December 23, 2008

Episode 0x03: With Software As a Service, Is Only the Network Luddite Free?

Summary

This episode of the Software Freedom Law Show is a recording of Bradley's speech on network service software freedom, a keynote from the 2008 Plone Conference.

This show was released on Tuesday 23 December 2008; its running time is 00:31:38.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:20)

Bradley made a quick reference to a Saturday Night Live skit that included Steve Martin.

Segment 1 (04:30)

The slides from the talk are available online and you can follow along. The numbers after each bullet point is the time index when you should hit the space bar to move onto the next point or slide.

Tags: bkuhn, agpl

December 9, 2008

Episode 0x02: Getting to Know the FSF

Summary

In this episode of the Software Freedom Law Show, Bradley and Karen interview Brett Smith, the Licensing Compliance Engineer at the Free Software Foundation.

This show was released on Tuesday 9 December 2008; its running time is 00:30:57.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:26)

• Bradley mentioned that the FSF is the one of the oldest non-profit organizations in the Free Software space. The FSF was founded on 4 October 1985. (01:25)
• Karen and Bradley mentioned the GPLv3 Process.

Segment 1 (03:42)

• Both Bradley and Brett used to order CD's from Cheap Bytes in the 1990s, which Bradley was amazed to learn is still in business today. (04:37)
• Bradley and Brett used to run Fedora when it was still called Red Hat. (04:47)
• We believe Brett was referring to RMS' lecture at KTH in Sweden on 30 October 1986, which inspired Brett to get involved with Free Software. (05:03)
• Brett and Bradley meet at the Cincinnati GNU/Linux Users' Group. (06:45)
• Brett mentioned David “novalis” Turner who used to work at the FSF in the position Brett now holds.
• Brett mentioned the GPL Compliance Lab at the FSF. (08:25)
• Brett mentioned the Affero GPL. (09:35)
• Bradley mentioned his blog post about the “Eternal September” of GPL compliance. (10:45)
• Brett keeps a Compliance case stats box on the FSF Licensing page. (11:36)
• We spoke a few times about the GPL FAQ, which includes info about other FSF-published licenses as well. (08:15, 12:30).
• Brett mentioned RMS' essay on why to upgrade to GPLv3. (14:35)
• Brett's Quick Guide to GPLv3 discusses some of the changes in GPLv3, including ones discussed on the podcast. (16:00)
• We discussed GPLv3's anti-DRM provision for User Products, at the end of Section 6. (16:03)
• We discussed GPLv3's Termination Provision. (17:12)
• We discussed GPLv3's Additional Terms provisions, which allows for Apache license compatibility. (19:11)
• Brett briefly mentioned GPLv3's patent provisions. (21:41)
• Brett mentioned the GNU Simplified Free Documentation License, for which the drafting process is ongoing. (23:18)
• Brett mentioned the FSF's release of the FDL version 1.3. RMS has written in detail about it since our recording took place. Bradley also made a blog post about it. (23:37)
• Brett and Bradley discussed how old and ground-breaking the FDL was. FDL was first released in March 2000. Bradley didn't have a chance to tell his story as to why the first version was 1.1; maybe he will sometime. :)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, fsf, gplv3, agpl, smith

November 25, 2008

Episode 0x01: The Engineer and the Lawyer

Summary

In this episode of the Software Freedom Law Show, Bradley and Karen discuss the differences and similarities of software developers / engineers and lawyers. They also interview their first guest, Scott K. Peterson, Senior Counsel at HP.

This show was released on Tuesday 25 November 2008; its running time is 00:40:24.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:43)

• Bradley and Karen recall the episode numbering debate raised on the first show. (00:56)
• Karen argues that saying Episode 1 makes it sound like the Star Wars movie. (01:08)
• Bradley and Karen like Star Trek. Bradley thinks that ST:DS9 was the best series. Karen likes Patrick Stewart.
• Bradley said the phrase high-order calculus, which was confusing. He was probably thinking of first order predicate calculus, which he studied in graduate school, but he was actually trying to make reference to the fact that Karen studied more complex calculus applications such as differential equations and multivariable calculus. (02:05)
• Cooper Union, which provides full scholarships to all of its students, doesn't have liberal arts majors.
• Karen talked about how engineering school can be good preparation for legal writing and for law school, generally. Apparently, physics and math majors score higher on the LSAT. (04:36)
• Many contracts and/or licenses contain a list of definitions that indicate how certain terms should be interpreted. See section 0 of the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 3 for an example. (04:54)
• Bradley compared those defined terms in licenses to the #define's in the C preprocessor. (05:52)
• A statute is a law passed by any legislative body. As the statute is the “letter of the law”, it is usually the first thing lawyers look at when determining what the law is and its application. Interestingly, statutes are also often referred to by lawyers as code. (09:20)
• Dicta (plural of dictum) are statements contained in a court's decision that are explanatory and not necessarily part of the legal rationale or doctrine of the decision. (09:50)

Segment 1 (11:58)

Interview with Scott Peterson.

• Scott attended MIT as an undergraduate.
• Scott mentioned the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and in particular Section 510(k), which regulates medical devices. (12:50)
• Scott is an “inside counsel”, sometimes called “in-house counsel” at HP. (13:35) In-house lawyers are employees of the company or organization as opposed to external counsel, who are lawyers hired by the company or organization that advise it from the outside. External lawyers are often employees of law firms.
• Scott mentioned Apollo Computer, which became a division of HP in 1989. (14:18)
• Scott participated in the GPLv3 Process (19:56) on Committee B. (21:11)
• Scott compared the GPLv3 process to standard setting performed by standards bodies.
• Scott mentioned that he's a patent attorney. People who practice patent law before the United States Patent and Trademark Office must have a technical background (usually an undergraduate degree in science or engineering). You actually don't have to go to law school to do that; non-lawyers with the appropriate technical educational background can take the “patent bar” exam and become a “patent agent”. (33:25)
• Scott mentioned the “claims” of the patent. Those unfamiliar with how a patent is structured might want to read the discussion on this in SFLC's Legal Guide. (34:05)
• Discussion of the Bilski decision:
• The Bilski decision heavily referenced the State Street decision (35:13)
• SFLC published a comment on the Bilksi decision. (35:30)
• Karen mentioned our colleague Dan Ravicher. (37:48)
• Bradley mentioned that some of the judges dissenting in Bilski were very pro-software-patent. (38:48)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, hp, peterson

November 11, 2008

Episode 0x00: Introducing the Software Freedom Law Show

Summary

The Software Freedom Law Center is proud to announce its new podcast, The Software Freedom Law Show. Hosted by Bradley M. Kuhn and Karen Sandler, this bi-weekly podcast will bring interviews and explanations on legal issues related to Free, Libre and Open Software Software (FLOSS).

Our first episode introduces the format and the hosts interview each other so you can get to know them better.

This show was released on Tuesday 11 November 2008; its running time is 00:32:39.

Show Notes

Our first episode introduces the format and the hosts.

Segment 0 (at 00:23)

• Numbering of the Episode
  • Dijkstra's article, Why numbering should start at zero.(00:49)
  • Karen mentioned the Zeroth law of Thermodynamics (00:52)
  • Bradley referred to the laws of robotics, to which Asimov added a Zeroth Law in his later books (making the law the first in priority of application, if not first in order of appearance). (00:52)
  • Bradley is a “Podcast Monitor”, not a “Hall monitor”. (01:30)
• SFLC
• An article announcing the founding of SFLC in March 2005 (02:43).
• The team of SFLC (04:50)
• Karen mentioned attorney client privilege which may be a term unfamiliar to our hacker listeners. (07:16)
• We mentioned that SFLC (and Conservancy) are each 501(c)(3) charities in the USA. (07:37)
• If your not-for-profit FLOSS project needs legal help, write to <help@softwarefreedom.org>.
• Software Freedom Conservancy
• An article that announced formation of the Conservancy.
• Karen mentioned that Conservancy helps projects handle their Google Summer of Code funds. (08:46)
• A discussion of umbrella organizations is contained in SFLC's legal primer. (12:11)
• Conservancy's Board of Directors is different from SFLC's, since they are separate organizations. (15:13)
• If your not-for-profit FLOSS project is looking for a non-profit, incorporate organizational home, write to <conservancy@softwarefreedom.org>.

Segment 1 (at 16:17)

• For the curious: NYC Noise Ordinance regarding emergency vehicles. (16:30)
• Hiawatha Bray often called the FSF Cambridge-based, as he did in this article about the SCO law suit. (17:20)
• Bradley's first Unix system was an AT&T 3B2/600. It ran System V R3, which didn't have streams (the SYSV equivalent to sockets). (18:18)
• The vi Lovers homepage says it's pronounced “vee eye”. Bradley doesn't love vi, so he'll go back to saying “vye”. (18:40)
• Bradley couldn't find a good web page that discussed the full history of Backspace vs. DEL in Emacs, but the Emacs Wiki hints at the controversy. (19:30)
• Bradley briefly mentioned the Xemacs fork. (19:40)
• Bradley mentioned The GNU Manifesto. (20:07)
• Bradley probably had his dates mixed up of his first GNU/Linux install. 0.99pl12 came out in early 1993, so he probably installed SLS in early 1993 during his sophomore year in college. He found his Xconfig file from his old laptop with a filedate of 15 December 1993. (Remember when you had to write Xconfigs by hand and they would break your monitor if you did it wrong?) (20:44)
• Bradley mentioned helping RMS start the license list. Here's the earliest known web archived version and its modern decendent. (21:28)
• Bradley stopped using Quicken in 2000 in favor of Gnucash, but he actually uses Ledger now. (22:30)
• Karen indicates Fortan is still relevant, and the Wikipedia entry seems to agree. (24:21)
• Chairman of SFLC's Board, and its Director-Counsel, Eben Moglen, is also a law professor at Columbia University, and was Karen's professor in Law School. (25:28)
• Karen mentioned doing a “Choose your own essay” program in C for Eben when she was law school, based on the idea of Choose Your Own Adventure books, which both Karen and Bradley read as children. (25:43)
• Bradley mentioned Eben and Larry Wall both being influenced by APL. Bradley is sure, although it doesn't seem to appear in the transcripts, that during one of his early State of the Onion speeches, Larry joked that he'd use Unicode Perl operators to reinvent APL. (26:20)
• Bradley mentioned his Master's thesis and the Parrot project. (26:42)
• We mentioned that law school is extremely expensive. (27:50)

Trackbacks

(Done by hand, currently. ;)

• Our producer, Dan Lynch, blogged about the start of the show, and also started a thread in the Linux Outlaws forum.

Tags: bkuhn, karen, numbering, fsf, sflc, conservancy