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18th August 2009 12:17 | by Andrew Robinson

Related tags: GPL, rms

rms talks to the Pirate Party UK

For nearly everyone reading this post, rms will need no introduction, so I'll just say that if it wasn't for Richard M. Stallman we wouldn't have GNU, the Free Software Foundation or the GPL.

A while back, rms published an article about the implications of the Swedish Pirate Party's proposal for a 5 year copyright duration on the GPL, in which he proposed a system of source code escrow.

Well, if I had a penny for each time someone sent me a link to that article over the last week, I'd be sitting here wondering where a quite large pile of pennies had suddenly appeared from. I feel this matter needs some clarification, bearing in mind that we have not yet finalised our policy on copyright duration or the escrow proposal, and rms has been kind enough to provide it:

"If the UK Pirate Party adopts 10-year (at least) copyright for free software source code, or a mandatory source escrow requirement for proprietary software source code, then (assuming the details are done right) this will be ok for free software. With the escrow requirement it would be very good for free software."
- Richard Stallman

I hope this calms some people's fears that we might represent a threat to free software.

Comments

Comments may take up to 5 minutes to appear on the blog.

Aug 18 2009 12:28 by Trakgalvis | Reply?

This is very good news. If we can keep Richard Stallman happy, I am happy. Dr Kalvis M. Jansons

Aug 18 2009 02:41 by mrutter | Reply?

Hey Andy, have you see that article that rms wrote about the unintended consequences of... oh

Aug 18 2009 04:19 by philward | Reply?

Surely only unmaintained Free Software will be purely public domain after 5 years. The public domain version of a piece of actively maintained software will be 5 years behind the development of the current version. What proprietary software company would want to use 5 year old code?

Aug 18 2009 10:59 by valisk1 | Reply?

Plenty would. BSD, GNU, Linux and derivative code is used quite widely all around the world, for a great many applications. In many cases with little changes other than patches since the individual programs reached maturity. Microsoft at one time used the mature BSD TCP/IP stack in its windows products, if my memory is correct.

Aug 25 2009 03:19 by bitplane | Reply?

Algorithms and code don't go stale, they mature with age like a fine wine, accumulating bug fixes and optimizations from the developers. It would be possible to take a free software project from 5 years ago, look at the changelog and all the bugs that were fixed, then implement the same changes in different ways and embed this into a proprietary application. The rights afforded by the GPL would be lost, the added code would serve to "evergreen" the PD code keeping it proprietary. This is indeed a difficult issue.

Aug 18 2009 11:40 by MCMLXXXIV | Reply?

There are banks using mainframe programs that are over 20 years old! (with patches, I'm sure...) It is a good thing for escrow to be a requirement for proprietary code (though at what point does a bit of hackery on my own box at work take on this requirement?), if for no other reason than to preserve a bit of software history when the next thing comes along. A lot of software companies already do this as part of their service agreements or for audit requirements. Definitely agree with the text though. Cheers rms!

Aug 24 2009 11:17 by sipos | Reply?

RMS's views, while sometimes strangely put, are certainly worth listening too. He, as author of the granddaddy copyleft license, is one of the father's of free culture and has shown to be a wise observer of potential threats to it. I hope that his views will help PPUK formalize their policy in a way that is friendly to free software.

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