Posted on 10/24/2002 1:13:43 PM PDT by JohnathanRGalt
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October 24 2002
Leaders of the New Democrat Coalition in the US Congress are seeking to have licenses such as those in the GNU and GPL outlawed on the grounds that they are "restrictive, preclude innovation, improvement, adoption and establishment of commercial IP rights."
In a letter to fellow members of their coalition, the three members of Congress leading the charge - Adam Smith, Ron Kind and Jim Davis - claim that "the terms of restrictive license's (sic) - such as those in the GNU or GPL - prevent companies from adopting, improving, commercializing and deriving profits from the software by precluding companies from establishing commercial IP rights in any subsequent code."
The letter says: "Thus, if government R&D creates a security innovation under a restrictive license, a commercial vendor will not integrate that code into its software. So long as government research is not released under licensing terms that restrict commercialization, publicly funded research provides an important resource for the software industry."
Davis and Jim Turner, Ranking Member of the Reform Subcommittee on Technology, have drafted a letter to be sent to Richard Clarke, chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure Board, expressing these sentiments, saying " it is essential that the National Strategy affirm federal tradition by explicitly rejecting licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption of promising cyber security technologies developed through federal R&D." Members of the coalition have been urged to sign the letter to show their support.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers had written a letter urging White House computer security adviser Richard Clarke to find sales opportunities for government-funded software projects. The letter had no mention of the issue of free software, also known as open-source or General Public License (GPL) software.
But when Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., whose biggest political contributor is Microsoft, began circulating the letter to his fellow Democrats asking for their signatures, he added his own correspondence, saying the free software philosophy is "problematic and threaten(s) to undermine innovation and security.''
The open-source movement advocates that software, such as the Linux operating system, should be distributed free and open to modification by others rather than treated as copyright-protected, for-profit property.
Smith's attack on open-source drew an angry response on Wednesday from one of the original authors of the letter, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy.
"We had no knowledge about that letter that twisted this position into a debate over the open source GPL issues,'' said Melissa Wojciak, staff director of the subcommittee. Wojciak added that Davis supports government funding of open-source projects.
Smith spokeswoman Katharine Lister said he has "definitely spoken with (Microsoft) about this issue,'' but that there wasn't a direct relationship between those discussions and his decision to write his letter to fellow Democrats.
Sixty-seven representatives signed the letter to Clarke; almost two-thirds were Democrats. "I'm going to hope that the people who signed on to the letter did their homework,'' Lister said.
Microsoft, whose Windows operating system competes with Linux, says open-source hurts a company's right to protect its intellectual property.
Microsoft is Smith's top source of donations. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Microsoft employees and its political action committee have given $22,900 to Smith's re-election campaign.
The original letter was fashioned by Davis and Jim Turner, D-Texas. They wanted the White House's national cybersecurity plan, which is set to be finished next month, to ensure that companies that develop software using federal funds are free to use the resulting products for commercial gain.
Clarke and his top spokeswoman were traveling Wednesday, and did not return a message seeking comment.
That monopoly power was the idea the dems had on election reform too - limit the ability to broadcast info before elections.
PING
If people want to produce software which has a GNU license, then by all means they should do it. But they should do it on their own nickel... not the taxpayers.
The most successful govt-funded software R&D projects have always released their code without restrictions. e.g. LINPACK/LAPACK.
Looked at in another way, that's exactly what the GPL does.
An obvious MS lackey.
Microsoft, whose Windows operating system competes with Linux, says open-source hurts a company's right to protect its intellectual property
Total BS!
No comment.
...buy a Mac. Under that pretty face is a full BSD Unix.
You can't make stuff like this up. Presumably, the irony is lost on the congressman...
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