Linux and the GPL, A Hard look at a Leftist Software Development model

by Coral Snake Also features the complete GNU General Public License by Richard M Stallman (RMS) -- (with commentary by Coral Snake)

For the last five years I have been involved with the "Free Software Movement". During my time in this movement I have been an avid user of the Linux OS from kernel 2.0 to kernel 2.4, The GIMP graphics authoring program, Open Office, and the GCC C and C++ compilers with the KDevelop IDE. I have also been a regular visitor to all the "Free Software" movement's web sites including Slashdot, Penguinista, Linux Today, Desktop Linux, News Forge, Source Forge, Fresh Meat, www.gnu.org and the personal web sites of Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond. In fact much of what you will read here comes from my experiences on "Free Software" related web sites. For those not familiar with this movement or its more supposedly business friendly "Open Source" derivative it is a software development model which on its surface it is based on the voluntary sharing of code. And indeed some Open Source people actually ARE such as those behind the BSD and MIT Licenses and those who continue to place their source code in the Public Domain. These people are actually sharing their code by making at available to both proprietary commercial and open source software projects. Therefore this article will not be concerning the BSD/MIT/PD branch of the open source movement at all. It will concern ONLY the branch most affiliated with the name "Free Software". This is the GNU/Linux branch of Open Source software that is licensed under the GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public License.

One would wonder why an Open Source programmer even from the BSD/MIT/PD branch of the movement would now be writing what seems to be Microsoft, SCO or Sun Microsystems FUD. Well for one thing I also develop some commercial Shareware too that I see as being endangered by the GPL/GNU/Linux branch of the movement but more than my little business I see this branch threatening America itself because of the underlying philosophy of the "Free Software" Movement's leaders and the GPLs potential for LEGALIZED ESPIONAGE due to its lack of restrictions on who can use the code and what they can use it for under the GPL other than its communistic requirements to "share" with the "community".

The reason for this article is that capitalistic and patriotic users of this software like Free Republic and myself have been deceived by the GPL/GNU/Linux "Free Software" movement's seeming friendliness to capitalism and patriotism through its deceptive "Open Source" branch while it HIDES its actual nature and ideology. Basically as this article will show this ideology is quite similar to that under which former President Bill Clinton ran his administration (and his adulterous affairs), basically a mixture of 60s "hippie" new left radicalism mixed with old standard Marxism. however the General Public Licence that this movement developed is far more dangerous than a small software hippie commune built around an OS they developed themselves as we shall also see. THE BASIC GOAL IF THE "FREE SOFTWARE" MOVEMENT IS TO ELIMINATE THE COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE INDUSTRY AND REPLACE IT WITH A MARXIST COUNTERFEIT UNDER THE GPL using essentially the Marxist "Dialectical Materialism" theory of Thesis v Antithesis = Synthesis. In this version of it "Free Software" is the Thesis, "Open Source" is the Antithesis and the elimination of commercial software is the Synthesis. In fact these neo hippie Marxists have disguised their attack on commercial software by calling standard commercial software proprietary software as negative buzzword against Intellectual Property in general while insisting that GPL software can be "commercial".

DON'T think that I am writing this because I love or "shill" for Microsoft or Bill Gates in any way however. I have severe problems with Microsoft's and Billy's "multinational" lack of patriotism or morality as well (Atheism, Attending Anti American meetings, Supporting the UN, Gun control support, Abortion support, "Gay partnership" support and Intellectual property theft.) However Microsoft's and Bill Gate's many sins against America, their stockholders, other commercial software companies and their users are the subject of another article for another time.

When we in the "movement" in any form think to the GNU General Public License the name of Richard M. Stallman often in its initialized form of RMS most regularly comes to mind. In fact Stallman is the figure the movement would most like to HIDE from the businessmen and patriots that it is duping, but his big mouth makes that virtually impossible. This guy REEKS of the 60s hippie movement probably being one of the few left in the world to wear long hair, a beard and other "hippie" regalia outside of one of Vince McMahon's "wrestling" and sex shows. Stallman is also known for immature temper tantrums and it is in fact one of these that led to his creating the GNU General Public License.

This little episode takes us back to the beginnings of practical small computers and commercial closed source software. The problem was that Stallman while a staff member at MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was working on a then obsolete computer/printer system with a bug in the printer driver. He wanted to fix the printer driver and asked the institute if they had the source code for it. After having it explained to him that the driver was "proprietary" and the source code was unavailable Stallman went into one his famous hissy fits and decided to apply his Marxist/hippie ideology to software development for the first time. At first he released his source codes as well as Binaries for many of his projects under the institute's standard MIT license for releasing code to the general public. (Later to also be known as the X Consortium License due to MIT being behind most of the Open Source work in the standard unix windowing desktop system X-11 or simply X-Window.) However Stallman decided that the MIT license was too public domain like since it allows commercial closed source companies as well as open source projects to use the source code under it as long as the institute or the individual author who contributed the code gets credit for it. A similar license originating from the more technical and less political part of the University of California At Berkeley called the BSD license was and is also popular for releasing source code into quasi public domain status while keeping the copyright on it for credit purposes.

However mere credit for the code was not enough for Stallman, He wanted to change the very way that

software was developed from a commercial business model to which he gave the negative buzzword proprietary to the Marxist "community" model that he probably learned about from his more leftist inclined professors at his alma mater Harvard. (Left wing professors are usually the source of the socialist and Marxist garbage that students pick up during their college careers.) With this in mind He developed what at first was called the Emacs General Public License for his then "crown jewel " software project, The Emacs command line text editor for unix style operating systems. As time wore on Stallman and the early members of his Leftist software "community" under the name of the Free Software Foundation also developed a unix style C/C++/Objective C/Fortran77 compiler collection, a command line shell and several other unix style tools under the name of GNU for GNU's Not Unix with the eventual goal of developing a whole unix style OS under their Marxist style "community" development model. The license's name was also changed to its full name of GNU General Public License in keeping with the new project.

One must truly wonder why people like Stallman and his "community" ever thought that Communism would work as a software development model when most of the GNU tools were reaching version 1 completion at about the same time as the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Communist dictatorships. Their belief that Communism can work as a software development model basically lies in the fact that computers are very VERY good at copying things including their own software and this allows for a supposedly infinite supply of a given computer software product. Therefore this seemingly infinite commodity can be successfully communized unlike the scarce commodities of shelter, land,clothing and food that Communism in the Soviet Union was trying to ration out. (Many other essentially communist theft networks like the former Napster and the still running Kazaa, Gnutella and other "peer to peer" file "sharing" networks also tend to justify themselves through this rather lame "non scarcity" theory of modern digital communism.) As with most Communist schemes however the MONTHS AND OFTEN YEARS OF WORK that go into the first copy of a commercial software product is simply not considered in their "non scarcity" equation, just the "infinite" copies that can be made after that first one has been developed.

To fully explain Stallman's Communist model of software development one must first have a basic understanding of the GNU General Public License. (A more detailed look at the GNU General Public License will come later.) Of course like most leading personalities and documents in the movement it is often initialized to GPL. The most basic way of describing it is kind of a mirror reverse of the single seat EULAs that you are used to from commercial software. Basically the GPL does not affect the use of executable binaries of software under it hence they are treated as quasi public domain and are "free as in beer" in the Stallman lexicon. (This means that they can be legally downloaded from the Internet at no cost to those not familiar with Stallman's "Free Software" lingo.)

Rather the GPL is designed to lock up the modification and derivative works of the SOURCE CODE of a program which Stallman equates with "free as in speech" in his hypocritical leftist lexicon to the use of a "community" of developers built around a given GPLed product in much the way a standard commercial EULA limits a commercial binary to a single "seat" or computer legally. (While the GPL says that the code of a GPLed product is legally available to all users its requirements that modifications and derivatives of such code and programs made from GPLed programmers libraries must also be under the GPL and the consequences of the license's "poison pill" provision (more on this later)if they are not essentially locks them up to "community" use only. They do have a right to lock up their own code to their own use if they wish under our copyright laws however what they DO NOT have a right to do is to use such code as a weapon against the commercial software industry that is an important part of the American economy by too closely duplicating commercial products or stealing code from them using the GPL "poison pill" provision as a defense for the theft. The former activity is the reason that software patents are rapidly replacing copyright protection as the standard way of protecting commercial software and the later activity is the crux of the SCO v IBM lawsuit surrounding the GPLed Operating System Linux.) the GPL also has an additional DANGEROUS feature. Other than the Marxist "community sharing" restrictions of the GPL that lock up the distribution of modification and derivative works of the code under it to the "community" THERE ARE NO OTHER RESTRICTIONS ALOWED ON HOW THE CODE CAN BE USEDAND BY WHO. This in a sense amounts to LEGALIZED ESPIONAGE against any national government using a GPLed product.

The GPL is not the only place where Stallman shows his leftist and atheistic ideology however. this web site:

is a GOLD MINE of expressions of his Leftist Anti American world view. If you did not know about this site before it is because the "Free Software Movement" does a very good job of HIDING its access through the more public www.gnu.org site that is the Internet Headquarters of the Free Software Foundation.

However in order to change the basic rising home computer software development model from the commercial one to his communistic one Stallman knew that he would have to gradually move the business community over to his ideas. His first move in this direction was to make the GNU compilers more attractive to the business community in two ways. One was to exempt some standard programming libraries that went with GNU compilers from the GPL. The other was to place most non exempted libraries under a more commercial software friendly version of the GPL called the GNU Library or Lesser General Public License initialized LGPL. These two moves would allow his "free" compilers to be used for commercial software development and thereby get commercial developers interested in Stallman style "Free Software". However to truly interest the business community in his "Free Software" The Movement realized that it would have to be marketed a lot differently and have a far different face than Richard Stallman's own 60sish hippie look and the Free Software Foundation's rather ugly GNU mascot connected with it.

Enter Linus Torvalds, the person who would develop the kernel for the GNU version of unix and provide the friendly innocent face and logo that was needed to sell the new "free" unix knock off to businessmen. Also refreshingly different from most leaders in the "Free Software" movement Linus Torvalds's name is never initialized. He is simply called by his first name Linus when people want to shorten his name probably again to exude an air of friendly innocence. Linus pretty much keeps his politics and religion to himself however the fact that his father was one of the most well known and outspoken Communist Party members in Finland points to a reasonably good guess that Linus Torvalds's politics and religion are pretty much like Richard Stallman's, Leftist and Atheistic.

Like Stallman Linus was a student in computer technology and programming At Helsinki University in his native Finland and there learned the trade mainly with a unix operating system variant called Minix that was free for educational purposes only at the time. When Linus got his own computer like most "geeks" who cut their teeth on unix he disliked the MS-DOS operating system that came with it because of its commercial closed source proprietary nature and single tasking "real mode" environment. He then made a mission for himself to develop a "Free Software" version of Minix under Richard Stallman's GPL. The basic story on how this new "Free Software" Minix kernel came unto being under the name "Linux" a mixture of Linus Torvalds's first name and unix was that it was developed by volunteer developers over the Internet and we will stay with that story for now even though the results of a couple of current court cases (SCO v IBM and Red Hat v SCO) may eventually change it.

Meanwhile back in Massachusetts the GNU project was going poorly. It had all the tools needed for a command line OS on the unix pattern and a free version of the X11 windowing system developed by the related XFree86 project under the MIT license which was somehow made "officially compatible" with the Marxist GPL. However they did not have the central part of an OS of any type as the kernel and boot loader for GNU which they called "the Hurd" was not getting anywhere. (Another indication of how well communism works. Most of these GPL "community" projects are essentially an exercise in "herding cats" which is why most of them wind up as vapor ware on source forge or fresh meat.) However a meeting of the Leftist minds of Stallman and Torvalds soon took place and it was decided to use the Kernel/boot loader combination of Linus Torvalds added to Stallman's Emacs editor, GNU tools and utilities and command line shell, XFree86 and a variety of "window managers" needed to make it work and build a full OS from all this chaos. The "community" development of the OS then proceeded through kernel series 1 up to 2.0 with no significant business people getting ready to bite because Linux as Linus Torvalds called the whole system or GNU/Linux as Richard Stallman called it was rightly seen as a hacker's and computer geek "hobbyist" OS produced by a group of rather flakey Leftist oriented amateur developers using a "herding cats" methodology.

Torvalds decided that what the new OS needed a friendly commercial image in the form of a new "official" mascot and logo, especially one that could "out cute" the increasingly prevalent and rather boring Microsoft Windows logo. Based on an event in Australia where Linus Torvalds was nibbled by one of the little ferry penguins that live there he decided that a penguin should represent the Movement's crown jewel of Marxist style software development to non Marxists. In keeping with the NO Morality prevalent in the Left in that time as it is now his first image of the penguin was to be a sexually explicit one, However Torvalds knew that such an image would be rejected by the business and Christian people he would be leading to his branch of the GPL "Free Software" movement soon to be called "Open Source" in the Marxist "dialectical materialism" equation. Therefore the penguin image to be used would be a seated one with the satisfied look that comes not from sex but from a good meal of "raw fish". The name "Tux" would be given to the penguin to finish up its and Linux's make over from an amateur hippie geek hacker's OS to a home desktop and business competitor to the mighty Microsoft Windows empire.

Kernel development then proceeded to 2.2 and then the current 2.4 and 2.6 kernel trees, than trouble, BIG trouble began to set in for Linux and other GPL based development "communities". Software patents were becoming an increasingly prevalent counter weapon that commercial software companies were using against GPL based "Free Software communities". (Unlike a copyright a software patent covers all possible variations to a function as well as the patented function itself essentially preventing GPL developers from using the function itself or any self designed or "filch 'n' copy" variant thereof.) There was also some bad news coming from a small failed Linux company named Calderathat would soon name itself for the closed source commercial unix it had purchased, SCO hinting of stolen intellectual property in Linux and the coming of a single seat paid licensing plan for it if IP violation lawsuits were to be avoided.

As these new attacks on Marxist GPL development systems began to assert themselves in the industry

Linus Torvalds started making statements that would cause him to lose the "innocent" front needed for the leader of the "Open Source" movement like this one:

I do not look up any patents on _principle_, because (a) it's a horrible waste of time and (b) I don't want to know. The fact is, technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git. Linus

Needless to say with statements like this from Linus appearing on the Internet where the potential suckers could find them and see his true character the raising of another leader for "Open Source" as a whole was required and fast! Linus would be relegated to the less dangerous roll as "Maintainer" or leader of the Linux kernel "community" ONLY!!

This search for a new leader for the Open Source Movement as a whole would leave the Marxist world of the "Free Software Movement" and dip into the other political cauldron of the modern Atheistic NO Morality. Capitalist Anarchism or more familiarly Objectivist Libertarianism. There are in fact many branches of Libertarianism that range from true Conservatives that believe in some libertarian goals like a return to a metallic money standard and 100 per cent reserve banking and a radical reduction of gun control and eminent domain laws to outright Capitalistic Anarchists that believe that entrepreneurs should run everything even including defense and criminal control in a competitive market. In general most identified libertarians believe in repealing all laws concerning public morality such as those controlling drugs, sexuality in general such as pornography and prostitution, gambling and other non sexual vices, As opposed to true Conservatives most identified Libertarians also tend to be strong pro abortionists, pro euthanasia and pro other anti life "liberal" issues. Also called Objectivists after the philosophy of their near saint Ayn Rand extreme libertarians probably derive their negative views of enforcing morality from her Atheism which many of them share. They also share this particular aspect of their philosophy (Atheism) with Marxists and that what probably made the "Free Software" movement look to Objectivist Libertarianism for the capitalist they needed to lead the "Open Source" branch of their movement.

The Libertarian that was chosen for this roll was Eric S Raymond or ESR. Raymond is a classic "useful idiot" in this Marxist game who apparently does not see that he is a part of the game. As an extreme Anarchist Libertarian Raymond does not believe in copyrights and patents seeing them rightly as government granted monopolies over intellectual property and not the property itself. He basically sees the GPL as simply a way to nullify copyright on software and all the derivatives and advancements that come from it therefore using it more in pursuance of Libertarian (copyright and patent elimination) rather than Marxist goals. It was with the arrival of Raymond's "Open Source Initiative" organization that a tool for selling Stallman's "Free Software" philosophy to businessmen was truly put in place.

However a close look at Eric Raymond shows that he is pretty much as flakey and "exotic" in his world view as the "Free Software" movement's more Marxist members. It turns out that even though Raymond belongs to the Objectivist Ayn Rand school of libertarianism that he is not quite an Atheist after all though he does retain the extreme anti Christianity of the Objectivist Libertarian movement. Rather Raymond practices the religion of witchcraft or Wicca that he calls "Neo Paganism" himself. Along with his Objectivist Libertarian political beliefs you can find a very extensive Q and A file about "Neo Paganism" or witchcraft at his web site.

Look in the HOWTO section and the Essays section for information on Raymond's "Neo Pagan" beliefs.

We have described in general the purposes of the GNU General Public License in the section of this article about Richard Stallman. This section however is dedicated to a more through look at it. In this section I will let the GPL itself do most of the talking (with some commentary about what it is REALLY saying underneath all the "legalese" (yecchh!!!) from yours truly of course.)

Like with most software licenses the GPL begins with a preamble which endeavors to explain its terms and conditions in non legalistic terms.

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

(This section of the preamble is where we first encounter the concept of "sharing" promoted by the promoted by the "free software" community. I have nothing against sharing, in fact it is a prominent part of my Christian Religion and because of it I develop Open Source software along with my proprietary stuff but under DIFFERENT LICENSING SYSTEMS (BSD/MIT/PD) than this one. However in view of Stallman's well recorded propensity for Leftist politics and the infamous "poison pill" provision of the GPL we have to say that the "sharing" advocated here actually consists of the old Marxist "From each according to his ability, To each according to his need" bilge.)

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

(Unfortunately the price referred to here is often YOUR FREEDOM no matter how much double talk this section of the preamble tries to present otherwise. As we will see later on this is probably the most restrictive Open Source/Free Software license in existence. Unfortunately these restrictions are designed to only keep commercial software developers away from the code, NOT sworn enemy nations like communist China, North Korea and Iran or such terrorist groups as Al Quieda and Hamas. The right to charge a fee for distribution here is basically designed to make the GPL palatable to businessmen and companies. However BECAUSE OF THE BASIC SOCIALIST NATURE OF THE LICENSE no one has been able to make any significant money from this feature though Red Hat has made a few of "kinda sorta" profits on its Linux distribution before dropping it for a pure "services" approach to GPLed software. Any REAL profits will be made from this feature about the same time that PIGS FLY!!!)

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it. For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

(These paragraphs of the preamble present the basic requirements of the GPL relating to copying and distribution of software under it. The third one is your first introduction to the GPL's "poison pill" provision. This is probably the most dangerous and socialist provision of the license. More about this later.)

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

(This part of the preamble is similar to most commercial and open licenses except in one respect. It actually recognizes that the "herding cats" nature of open development and GPL development in particular can cause problems with the software.)

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that re distributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

(This is just pretty much just a Leftist dig at the favorite commercial software industry defensive weapon against this license, the software patent.)

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you". Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

(This is where the "legalese" (yecchh!!!) starts. It basically tells us what constitutes a "program" under the GPL. It basically describes a program under the license as the GPLed product itself, any derivative or modification of it, any translation of it into another programming language (think C to Pascal, or more likely C to C++, Java or or Microsoft C# here) or portions of the program used in other programs. A particularly dangerous and recent use of this section is the GPLing of programmer's libraries probably as a retaliatory weapon against the use of software patents by commercial software companies.)

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

(This requirement is or more commercial variations of it is common to all software licenses open or proprietary and therefore can be considered pretty harmless.)

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

(Covered before in the preamble. Once again however profits will come from this only concession to capitalism in the GPL WHEN PIGS FLY!!!)

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

(This is basically the part of the license that covers the "community sharing " and "individual credit" aspect of the GPL. To put it in simple terms this section covers the requirements for modifying a GPLed program or contributing code to the "community" sponsoring it. Basically this section requires anyone that makes modifications of the program or contributes code to it to take credit for the modifications or contributions and give the date that such modifications or contributions were made.)

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

(These paragraphs are designed to keep the license from being "viral" in most cases so that people can develop commercial software under GPLed operating systems like the Hurd and Linux. However commercial programmers still have to be very careful because many of the programming libraries that come with GCC especially under Linux and FreeDOS are coming under straight GPL rather than the commercial software friendly LGPL. This is causing the use of GCC to become much more connected with the "poison pill" provision of this license hence making it "viral" that we will look at later.)

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with suchan offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

(This is essentially the Open Source provision of the License. Notice however if you can get through the "legalese" (yecchh!!!) That the GPL REQUIRES open source distribution while more traditional Open Source license like BSD and MIT merely encourage it. (This licence has more of this legalistic double talk in it than any other such document I have ever read including the Microsoft EULA. However what do you expect from documents that emanate from the LEFT.)

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

(If you have ever heard the term "poison pill" when referring to one of the GPL's provisions THIS is that provision. It basically TERMINATES your GPL software distribution privilege if you distribute a program that has as much as a SINGLE function call in it if that call comes from a GPLed programmer's library if you do so in a closed source commercial program. The "poison pill" is becoming particularly dangerous in the Linux and GCC worlds today as there is a policy of abandoning the LGPL which allows proprietary use of programmers libraries for the straight GPL and this "poison pill" provision. This is probably mainly in retaliation for the use of software patents by commercial programmers to protect their own software from GPL based "filch 'n' copy" duplications. Once again SWEET HYPOCRACY!!! These Open Source cultists whine about "submarine patents" when they can be potentially caught with stolen patented goods then initiate a similar policy of GPL "poison pill" land mines in their own software for a similar purpose. This "poison pill" provision is what also makes the GPL communistic and "viral". It was DESIGNED with the express purposes of stealing commercial code that comes onto contact with it for the "collective good" of the "community".)

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifyingthe Program or works based on it.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties tothis License.

(These sections are basically the reason that programmers trying to make a profit from the distribution fee provisions of the GPL will to so WHEN PIGS FLY!!! They are basically a copyright warning used to implement the "poison pill" provision legally. They make ANY conventional means of taking advantage of the distribution fee provision virtually impossible.)

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannotdistribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

(This section is basically a leftist dig at software patents written in legalese (yecchh!!!) basically it terminates the GPL for "free software" found to violate such patents or copyright law in a court of law and bans the cross licensing of such patents if they remain proprietary. If this single section did not exist in the GPL and cross licensing between between GPLed software and proprietary software were allowed the SCO v IBM case might not have even been filed let alone made it to court.)

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

(This allows for bans on the distribution of GPLed software to nations where it may violate software patents or interface copyrights. The main problem here is that does NOT allow for such bans on enemy nations or terrorist organizations who may use the open code for something like Linux to learn how to crack its security provisions or build terrorist weapons like computerized "drone" aircraft full of WMD materials. This aspect of the GPL's lack of ability to keep source code out of the wrong hands probably makes it the best "legal" tool for ESPIONAGE ever developed.)

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

(This may actually be the most dangerous part of the GPL of all with the possible exception of the "poison pill" provision. Eventually leftist groups like the Free Software Foundation, The Open Source Intitative and "Free Developers" want to make a monopoly as pervasive as Microsoft is now for the Marxist software development model represented by this license for virtually all computer devices that will ever be made. That is basically what the version changes alluded to are all about.)

10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goalsof preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.

(One might call this a "politeness" provision and it can be considered pretty harmless.)

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

(This or some form of it is found on virtually all software licenses proprietary and open. It is basically an admission that all software has bugs and therefore cannot be warranted like a regular product, pretty harmless stuff.)

Appendix: How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

Copyright (C) 19yy This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.

This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even bemouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License.

(These are basically procedures that tell a given program development "community" how to place their software under the GPL. They can be regarded as harmless.)

The basic goal of the "Free Software" movement as a whole is essentially to make software under the GPL as pervasive a monopoly as Microsoft is now by the use of a classic Marxist means. Karl Marx actually proposed two ways of achieving his communist goals in two different books. One, the Communist Manifesto essentially proposed violent revolution by "the proletariat" or middle and lower working classes of industrialized nations as the way to bring it about. However Marx's other famous book, Das Kapital proposed another less violent and more subtle solution to the communization of an industry or nation and this is is the one that the "Free Software" movement is generally following. Basically pirating from an earlier leftist named Hagel and adding his own Atheistic ideas that "history" rather than GOD is some kind of independent force that acts on mankind to Hagel Marx came up with this second approach which he called "dialectical materialism".

Basically "dialectical materialism" is a fancy name for the art of creating ones own "opposition", marginalizing any genuine opposition and then compromising with the false opponents in the direction that both groups actually mutually want to go. To give all this leftist political bilge a scientific appearance Marx used the scientific terms Thesis for an outright commie organization, Antithesis for its false opposition and Synthesis for the ultimate goal of both which was of course communism.

How is the "Free Software" movement practicing "dialectical materialism" you may ask. Just look at how it is currently structured. You have not a single organization of "free software" proponents but you actually have TWO such organizations at apparent odds with each other, Stallman's Free Software Foundation and The Raymond-Torvalds Open Source Initiative. However BOTH of these organizations have the same goal of eventually making all software development a GPL open source monopoly. Anybody who has even studied the little of the Marxist "dialectical materialism" technique you find in an encyclopedia should be able to smell a FISH that has been laying in the sun for a WEEK in this little arrangement. Essentially the Marxist "dialectical materialism" formula the movement is working on is this.

Free Software Foundation (Thesis) vs Open Source Initiative (Antithesis) = GPL Monopoly (Synthesis)

In this little "dialectical materialism" game The free Software Foundation takes the side of the obvious commies. It basically pushes a doctrine that all software MUST be "free" (meaning GPLed) as practically a religious moral imperative on the order of the Ten Commandments. It is literally a SIN in the public pronouncements of Richard Stallman and his followers for anyone to be running, selling or even GIVING AWAY a closed source "proprietary" program. (In practice however there has been compromises between the FSF and proprietary developers such as the less restrictive LGPL license and even exempting some of the GNU compiler standard libraries from GPL style licensing altogether IF those compromises move users in the direction of acceptance of GPLed software.)

In this "dialectical materialism" good cop-bad cop game against more traditional free software under BSD/MIT type licenses and in the Public Domain, and commercial proprietary software Eric Raymond's Open Source Initiative plays the "good cop". These are generally seen in public as the compromising crowd that say they want proprietary software to remain at the APPLICATION and ENTERTAINMENT level for some purposes and to a large part it is their lobbying proprietary software companies like Borland, SyBase and Oracle that is responsible for the few proprietary apps that Linux does have. Basically this organization is where the term "Open Source" has come from for all free source code-binary software distributions regardless of the licensing or lack thereof (Public Domain) that a given project's "community" uses. However like with the Free Software Foundation's public crusade for all GPL "free software" The Open Source Initiative's proprietary friendliness is basically smoke and mirrors. When people like Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds say that proprietary and "open source" software are compatible what they REALLY mean is that the proprietary software is compatible until they can legally "filch 'n' copy" enough of a proprietary program's unpatented features to make a reasonable knock off of it under the GPL.

However there is one thing that BOTH of these "sides" (The Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative) agree about it is HEAVY promotion of the GPL as the main license for their leftyware.

While both give lip service support to the traditional Open licensing arrangements (BSD/MIT/PD) and the large variety of new open licensing arrangements that have come about with the popularity of Open Source Software the main preference is for the GPL in both organizations. This takes care of the Thesis and the Antithesis in a Marxist "dialectical materialism" scheme but what about the Synthesis. Is there ANY evidence to show what that might be yet. The answer is MAYBE. The Synthesis at least for now seems to be located in a third "free software" organization called "Free Developers". This organization amongst other obscenities has PIRATED the AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE as the basis for its own ANTI American anti business and anti Intellectual Property manifesto. The Eventual goal of Free Developers is to become a communist MONOPOLY of GPL software developers from both the "Free Software" and "Open Source" sides of the "dialectical materialism" equation. Such a monopoly would make the original IBM and Microsoft look like the rankest of amateurs in the monopoly maintenance department.

The Free Developers idea is that a MONOPOLY over Free software would eventually be able to enforce the distribution fee provision of the GPL and tax users of "free" software because even more than Microsoft is now THEY WOULD BE THE ONLY SOURCE FOR ANY SOFTWARE.

Now that we have looked at the main founders and leaders of the GPL "Free Software/Open Source" movement, their license and their essentially Marxist scheme Now comes the time for some recommendations. first for developers who want to keep their code open and free in the truest sense of the word then for those who develop proprietary software.

For the true free software people my sole recommendation is simple. Stay away from the GPL like it is the plague because it IS. Software is ONLY free when it is under a license that truly shares the code with EVERYBODY open and proprietary like the BSD, MIT and similar "credit only" style licensing plans, or is simply put into the Public Domain with no Intellectual Property claims whatsoever on it. The GPL is NOT the free software license that it claims to be but is only a communist inspired EULA on source code rather than executable software.

For the proprietary developers this author believes that the best recommendation for them is one that his own Arron's Rod Network is going to be following with their proprietary offerings which will probably be a first for the proprietary software industry. That is to END THE SINGLE SEAT LICENSE POLICY and replace it with a by the family or by the business licensing policy. There is plenty of money to be made of selling single copies of software as products and allowing the user to Install and use it on as many computers as he wishes provided he does not break copyright law by distributing the software outside the home or place of business it is licensed to. Ending the single seat license policy has several advantages that will not be appear ant until it has actually been done these are.

1. The end of single seat licensing will be an effective way to compete with corporate based open source and still be able to charge for software and keep its code closed. Multiple Install rights under the GPL are the main selling point of paid for boxed Linux distributions. If proprietary software could end that advantage that would be pretty much the end for corporate open source.

2. The end of single seat licensing may actually INCREASE profits for proprietary software companies by eliminating overheads such as lawyers, software audits, and organizations like the Business Software Alliance whose only purpose is to enforce single seat licensing policies at considerable expense to the software companies involved.

Another recommendation I is recommending to proprietary developers is in the realm of charity but involving software rather than money. This is to put obsolete versions of their products on a closed source free ware basis. This will both allow older computers the software they need to remain functioning ending the lions share of current computer disposal problems and perhaps even increase profits by acting as a commercial for current products. Sierra games is one company that I know of who has been very successful and profitable with this approach to their obsolete products.

This concludes my article about the Leftist threat on GPL based "free" or "open source" software and I hope that the Members of Free Republic who will read it will enjoy and learn about this threat to one of our most important American industries from it.

After you strip away all the outrageous style of your posts, you seem to be saying that the GPL is pushing software toward being a communal property, rather than privately owned property.

So ... your point is?

Yes, this does make it harder to make money at it. Or at least, one has to be more creative in finding alternative business models, than just straight propriatary software.

But customers love it, because software becomes more common, more sensibly priced, and open if need be to change and maintenance without worries that the initial vendor will go out of business or charge fees based more on extortion than reasonable costs and profits.

Is all communism bad?

Civilizaton has gained greatly over the past few centuries from the work of professors in Universities, who needed to "publish or perish". They did not personally become rich, in most cases, but for our most complex intellectual human endeavors, that require the contributions of many great and minor contributors, over years and decades of effort, public sharing does lead to the best results.

I think your hatred of all things communal is way over drawn.

Now if someone could just explain to me why I have bothered to respond to such spew in the first place, ... I would sleep better tonight.

There's much more going on here than a leftist software development model. It's about innovation, who can do it, when can they do it, and can they share their ideas. Stallman got his start on a university campus (MIT) where OS system software innovation and development was done by geeks and nerds just for the joy of learning and contributing to a common goal of improving a networked environment for *other* research.

A lot of Stallman's ideology is irrelevant. That doesn't make the open source software development model socialist. A community of geeks and nerds researching and developing software is anything but a commune; it's invariably one of the most rigidly regulated meritocracies you'll ever find. Moreover, they often find shrink-wrapped software (a la Microsoft) to be boring and inflexible. They want to do it their own way, and in many cases, they can and do.

The real popularity of open source development emerged later in the context of AT&T's UNIX system software, which was enhanced and extended to support the Internet protocols using millions of dollars in DARPA funding at Berkeley. To keep up with the Internet and to provide a useful environment to a team of researchers, you had to have UNIX. Some people were uncomfortable with the fact that they couldn't share their own personal innovations at one of these "source shops" (a laboratory with a UNIX source code license), so they started casting about for alternatives. XINU, MINIX, and after the big USL court case over the inclusion of a few lines of UNIX code in the Berkeley's NET releases, the unencumbered (unpolluted with AT&T code) 386BSD software emerged.

About this time, Linus Torvalds used what he had learned by hacking on MINIX to implement a clone of UNIX that would be more scalable, and would fully utilize the virtual memory subsystem of the Intel 386 architecture. Someone else added the NET3 Berkeley TCP/IP code (as I recall). The rest is history.

Meanwhile, you can be either a socialist or a capitalist with open source software. The licensing doesn't preclude anyone from modifying it and selling it again, so long as the source is always available. It's actually kind of cool, but it takes some analysis to figure out whether or not your latest idea is going to be legal with respect to basing a product on GPL'ed software. The bottom line: do what you like. It's the free marketplace of ideas.

Stallman is not widely respected outside of a narrow group of people who adore his eccentricities. Eric Raymond, an advocate of the OSS model, is an anarhcist and second amendment rights enthusiast. Does it bother you that some nuts have been attracted to the cause of the OSS model? Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't. In any case, I think it takes both shrink-wrap and open source together to provide users and developers with the freedom they want to compute in the best possible way. It's really and truly a free market like none other.

For those interested in what the scientists at Bell Labs did after UNIX, see http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/

That is to END THE SINGLE SEAT LICENSE POLICY and replace it with a by the family or by the business licensing policy.

We allow our customers to install our software on as many machines as they want. However, we use a hardware key. Without the key, the software runs in demo mode. Plug the key in, and it's fully functional again. This allows them to buy one license, install it on many machines, and move the hardware key from machine to machine. If they wish to run two copies of the software on two machines at once, they need to buy another license, which gets them another key.

The key is expensive, cuts into our profit margin, and does occasionally cause installation problems all by itself. But our customers seem to like being able to buy one license, and use it on their desktop machine one day, their laptop another, and their own customers' computers the next.

It must be an odd approach, because we do get questioned on it, as if they didn't hear us right, and they can't believe what they just heard. "You mean I can install this software on more than one computer, and you don't care?" "Nope, I don't care. In fact, I encourage it."

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HAY Everybody, IT'S HERE!!!