"Respects Your Freedom" certification?

[Grench]

The FSF/RYF uses closed source, private, negotiated (not the same for everyone) and paid contracts with penalties for non-conformity.  Non-conformity is defined around their need to control member's speech - requiring approval for when and where the member can say what - and what needs to be included in their statements.

This is being done in the name of Free and Open Source software where the entire basis is for open, everyone treated the same, free of contracts software and hardware.

Closed source/licensed/paid/contracted deals with contracted penalties for non-conformity to get a badge that states you think babies are cute Free Open Source is good.  

It's that simple.

 

[Binky]

penalties for non-conformity.

I appologise (again) for being unobservant, but what are these penalties? Where are they stated?

 

[Grench]

penalties for non-conformity.

I appologise (again) for being unobservant, but what are these penalties? Where are they stated?

They're relationship to the device sellers is closed contract based.  The penalties would be defined specifically in the contract that we don't get to see.

http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/criteria

See top statement.  Note the closed nature of these individually negotiated contracts.

"The following page outlines the general criteria for hardware products that bear the Respects Your Freedom hardware certification mark. However, each certified product carries with it contractual obligations that may differ from those listed on this page."

Note that the "Bounty Program" is funded by the seller.  These are penalties to the seller for nonconformity.

"Bounty program

The FSF and the seller will jointly set up a bounty program to encourage the public to report any failure to follow these conditions, with a view to correcting the failures. In this program the FSF will give a small reward to the first person to report any compliance problem in the product previously unknown to the FSF. The FSF will forward the reports to the seller."

Note their tax forms - they take in over a million a year and pay the majority of it out to internal salaries:

http://www.fsf.org/about/financial

FOSS is a great idea.  Jumping through the hoops to get and maintain FSF/RYF certification - entirely not worth it.

 

[Exophase]

I'd like to know more about the role the seller is expected to play in the creation of the tattle program. What is the seller's responsibility in jointly setting up this program? Providing some kind of contact e-mail? Having information about the program presented on the device? Surely not providing part of the money FSF says they'll pay.

Note their tax forms - they take in over a million a year and pay the majority of it out to internal salaries:
http://www.fsf.org/about/financial

You've pointed this out several times, but I don't see the cause for alarm (or the relevance for that matter). They're a not for profit organization with a particular cause, not a strictly volunteer contributed charity. For an organization of this size $1m is peanuts, think of how few full time salaries that actually pays. But salaries are needed to actually run these things, you can't have an organization like this reliably running on nothing but people's spare time. They probably get most of their money from grants and donations, from individuals and organizations who willingly pay this money to help further a cause they believe in - which it does. What's the problem exactly?

 

[notaz]

Maybe we should migrate to BSD userspace just so that this GNU matter could be put to rest. In my view the GNU project is getting less relevant over time, gcc can now mostly be replaced with clang, their coreutils by something like busybox and BSD tools. Change those and there is not much of their "operating system" left (in context of something like our current pandora).

I also hate all that enforcing of some ideals of what's "good" and what's "bad", like why I can't call something like MAME free, it's not just gratis, it's open, hell, it's even under copyleft license. But no, for GNU, no GPL, not free software.

 

[Exophase]

Maybe we should migrate to BSD userspace just so that this GNU matter could be put to rest. In my view the GNU project is getting less relevant over time, gcc can now mostly be replaced with clang, their coreutils by something like busybox and BSD tools. Change those and there is not much of their "operating system" left (in context of something like our current pandora).

I also hate all that enforcing of some ideals of what's "good" and what's "bad", like why I can't call something like MAME free, it's not just gratis, it's open, hell, it's even under copyleft license. But no, for GNU, no GPL, not free software.

We should totally do that, say it has Linux instead of GNU/Linux, then ask for RYF certification. Maybe once we explain it does not in fact contain anything GNU they themselves will be happy to provide the explanation that calling it BSD/Linux is unnecessary since BSD doesn't stand for anything as an open source movement, and it was never about giving credit. Would be great to see OSI's reaction to that. At least BSD actually reflects the license, unlike GNU which reflects a specific albeit widely encompassing project..

I'd love to see all the controversy this would spark. It's way better than trying to GPL a binary you wrote in a hex editor

 

[comradekingu]

The BSD license requires the reader to understand written english, i dont see how this will solve grenches problem.
 
You can call MAME free, nobody is hindering you, its even correct. It is free, as in beer. American law/society is not going to change overnight though, so mame license is going to not be free software for the forseeable future. Its either that or you have to change what free software means, and then you arent really talking about free software as in free software anymore. I guess the FSF were first to claim their not that good slogan, and they carry that banner legaly. But to everyone else, you need to understand and acknowledge freesoftware to come to terms with it. Otherwise you are grenching.
 
As far as i remember the problem with the mame license is that it forbids commercial endavours. And that is a restriction on use. For better of for worse, the mame license exists, and nobody else uses it (?)
 
Edit: Upon reading it i see they also limit distribution
 
Q. Can I include MAME with my product?
A. No. MAME is not licensed for commercial use. Using MAME as a "freebie" or including it at "no cost" with your product still constitutes commerical usage and is forbidden by the license.

See, it wasnt all irrelevant.
 
And if people want to use that, or BSD, etc let them! But the hardware must support it, because linux and FSF(GPL) is the big player, and everything caters to that. Even if you dont like that huge beast, its still what this is about, having hardware that lets you have freedom as a minority.

Exophase: I dont see the controversy. Google did that and nobody cared. People who know better says it sucks, and the lead dev on AOSS left because of closed source blobs. Thats what we dont want.

BSD and other permissive free software licenses have been a hallmark in "the open source movement" (if thats what you want to call it. It represent a philosophy just as much as anything else.

Law works this way, if you dont protect your stuff, its not protected. When sun still owned java, they were glad to share that google was using it, no problems. New owners, change of policy, didnt hold up because it was already on good terms that it could be used. How that applies to dalvik and can you patent API calls and GPL and copyright, patent law. Ask a lawyer. If the FSF is lenient on calling the MAME license free then the free in the free software they want to protect/uphold means nothing/less. Pick whatever applies.

What i know is this. Open source is good and all, but it means almost nothing, just like saying "i use linux OS" is falling out of relevance aswell as still being technically incorrect. Open source has good connotations in language, but legally its free software that means anything. It means that it isnt something bad. Whereas open source means it could be. GPL holds up in court.

TLR if you are a coder type guy who dont want politics or law, read last paragraph.

 

[Exophase]

The BSD license requires the reader to understand written english, i dont see how this will solve grenches problem.

A) I'm pretty sure a lack of foreign translations included in license distributions isn't the crux of any of his problems

B) Why again do I care what Grench's problems are? Do you think anyone who has any concern over anything FSF says or does are all on the same side?

You can call MAME free, nobody is hindering you, its even correct. It is free, as in beer. American law/society is not going to change overnight though, so mame license is going to not be free software for the forseeable future. Its either that or you have to change what free software means, and then you arent really talking about free software as in free software anymore. I guess the FSF were first to claim their not that good slogan, and they carry that banner legaly. But to everyone else, you need to understand and acknowledge freesoftware to come to terms with it. Otherwise you are grenching.

As far as i remember the problem with the mame license is that it forbids commercial endavours. And that is a restriction on use. For better of for worse, the mame license exists, and nobody else uses it (?)

I don't think there's a country in the world that gives an organization legal authority over the definition of a phrase, regardless of whether or not they used it first. And no, trademarks aren't the same thing as definitions for a phrase. I also have pretty high confidence that someone somewhere publicly used the term free software before FSF did to describe something they didn't mean.

As far as i remember the problem with the mame license is that it forbids commercial endavours. And that is a restriction on use. For better of for worse, the mame license exists, and nobody else uses it (?)

I respect that you put a question mark there acknowledging you could be wrong but yeah, other things do use it (there are other unrelated emulators for instance). But even if they didn't, so what? There are other non-commercial licenses to.

I've seen this argument a lot in the past: you should use GPL because it's so well defined and well defended! You shouldn't make your own license or use a lesser known one unless you're a lawyer because you'll get caught in some legal loophole. I bet lots of people ended up using GPL when it wasn't really the kind of license they wanted, because they were scared by this argument. It doesn't help that people who make their own licenses that share a lot in common with GPL but differ on some major point often get ostracized more than people who just make proprietary software.

And if people want to use that, or BSD, let them. But the hardware must support it, because linux and FSF(GPL) is the big player, and everything caters to that. Even if you dont like that huge beast, its still what this is about, having hardware that lets you have freedom as a minority.

Everything caters to FSF and GPL.. what are you thinking here exactly? Fortunately a BSD Linux system would still fulfill RYF's requirements, so you don't need anything GPL outside of the Linux kernel. Or we could just use FreeBSD.

 

[Grench]

I'd like to know more about the role the seller is expected to play in the creation of the tattle program. What is the seller's responsibility in jointly setting up this program? Providing some kind of contact e-mail? Having information about the program presented on the device? Surely not providing part of the money FSF says they'll pay.

I would too - but that would require them to be open and up front about their contractual terms - which they are not. Closed contracts = closed license terms.
I feel that this statement adequately implies that the FSF is going to back-bill the seller for said fees: "The FSF and the seller will jointly set up a bounty program to encourage the public to report any failure to follow these conditions, with a view to correcting the failures. In this program the FSF will give a small reward to the first person to report any compliance problem in the product previously unknown to the FSF. The FSF will forward the reports to the seller."

Until or unless someone comes forward with the entirety of the FSF's RYF contractual terms, payments and penalties, we'll never know for sure.

Note their tax forms - they take in over a million a year and pay the majority of it out to internal salaries:

http://www.fsf.org/about/financial

 You've pointed this out several times, but I don't see the cause for alarm (or the relevance for that matter). They're a not for profit organization with a particular cause, not a strictly volunteer contributed charity. For an organization of this size $1m is peanuts, think of how few full time salaries that actually pays. But salaries are needed to actually run these things, you can't have an organization like this reliably running on nothing but people's spare time. They probably get most of their money from grants and donations, from individuals and organizations who willingly pay this money to help further a cause they believe in - which it does. What's the problem exactly?

It is important because nearly all of their income is expended via salaries. Their employees have a vested interest in ensuring that licensing fees and penalty income is maximized. Most charitable organizations that qualify for non-profit standing are redistribution based. Give money to a quality food bank and the majority of the money goes to the acquisition, storage and distribution of food to the needy. Give money to the the FSF and someone gets a raise and/or they advertise more.

Why don't you give them a call and ask how much it would cost to get RYF certification for a device like the Pandora? I'm betting they won't even discuss that without an iron clad NDA.

Again, entirely not worth it.

 

[Exophase]

It is important because nearly all of their income is expended via salaries. Their employees have a vested interest in ensuring that licensing fees and penalty income is maximized. Most charitable organizations that qualify for non-profit standing are redistribution based. Give money to a quality food bank and the majority of the money goes to the acquisition, storage and distribution of food to the needy. Give money to the the FSF and someone gets a raise and/or they advertise more.

Why don't you give them a call and ask how much it would cost to get RYF certification for a device like the Pandora? I'm betting they won't even discuss that without an iron clad NDA.

Again, entirely not worth it.

No one said anything about licensing fees or penalties paid to FSF. They're offering to pay end users as an incentive for reporting breaches, that's what a bounty is. I don't think it's implied that they'll pass that fee on to the seller, they merely say they'll pass the report along (as they should, they want to resolve issues, not just punish people for having them). When they say FSF will give the reward it doesn't sound like they really mean you will give the reward, I think they'd have a hard time getting people to agree to do that, and it's not like you could enter into a contractual agreement like this without actually knowing what the terms are. Most likely FSF loses money over this, but even if they really did make you foot the bill they still wouldn't gain anything.

Non-profits set fixed salaries and AFAIK there's a limit to how high they're legally allowed to set those, depending on the position within the organization. People who are looking to increase their income will generally try to find work someplace else.

 

[comradekingu]

Exo:

I dont really know if "free software" is a trademark or just a construct of language. Anyways, what it means is very well defined, and i dont see a problem with that. If your itch is that permissive part, it doesnt sound less like freedom. I just know that if the FSF didnt itself understand what is what and kept too it, free software would be another ballpark. The term might not be the best, but it has the best of intentions, and it works, good enough for me. In my language its "fri programvare" and it works in german too.

Going with GPL or any other big free software license is good advice. The mame license i dont think is good for general purpose stuff anyway, so im not going to reccomend it. Nor did i actually reccomend GPL, but thats semantics.

FSF(GPL) and Linux is the big players, i was talking about that point you made. Big gets bigger and cancer spreads and mah freedums and all that jazz. Linux gets things like kernel mode switching, and when people make drivers and backends that require it, then all the posix compilant guys dont get their share or lag behind.

I did try to find that BSD/linux thing i think i read about some years ago, but it seems to have vanished. It is too much effort for dubious reward. We could call it "pandaemonium" though, the devil is in the details.

 

[_wb_]

Maybe we should migrate to BSD userspace just so that this GNU matter could be put to rest. In my view the GNU project is getting less relevant over time, gcc can now mostly be replaced with clang, their coreutils by something like busybox and BSD tools. Change those and there is not much of their "operating system" left (in context of something like our current pandora).

The relevance of the GNU project is not just that they wrote a whole bunch of useful programs and libraries that you can include in a distro. Even if we would not use any GNU software and replace it all by non-GNU alternatives, we should still credit GNU, because they got the whole movement started. It's because of GNU that we now have Free versions of BSD. It's because of GNU that X and the Linux kernel have a Free license. The real contribution of the GNU project is not their code, but their political philosophy and the impact that philosophy had on many, many other projects.

I also hate all that enforcing of some ideals of what's "good" and what's "bad", like why I can't call something like MAME free, it's not just gratis, it's open, hell, it's even under copyleft license. But no, for GNU, no GPL, not free software.

That's not true, the GNU project and the FSF endorse a lot of licenses (including the BSD license, at least the one without the forced advertisements), not just the GPL. see e.g. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses

 

[Exophase]

The relevance of the GNU project is not just that they wrote a whole bunch of useful programs and libraries that you can include in a distro. Even if we would not use any GNU software and replace it all by non-GNU alternatives, we should still credit GNU, because they got the whole movement started. It's because of GNU that we now have Free versions of BSD. It's because of GNU that X and the Linux kernel have a Free license. The real contribution of the GNU project is not their code, but their political philosophy and the impact that philosophy had on many, many other projects.

I don't see how you can show that OSes like FreeBSD only happened because of GNU. Did it ever occur to you that people other than Richard Stallman could see the value in similar ideas? That maybe stuff like the Linux kernel would have chosen a similar license because it made sense to the developer - contrast a college student starting a kernel with a corporation - and not only because GNU opened his eyes? You want to give credit to a bunch of stuff that can't be proven.

I mean, it sounds like your reasoning dictates that even if a BSD userspace WAS used it should still have GNU in the name because they still deserve credit and it should still raise awareness towards GPL and its "Freedom" (although I'm skeptical that "GNU" actually raises awareness of a political philosophy anymore than "Linux" does)

 

[ZXDunny]

The relevance of the GNU project is not just that they wrote a whole bunch of useful programs and libraries that you can include in a distro. Even if we would not use any GNU software and replace it all by non-GNU alternatives, we should still credit GNU, because they got the whole movement started. It's because of GNU that we now have Free versions of BSD. It's because of GNU that X and the Linux kernel have a Free license. The real contribution of the GNU project is not their code, but their political philosophy and the impact that philosophy had on many, many other projects.

Wtf? Really? So even if we have no GNU influence at all in our firmware we still need to credit GNU? Do you even know what you sound like?

I'm revoking any GPL I've placed on my code and closing source as of now. This is just too much.

D.

 

[_wb_]

The relevance of the GNU project is not just that they wrote a whole bunch of useful programs and libraries that you can include in a distro. Even if we would not use any GNU software and replace it all by non-GNU alternatives, we should still credit GNU, because they got the whole movement started. It's because of GNU that we now have Free versions of BSD. It's because of GNU that X and the Linux kernel have a Free license. The real contribution of the GNU project is not their code, but their political philosophy and the impact that philosophy had on many, many other projects.

I don't see how you can show that OSes like FreeBSD only happened because of GNU. Did it ever occur to you that people other than Richard Stallman could see the value in similar ideas? That maybe stuff like the Linux kernel would have chosen a similar license because it made sense to the developer - contrast a college student starting a kernel with a corporation - and not only because GNU opened his eyes? You want to give credit to a bunch of stuff that can't be proven.


I mean, it sounds like your reasoning dictates that even if a BSD userspace WAS used it should still have GNU in the name because they still deserve credit and it should still raise awareness towards GPL and its "Freedom" (although I'm skeptical that "GNU" actually raises awareness of a political philosophy anymore than "Linux" does)

Well of course it is hard to prove claims about hypothetical alternative histories. But Linus Torvalds originally licensed Linux under a more restrictive license, and if the GNU Project were not around with userspace tools (in particular, gcc) and with the GPL license, it is highly doubtful that Linux would ever have become more than a small hobby project. Linus Torvalds himself has often claimed that the GPL was key to the success of Linux - that's still no proof of course, but it's an indication. It's impossible to make claims about an alternative universe in which Linux was released under some non-free license, but I would imagine that it would have attracted much less attention from Free Software enthusiasts, who might have worked on Hurd instead.

If you look at the history of FreeBSD (and OpenBSD and NetBSD etc), it's quite clear that they were inspired by the GNU project too, and that they used a lot of programs from the GNU project to get things started. The original BSD versions (1977-1991) were closed source and quite expensive. Only well after the GNU project was started did they evolve towards an open source license -- the network stack code was released in 1989, the first freely redistributable full BSD-based OS (386BSD) was first released in 1992. Of course it is not GNU who made the decision to free BSD, but it was GNU that inspired the BSD developers to make their code free, and GNU activists actively tried to convince them to do so (successfully). So no, we don't have to thank GNU for BSD, but I think it's fair to say that GNU played an important role in today's BSD licenses.

Much of the non-GNU software, like busybox, is not officially part of the GNU project, but it is completely in the spirit of the GNU project (e.g. busybox is GPL'ed).

Other non-GNU software like clang (and e.g. the userspace of Android) are relatively recent developments, and I guess they are mostly motivated by the need for companies like Apple and Google to be able to not have to give back all their contributions to the community -- they like to be able to hand-pick what stuff they release with source, and what stuff as binary-only. This is not be a step in the right direction in my opinion.

And just to be clear: No, I'm not saying that you have to call all FreeBSD distros "GNU/kFreeBSD" (although that name does make sense for something like Debian GNU/kFreeBSD); if they don't use any significant amount of GNU software, the "GNU" should not in the name, that would be silly. But even if we would use FreeBSD as the default OS of a Pandora successor, I think we should give "spiritual" credit to GNU and the FSF by applying for RYF certification.

 

[ZXDunny]

Having been reading this thread from the start I was really quite liking the idea of RYF after my initial doubts were expertly cleared up.

Having now read what _wb_ and others are proposing, I really do see why GNU fanatics are almost unilaterally despised and I'm withdrawing my support now. In fact I may even go so far as to say I'll actively avoid any hardware that bears the RYF badge from now on.

Do we really want to ally ourselves with these kinds of people?

D.

 

[_wb_]

The relevance of the GNU project is not just that they wrote a whole bunch of useful programs and libraries that you can include in a distro. Even if we would not use any GNU software and replace it all by non-GNU alternatives, we should still credit GNU, because they got the whole movement started. It's because of GNU that we now have Free versions of BSD. It's because of GNU that X and the Linux kernel have a Free license. The real contribution of the GNU project is not their code, but their political philosophy and the impact that philosophy had on many, many other projects.

Wtf? Really? So even if we have no GNU influence at all in our firmware we still need to credit GNU? Do you even know what you sound like?


I'm revoking any GPL I've placed on my code and closing source as of now. This is just too much.

If we have no GNU influence at all, then of course we should not credit them at all. E.g. if we decide to ship the thing with Windows 8.

But if we decide to use Free Software, whether it is GNU/Linux, GNU/kFreeBSD, or even something with the Linux or FreeBSD kernel and no GNU tools at all, then I think it makes sense to credit, at least to some extent, GNU and the FSF because they started the whole Free Software movement. Getting the RYF label would be a nice way to do that. If the distro we end up using contains a significant amount of GNU software, then calling it a GNU/Linux-based distro would also be nice. If it doesn't contain (much) GNU software, then we should of course call it something else, but as long as it is Free Software, we could still apply for the RYF label.

Having been reading this thread from the start I was really quite liking the idea of RYF after my initial doubts were expertly cleared up.


Having now read what _wb_ and others are proposing, I really do see why GNU fanatics are almost unilaterally despised and I'm withdrawing my support now. In fact I may even go so far as to say I'll actively avoid any hardware that bears the RYF badge from now on.


Do we really want to ally ourselves with these kinds of people?

What exactly am I saying or proposing that is so outrageous to make you change your mind?

And how is what I am saying even relevant to your opinion of RYF and your choice of software licenses for your own projects? Because let me be clear: I am just expressing my personal opinions here, I am not at all a spokesperson for GNU or the FSF - in fact I'm not even a member of these organizations, although I do of course sympathize with most of their goals.

 

[WizardStan]

We should be sure to include credit to Xerox as well. If not for their reversal of policy Stallman wouldn't have encountered the problems he did with the mythical printer and started the whole thing.

Also their whole thing about the windowed interface which we wouldn't have without them because that's how history works.

 

[ZXDunny]

_wb_, I'd always thought you were one of the more level-headed of the FOSS zealots; but now that I see you're all like Onpon underneath then I really think it would be best if we distanced ourselves from that particular movement.

I'm all for open-source and protected freedom, but suggesting that we credit the GNU folks when they've had no hand in creating an OS whatsoever... that's just too much and is frankly quite scary.

D.

 

[sebt3]

What exactly am I saying or proposing that is so outrageous to make you change your mind?

I bet this :

The relevance of the GNU project is not just that they wrote a whole bunch of useful programs and libraries that you can include in a distro. Even if we would not use any GNU software and replace it all by non-GNU alternatives, we should still credit GNU, because they got the whole movement started. It's because of GNU that we now have Free versions of BSD. It's because of GNU that X and the Linux kernel have a Free license. The real contribution of the GNU project is not their code, but their political philosophy and the impact that philosophy had on many, many other projects.

 (emphasys mine)

That's way too much, for him, me and I bet a large brunch of others...

At this point this is not support for freedom you're showing but zealotry for a fu**ed religion