[GUFSC] Artigo da Forbes sobre a FSF

[Gustavo Bouzon]

Meu, que sinistro o artigo que encontrei... destaque pra frase

"But the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties - it wants you
to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners.

http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html

Gustavo Bouzon    -     gbouzon em das.ufsc.br
Mestrado DAS - Sistemas a Eventos Discretos
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Linux's Hit Men
Daniel Lyons, 10.14.03, 7:00 AM ET

NEW YORK - In the world of "free" open source software, there is no
greater villain than *SCO*, owner of the Unix operating system.

The Lindon, Utah, company has outraged Linux lovers by suing *IBM*,
claiming IBM stole Unix code and put it into Linux. Some fear the
lawsuit by SCO will impede the adoption of Linux.

But the spread of Linux could be hurt by another group--and ironically,
it's the free-software proponents themselves.

For months, in secret, the Free Software Foundation, a Boston-based
group that controls the licensing process for Linux and other "free"
programs, has been making threats to *Cisco Systems* and *Broadcom*
over a networking router that runs the Linux operating system.

The router is made by Linksys, a company Cisco acquired in June. It lets
you hook computers together on a wireless Wi-Fi network, employing a
high-speed standard called 802.11g. Aimed at home users, the $129 device
has been a smash hit, selling 400,000 units in the first quarter of this
year alone.

But now there's a problem. The Linux software in the router is
distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which the Free
Software Foundation created in 1991.

Under the license, if you distribute GPL software in a product, you must
also distribute the software's source code. And not just the GPL code,
but also the code for any "derivative works" you've created--even if
publishing that code means anyone can now make a knockoff of your product.

Not great news if you're Cisco, which paid $500 million for Linksys. In
Cisco's case, it's even trickier, because the disputed code resides on
chips that Linksys buys from Broadcom. So now Cisco is caught between
the Free Software Foundation and one of its big suppliers.

For several months, officials from the Free Software Foundation have
been quietly pushing Cisco and Broadcom for a resolution. According to
Free Software Foundation Executive Director *Bradley Kuhn*, the
foundation is demanding that Cisco and Broadcom either a) rip out all
the Linux code in the router and use some other operating system, or b)
make their code available to the entire world.

And if they balk? Kuhn raises the threat of legal action. "We defend the
rights protected by the GPL license," he says. "We have legal teeth, so
if someone does not share and share alike, we can make them obey the
rules."

The legal teeth belong to Eben Moglen, a Columbia Law School professor
who acts as pro bono counsel for the foundation. Moglen says his chats
with Cisco have been friendly, and he believes the matter will be
settled without a court fight. Cisco and Broadcom wouldn't comment.

The dispute, which was leaked to an Internet message board, offers a
rare peek into the dark side of the free software movement--a view that
contrasts with the movement's usual public image of happy software
proles linking arms and singing the "Internationale" while freely
sharing the fruits of their code-writing labor.

In fact, the Free Software Foundation runs a lot of these "enforcement
actions." There are 30 to 40 going on right now, and there were 50 last
year, Kuhn says. There have been hundreds since 1991, when the current
version of the GPL was published, he says. Tracking down bad guys has
become such a big operation that the Free Software Foundation has
created a so-called Compliance Lab to snoop out violators and bust them.

Who pays for this? The 12-employee Free Software Foundation has limited
resources. So it seeks donations. And sometimes it collects money from
companies it has busted.

Last year, the foundation alleged that *OpenTV*, a San Francisco company
that ships a set-top box containing Linux, was violating the GPL. The
drama took months to resolve and ended with OpenTV writing a check for
$65,000 to the Free Software Foundation. "They paid us a very
substantial payment for our time and trouble," Moglen says.

Sometimes it's the other way around--the foundation gets paid by private
companies for whom it acts as a sort of hired enforcer. Last year a
Swedish software company called *mySQL* asked for help resolving a
dispute with *NuSphere*, a subsidiary of *Progress Software*.
The companies had made a deal to work on software that would include
mySQL's GPL-licensed database program. A dispute arose over contract
issues, and also over the GPL, which mySQL claimed NuSphere had
violated. In the end, Progress resolved the matter by walking away from
the partnership.

Afterward, mySQL made a $25,000 donation to the Free Software
Foundation. Was this payback? "I won't say that," says *Marten Mickos*,
chief executive of mySQL. "But of course, why would we give them money
if not as a sign of gratitude?"

The mySQL versus NuSphere squabble demonstrates another risk: These
disputes might scare companies away from using open source software.
Joseph Alsop,
chief executive of Progress, reckons the fiasco with mySQL cost his
company $10 million in lost development and marketing work. Now he says
he is cautious about working with GPL software. Instead, Progress uses
an open source database program distributed under the less onerous
Berkeley Software Distribution license.

In some ways, these Free Software Foundation "enforcement actions" can
be more dangerous than a typical copyright spat, because usually
copyright holders seek money--say, royalties on the product that
infringing companies are selling. But the Free Software Foundation
doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house, or at the
very least share it with cloners.

Or maybe, as some suggest, the foundation wants GPL-covered code to
creep into commercial products so it can use GPL to force open those
products. Kuhn says that's nuts--"pure propaganda rhetoric." But he
concedes that his foundation hates the way companies like *Oracle*
and *Microsoft*
generate billions of dollars by selling software licenses. "We'd like
people to stop selling proprietary software. It's bad for the world,"
Kuhn says.

So far, none of the Free Software Foundation's targets have decided it
is bad for the world and gone to court. This despite the fact that the
foundation has $750,000 in the bank and one lawyer who works for free,
part time, when he's not teaching classes at Columbia University.

Will Cisco and Broadcom be the first? Probably they'll decide, like
everyone else, that it's cheaper to settle than to fight.

Such a pity, comrade.