 words per minute with a minimum of mistakes.
Then, as promised, she brought it to her junior college classes this morning and showed it around.
“When I showed one of my classmates in my Calculus class, he said that the size reminded him of something called, My First Laptop. I thought that was funny.”
One really big advantage over her seven-pound Lifebook is its two-pound weight.
“I was carrying everything for Calculus. I was going to do a little cramming before the test. It did not really add any weight. and my Calculus book is pretty big and heavy on its own.
“Also because it starts up pretty fast and even shuts down fast it is something that everyone can use anywhere in the library or wherever they are.”
I know some people might think this $400 Linux laptop is a Microsoft killer. It’s more like a Dell killer. There are no moving parts — it’s just chips and a screen. For extra memory there’s an SD card slot, or plug in a hard drive through a USB port.
This makes for long battery life and ruggedness. Plus, each unit is the same — no need for Dell’s mass customization.
While I focused on the tiny keyboard (which she also noticed) Robin’s biggest complaint was the slow response of the mouse buttons. But it’s something you can get used to, she said.
There’s one point missing from Robin’s review and it’s an important one. There were no ease-of-use issues. Everything was point-and-click, Windows-like. She didn’t learn Linux. She didn’t have to.
This is not a PC you load with additional hardware, or much additional software. This is more like a cell phone, something you toss in your backpack and use on-the-run. I can see a lot of Airport road warriors grabbing these babies.
So what do you think? Grandpa going to put it in a grandkid’s stocking this Christmas? Could be. It’s cheap as chips.
September 5th, 2008
Seinfeld becomes McCain
You can see the first Seinfeld ad for Microsoft here. It aired last night.
This is going to sound political, but it looked to me a lot like John McCain’s speech from later in the same evening.
That is, it was selling a myth.
In this case, the myth was of hero-geek Bill Gates. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Seinfeld did the same act on Superman for American Express. It’s the Marine basic training idea — tear them down to build them up.
The problem is that, as I’ve said here before, Elvis has left the building. Turning Bill Gates into Colonel Sanders is not going to beat open source, or even Apple for that matter.
Future ads, I expect, will show real Windows employees showing capabilities already built into their products, and some of what they’re working on in the lab.
Humanizing that is Jerry’s real challenge.
But since this may seem off-topic, let me conclude with a good open source question. If you were making a commercial for open source, who would it star? What would it say?
And the ad above (for Education Connection) doesn’t count. The challenge in advertising is always to come up with something new, something fresh, not just riff on what some more creative outfit has already done.
September 5th, 2008
An open source rootkit kit
The Register is convinced that former NSA programmer Dave Aitel has gone over to the dark side by making his DR Rootkit open source under GPL 2.
While it’s true that the program can make rootkits, I don’t see it as a net loss for Linux security.
I think it may be more of a honeypot.
A honeypot is set up to attract bad guys. It looks innocent, but behind it good guys are tracking the malware being dropped into it, taking it apart, and teaching the rest of the Internet how to beat it.
The boys at Zero Day can tell you more about the quality of the DR Rootkit than I can. (This picture of Aitel appeared at Zero Day in 2007.) If it’s not great then where is the beef? If it’s really great then there are two big opportunities:
- You can track downloads and learn where potential script kiddies are living.
- You can track improvements and, if they’re not donated back, hit the hackers up on license violations.
- You spread security knowledge, because as Dave himself wrote last year “vulnerability information is worth money.
Yes, I know. Going after a hacker for violating the GPL is a bit like nabbing Al Capone for tax evasion. But in Capone’s case it worked.
Aitel, a valuable speaker at security events, has already put several other security programs into the open source pot, including SPIKE, SPIKE Proxy, and Unmask, a utility that can fingerprint users based on their e-mails and IRC postings.
I’m not ready to throw a security guru under the bus simply because he believes that an open source process can do what the older proprietary and highly secretive processes have not, namely deliver real security.
Are you?
September 4th, 2008
My first Linux laptop is the Asus EeePC netbook
My first Linux laptop is the ASUS EeePC.
This is a sweet machine in many ways. It boots up very quickly. All its functions are accessed through icons so you need know nothing. All its software is pre-installed so you need to do nothing.
Getting it out of the box and setting it up to recharge its battery took me all of five minutes. Just plug in the battery, connect the cables and find the on switch.
There is supposed to be a First Run Wizard for registration and license approvals but my review unit skipped right past it.
Configuring my network was a bit tricky, in that the terms used by my Netgear router and the Asus to describe my wireless encrytion were different. But trial-and-error worked.
The computer works. As you can see, our home page displays. I took this picture less than one hour after opening the box.
The unit is incredibly light. I haven’t felt anything like this since my old Radio Shack TRS-100. That’s going back 25 years.
But I may have to revise my Iron Law.
What I dubbed Dana’s Iron Law of Laptops, back in the 1980s, it held that “an ounce on the desk is a pound in my hand.”
I was looking for something like that old TRS-100, and to maintain Windows compatibility manufacturers were just unwilling to compromise for me.
Asus has. (You can get Windows XP on this unit.) The problem is, the keyboard is really scrunched-up. While there are tiny dots under the index fingers identifying the F and J keys, I still can’t touchtype on it.
I could on the TRS-100 but you will notice that old unit didn’t have a mouse. Making room for a mouse pad made the keyboard hard to use.
And the keys have no travel — it’s hard to tell through my fingers when I’ve pressed one. You can’t put travel on them without making the thing hard to close.
If you hunt and peck and go slowly, you can get some words into it. But I’m used to listening to a speaker and blasting away at 100 words per minute. I can’t do that with the Asus.
There’s a cute toggle button on the main screen I want to try. It lets you go back-and-forth between English and Chinese typing. My son is in his fourth year of high school Chinese, and I’d like him to check that bad boy out.
I could probably put a keyboard into one of the USB slots, assuming I could find a Linux driver, but that sort of voids the advantage of its small size.
There is a Voice Command feature under Settings but that just lets you access basic functions. It won’t take dictation.
So let’s summarize. The Asus EeePC is silent, it’s easy to use, it runs Mozilla, Open Office and wireless networking expertly. No one needs to know it’s Linux. It’s light as a feather.
But if you’re a touch typist this is going to hurt.
September 4th, 2008
Linux netbook buyers are cheap and plentiful
Last week I learned that Linux laptops are selling briskly at Amazon.
I contacted the company, which put me in touch with Chris Rupp, their director of merchandising for computers and office supplies.
He confirmed that netbooks are hot. A netbook is distinguished from a laptop by its size (smaller), its price (also smaller), and what it can do (it’s designed for Internet access).
“Three of the top five selling laptops at Amazon are Netbooks,” he said. This year’s models sport 9-inch screens, up from 7-inches last year.
What about Linux?
“In the month of August, 12 of the best selling netbooks were based on the Linux operating system, six supported Windows XP and two supported Microsoft Vista.” (Note this is two months after the XP era supposedly ended.)
This does not necessarily mean that Linux is outselling Windows, only that a lot of different Linux set-ups are selling, he added.
And what about those Linux buyers?
“In general buyers of Linux based netbooks are looking for a lower price point - netbooks loaded with Windows XP cost a little more.”
So, online at least, Linux is taking advantage of the netbook trend and disillusion with Windows Vista approaching Bush-like proportions. (Maybe Jerry can get Sarah Palin in to do a Vista ad.)
After my session with Rupp I redoubled my efforts at finding a Linux laptop, now having some sense of what I was looking for and who I was likely to get one from.
My patience was rewarded. An Asus representative contacted me (they now pronounce it A Seuss instead of Ace-us) and said one would be arriving shortly.
I think I hear the mailman now.
September 3rd, 2008
Who wins with Google Chrome
The question of who wins with Google Chrome is wrong. The real question should be what wins.
Javascript wins.
If Google Chrome wins wide adoption, or the technologies within it win wide adoption, Javascript becomes a bigger technology. Technologies which compete with it lose.
Web applications win.
If Google Chrome wins wide adoption, making software-heavy pages easier to run (with multiple tabs), then anyone building a Web application wins, and things which compete with them lose.
Good code wins.
If Google Chrome wins wide adoption, and users can see which windows are hosing them (without losing all their tabs in the process) then sites running good code win, and those which don’t lose.
Webkit wins.
If Google Chrome, based on a Webkit rendering engine, wins wide adoption, rendering engines that compete with Webkit are losers.
That also means the mobile Internet wins. The iPhone renders with Webkit. So will Android phones. If their rendering engine is compatible with what desktop browsers are using they win, and alternatives lose.
Malware writers are losers with Google Chrome because it uses sandboxing to isolate malware to individual tabs. Anyone who uses or writes to Google Gears can win because that API is included in Chrome.
This is your takeaway. The winners and losers in Google Chrome are technologies. Not companies. Not sites. Technologies.
And those which are open source are naturally advantaged. It’s the open source process itself that is the biggest winner with Google Chrome.
September 3rd, 2008
Mozilla CEO: No worries about Google Chrome
Mozilla CEO John Lilly said he has no worries about Google jumping into the open source browser market.
In a blog posted on September 1 before the beta release of Google’s Chrome yesterday, Lilly noted that Mozilla’s Firefox has plenty of competition and reminded the public that the foundation’s primary motive is to keep the web open.
“As much as anything else, it’ll mean there’s another interesting browser that users can choose. With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc — there’s been competition for a while now, and this increases that. So it means that more than ever, we need to build software that people care about and love. Firefox is good now, and will keep on getting better,” Lilly wrote. “Competition often results in innovation of one sort or another — in the browser you can see that this is true in spades this year, with huge Javascript performance increases, security process advances, and user interface breakthroughs. I’d expect that to continue now that Google has thrown their hat in the ring.”
Lilly also said the two organizations will continue to cooperate and hinted that Mozilla will remain independent.
“It should come as no real surprise that Google has done something here — their business is the web, and they’ve got clear opinions on how things should be, and smart people thinking about how to make things better. Chrome will be a browser optimized for the things that they see as important, and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves,” he wrote.
Google announced the beta release of Chrome as Mozilla prepares to freeze the beta 1 code for Firefox 3.1 on September 30 and as Microsoft IE8 beta slips into the marketplace.
Lilly’s blog continued:
“Mozilla and Google have always been different organizations, with different missions, reasons for existing, and ways of doing things. I think both organizations have done much over the last few years to improve and open the Web, and we’ve had very good collaborations that include the technical, product, and financial. On the technical side of things, we’ve collaborated most recently on Breakpad, the system we use for crash reports — stuff like that will continue. On the product front, we’ve worked with them to implement best-in-class anti-phishing and anti-malware that we’ve built into Firefox, and looks like they’re building into Chrome. On the financial front, as has been reported lately, we’ve just renewed our economic arrangement with them through November 2011, which means a lot for our ability to continue to invest in Firefox and in new things like mobile and services.
“So all those aligned efforts should continue,” he insisted. “And similarly, the parts where we’re different, with different missions, will continue to be separate. Mozilla’s mission is to keep the Web open and participatory — so, uniquely in this market, we’re a public-benefit, non-profit group (Mozilla Corporation is wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation) with no other agenda or profit motive at all. We’ll continue to be that way, we’ll continue to develop our products & technology in an open, community-based, collaborative way.”
Mozilla’s Firefox will continue to be competitive, he said.
“With that backdrop, it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the coming months and years,” Lilly said.
September 2nd, 2008
Can Google not do evil?
Conventional wisdom holds that, no matter how altruistic a company starts, its growth eventually turns those values inside-out and creates a monster.
During my own career I have seen this happen twice, to Wal-Mart and Microsoft. With the launch of Google Chrome, the nattering classes insist it is happening to them as well.
Back in the early 1980s Wal-Mart was an upstart, bringing big city bargains to small towns, turning associates into millionaires through the magic of stock options. Founder Sam Walton was revered, the modest man who built wealth on people power.
Today Wal-Mart has more enemies than Richard Nixon ever imagined having. Its critics call it the destroyer of worlds, horrible to employees, the drivers of our trade deficit and China’s human rights policies, environmentally insensitive.
The same thing happened to Microsoft. In the early 1990s all those Sam Walton stories became Bill Gates stories. (They are now Warren Buffett stories.)
Microsoft had taken on the IBM monopoly and won. Microsoft offered an open system in Windows. Microsoft brought computing to the masses.
Now those same policies are seen as evil. Windows is an ever-encroaching monopoly, which devours its young. Microsoft wants to control all of computing and Elvis, in the form of Gates, has left the building.
The same thing will happen to Larry and Sergey, we’re told.
September 2nd, 2008
Google Chrome is complementary to Firefox
The media is going to be all over the Google Chrome story today, painting it as a threat to or rejection of Firefox.
While it’s true Google pulled its developers off Firefox in 2006, the resulting code is open source.
Google felt it had to go to a clean sheet of paper in order to deal with key problems and take advantage of its own infrastructure in development.
As the now famous comic book describes it, Chrome is aimed at solving key problems with current browser design — single-threading, inefficient rendering engines, incomplete garbage collection — that slow you down once you put up a bunch of tabs.
I do it all the time with Firefox. Working on a story like this one I may have a dozen or more tabs open, building an array of sources I can then cut-and-paste as links in a story.
This can easily crash Firefox. If one tab has corrupt code the whole browser is hung-up. And it slows Firefox down, because a tab’s memory isn’t entirely cleared out when you close it.
Chrome is based on open source technologies like Webkit and Javascript, so it’s not a “corporate capture” of the Internet. It can’t be. If Mozilla likes aspects of it, Mozilla can adapt them. The comic explicitly endorses Mozilla’s capture of the V8 Javascript engine, for instance.
In the end this isn’t about Microsoft or Mozilla or Google at all, but the Web and Web developers. Chrome is designed for a more complex development environment, and a more sophisticated user base.
Over the last few years it has become obvious that, given Google’s size, it would “take over” any project it contributed to. The Chrome project is an explicit acknowledgement of that reality.
But it’s not a threat to open source. It is open source. I am really looking forward to trying Chrome, because if it fulfills all its promises it’s going to be a very good thing.
September 2nd, 2008
Could Google’s Chrome be death blow to Firefox?
No doubt, Google’s forthcoming open source browser — known as Chrome — is going to challenge other open source browsers, most notably Firefox. It could be a devastating blow to Firefox, which has amassed and taken roughly 18 percent of browser market share away from Internet Explorer in a short time.
Although Google has been an ardent supporter of the Mozilla team, it appears that the online giant has decided to take on Microsoft with a full portfolio of web applications, rather than relying on other open source projects to fill in the gaps. Might this explain the recent departure of Mozilla’s VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer to Facebook?
Or is this a prelude to Google acquiring Mozilla? Google, after all, recently extended funding to Mozilla and someone must have been notified that Chrome was imminent. In a recent blog reflecting on Mozilla’s 10 year anniversary, Mitchell Baker pointed to Google’s support as a key indicator of its success: “Another important element is the financial resources Mozilla enjoys. We’ve just renewed our agreement with Google for an additional three years. This agreement now ends in November of 2011 rather than November of 2008, so we have stability in income,” Baker wrote.”
Chrome, which is launching into beta testing today, is a very full featured open source browser and is unique from Firefox in several respects.
First, it will have a private browsing feature known as Incognito, which allows users to browse in total privacy. It does not record sites visited or any aspect of the web session. (Firefox is working to include this feature in FF 3.1 but it’s not there yet).
Google has taken the tab-style browsing metaphor used by Mozilla and Microsoft to a new level. Chrome’s user interface features tabs on top, rather than windows containing tabs. The search panel — dubbed an omnibox — is the URL box at the top of each tab. Popups can be assigned to each tab to protect the integrity of each process. Like Mozilla Prism and Adobe AIR, Chome allows web applications to be launched in their own window without the URL search bar to allow web applications to run next to local software simultaneously.
Chrome also features multi-process support and contains a Javascript Virtual machine.
Multi-process support is said to significantly improve the stability of browsers because it can support multiple web applications simultaneously and isolate each process in its own tab. If one web app crashes, for example, it won’t take down the whole browser — just the corrupted tab. Surfers can launch a process in one tab and go to work in another. The V8 Javascript Virtual Machine is designed for speed and supports the more substantial web applications of today.
Google’s Chrome also features an open source rendering engine known as Webkit, the same engine used in Google’s Android. This will no doubt make it easier to integrate Google’s forthcoming mobile platform — Android — with the Google Desktop, now equipped with its own browser. This can’t be good news for Firefox’s “Fennec” team.
Larry Dignan of ZDnet suggests that perhaps Google and Mozilla are working together as a tag team to defeat Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and that Google may perhaps purchase the Mozilla Firefox crew and integrate the two code bases to deliver a kock out punch to Microsoft’s IE. Will Mozilla become Google browser labs? Given the close cooperation of the two projects, it’s more than possible.
If not, though, the debut of Chrome can’t be good news for Firefox. Google has so much market momentum that it doesn’t necessarily have to have the best open source browser to displace Firefox. And on the face of it, Chrome looks pretty good.
September 1st, 2008
Are we to have two Internets?
There are now two Internets.
One you see at home. One you see at work.
On the Home Internet bandwidth is limited, but people can choose freedom (for now). On the Work Internet bandwidth is unlimited but the boss rules.
On the Home Internet standards evolve from an open process and are generally followed.
On the Work Internet standards are set by Microsoft.
On the Home Internet duopolists are setting bandwidth caps aimed at centralizing delivery of video and forcing users to buy it from those authorities.
On the Work Internet Microsoft is ignoring Internet standards and calling standards non-standard.
The Work Internet is controlled by employers, who buy their own gear, set policy based on their own hopes and fears, but control private networks at wholesale prices. It can be downright Chinese, with filters not only looking at where you surf, but searching your e-mails for images of skin.
The public Internet is controlled by duopolists who manage resources for maximum profit and minimal investment. You can censor yourself and your kids if you choose, but the main limits are on your gross use of the resource, not what you do with it.
Microsoft’s decision, with IE8 beta two, to make its proprietary standards the default in corporate Intranets, defining Web pages using open standards as “broken,” may be the final break between these two Internets.
Can the two Internets be brought back together? And can we return to an Internet where consumers have choices and are free to do as they will?
Something to consider as we enter the election campaign.
September 1st, 2008
Is open source labor or management?
Something to think about on this Labor Day holiday.
Is open source labor or management? (Picture from SolidSmack.)
It’s labor in that it makes developers central, it flattens the management structure better than Google Maps, and it brings computing within reach of more people.
It’s management in that it eliminates jobs in marketing and distribution, it reduces wages for everyone, and it mainly benefits the biggest businesses.
The strict division between labor and management may have broken down a bit in technology (where line workers get stock options and managers live in cubes) but the social divisions are still there, in some ways more stark than ever.
As open source gains traction will these differences grow, or will they be reduced?
Is open source good for ordinary people, bad for ordinary people, or does it make no difference at all?
Does open source put a steak on your barbecue or a hot dog?
August 29th, 2008
Where the Linux laptops live
Almost one-third of the 25 top-selling laptops at Amazon.com are sold with Linux. (Shown is their top-selling Linux laptop, an Asus EEEpc 900 unit.)
When I last reported on my search for such a laptop, we learned that this is not something you just go into a store and ask for, unless you like blank stares from clerks.
But a correspondent linked me to an Amazon page showing a number of Linux-based laptop configurations, mostly from MSI and Asus. So I asked their nice PR lady about it.
Her response was to send me a list, compiled based on sales data, of the 25 most popular laptop configurations currently on sale at the site. Eight of them ship with Linux.
Most are versions of the Asus EEEpc, a “netbook” which has suddenly gained enormous traction in the market. But at least one is an Acer unit, weighing just three pounds. Sweet.
Both companies offer Windows XP or Vista on their gear as well, and there were plenty of these on the list.
It may well be the growth of the netbook category that has sunk shares in Dell, which is only now in the process of rolling one out.
None of the models on the Top 25 list sent by Amazon was a Dell, although three come from HP, and four of the top 12 are Macs. Amazon does stock some Dell Latitude notebooks.
My own theory is that, thanks to the ubiquity of broadband Internet, configurations have stabilized, giving mass-production Asian houses an enormous advantage over the mass-customization Dell has long practiced.
What do you think? Or could it be that Linux makes this category highly viable? Or that everyone’s now pirating Windows?
August 28th, 2008
Public policy and open source
Two stories crossed my desk today, both involving our French-speaking friends, and both involving the intersection of public policy and open source.
(The French Taunter to the right, from PythonOnline, is very hard to find, we understand.)
First there is this hymm to the French, who have used public policy to make that nation an open source paradise, according to Tom Kaneshige of Infoworld. Surprising, because few major projects are there, and few major contributions come from there.
OK. The French economy and French government benefit from open source. But where is the quid for this pro quo? Please, nasty comments from Paris, Marseilles and Lyon are required.
Then we have a suit by open source advocates against the government of Quebec, complaining that Microsoft has become a sole supplier and we’re not getting a fair shake. Big Money Matt no likey.
I do. When your government is wasting money, when it seems the bids are rigged, a lawsuit draws attention to the grievance. Perhaps it will draw the attention of the ADQ and there can be a political debate on it.
As to France itself, I repeat. What have they accomplished? Where are the great French contributions to open source, or is this a nation of les free riders?
Just remember there is a serious issue here. What role should government have in moving open source forward? And what should we do, as citizens, to force the issue?
UPDATE: What Matt said. This has been another episode of what Matt said.
August 28th, 2008
The importance of the Veoh decision
Maybe it was because the plaintiff was a pornographer.
But magistrate Harold Lloyd in San Jose has given open content a major victory, ruling that Veoh did not infringe copyright when users uploaded licensed porn to it, and that claimants need to prove willful infringement to prevail in a video piracy case.
The case involved the “safe harbor” provisions of the DMCA, which Lloyd ruled Veoh was entitled to use because it had a strong anti-piracy policy and used it, taking down videos once claims were proven against them.
Here’s the money quote:
The court does not find that the DMCA was intended to have Veoh shoulder the entire burden of policing third party copyrights on its website (at the cost of losing business if it cannot). Rather, the issue is whether Veoh takes appropriate steps to deal with copyright infringement that takes place.
Needless to say, Google’s lawyers are happy. They now have a precedent to hit Viacom over the head with.
Is an end to the copyright wars finally in sight? It could be.
With music companies now looking to take down their encryption walls because they only benefitted Apple, and with a well-reasoned decision for video safe harbor in hand, we might have digital peace in our time.
August 27th, 2008
Linux Foundation announces end user summit
The Linux Foundation says it will hold its first End-User Summit on October 13-14.
The event will be held at the Desmond Tutu Center, which despite its name is an Aramark joint, recently opened a mile southeast of the Javits Center on the West Side.
The target is businesses which are heavy users of Linux and open source in their enterprise computing systems.
So no surprise its first keynote will be from Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, with a Q&A moderated by Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin.
Other features include a panel with key Linux maintainers, a panel of large users, and a presentation of the Linux Weather Forecast, designed to keep users up-to-date on coming changes to the kernel.
So, you going? Autumn in New York…maybe you can catch a Mets play-off game (as if that’s going to happen).
August 27th, 2008
Has Firefox already matched IE privacy features?
Microsoft hasn’t even shipped its Internet Explorer 8 but already some Firefox developers say they have a better privacy solution.
Perspectives, hatched at Carnegie Mellon, thwarts so-called “Man in the Middle” attacks on SSH (secure) sites by creating a virtual notary that can check the validity of an unsigned security certificate.
I have already been burned by over-zealous security in trying to reach the site where I write these posts. The standard security warnings read like Windows error messages. The results from Perspectives promise to be more straightforward.
Versions for Windows, Linux, and OS X are already available.
The Explorer feature, dubbed “porn mode” by wags, burns your browsing trail, along with cookies and cache, with each session. Expect this to be a default at Internet cafes around the world.
The incident illustrates a key advantage of open source. Academic labs don’t need permission to improve popular code — they just offer it online as they finish the project.
August 27th, 2008
A way to assign copyright globally
Open source is a global movement in a world without a global law.
While a U.S. court has ruled open source licenses are copyright, assuring that in other courts remains a challenge.
The challenge only grows when projects extend across borders, with multiple contributors in 10,000 different places. .
So the acceptance of something called the Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) by FSF-Europe, and its adoption by the KDE project (a Linux GUI) is a pretty big deal.
On the surface it’s a simple license assignment, a way to pass control of contributions from developers to a project. But it also allows projects to be re-licensed, which is important for their viability and flexibility.
Therein hangs the controversy.
Why re-license if you’re not going to do a proprietary fork, some ask? The fear that a project may take copyleft code and use the FLA to turn it into a source of proprietary profit is real.
I disagree. The FLA mainly takes the burden of worrying about international copyright law out of the programmer’s hands and places it in the hands of people who care about such things, and who will protect the code under the FLA’s terms..
There’s another important issue here, that of “orphan” copyrights.
The extension of copyright to near-infinity, meant to maintain Disney and other movie companies, leaves us with a lot of stuff noone y