Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/11/26/conservancy-fundraiser.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

I’m quite delighted with my career choice. As an undergraduate and even
in graduate school, I still expected my career extend my earlier careers in
the software industry: a mixture of software developer and sysadmin. I’d
probably be a DevOps person now, had I stuck with that career path.

Instead, I picked the charity route: which (not financially, but
work-satisfaction-wise) is like winning a lottery. There are very few
charities related to software freedom, and frankly, if (like me) you
believe in universal software freedom and reject proprietary software
entirely, there are two charities for you:
the Free Software Foundation, where I used to
work, and Software Freedom
Conservancy, where I work now.

But software freedom is not merely an ideology for me. I believe the
ideology matters because I see the lives of developers and users are better
when they have software freedom. I first got a taste of this
IRL when I attended the earliest Perl
conferences in the late 1990s. My friend James and I stayed in dive motels
and even slept in a rental car one night to be able to attend. There was
excitement in the Perl community (my first Free Software community). I was
exhilarated to meet in person the people I’d seen only as god-like hackers
posting on perl5-porters. James was so excited he asked me to take a
picture of him jumping as high as he could with his fist in the air in
front of the main conference banner. At the time, I complained; I was
mortified and felt like a tourist taking that picture. But looking back, I
remember that James and I felt that same excitement and we just
expressed it differently.

I channeled that thrill into finding a way that my day job would focus on
software freedom. As an activist since my teenage years, I concentrated
specifically on how I could preserve, protect and promote this valuable
culture and ideology in a manner that would assure the rights of developers
and users to improve and share the software they write and use.

I’ve enjoyed the work; I attend more great conferences than I ever
imagined I would, where now people occasionally walk up to me with the same
kind of fanboy reverence that I reserved for Larry Wall,
RMS and the heroes of my
Free Software generation. I like my work. I’ve been careful, however, to
avoid a sense of entitlement. Since I read it in 1991, I have never
forgotten RMS’ point
in the GNU
Manifesto: Most of us cannot manage to get any money for
standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and
starving. We do something else., a point he continues
in his regular speeches,
by adding: I [could] just … give up those principles and start
… writing proprietary software. I looked for another alternative,
and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field and do
something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I’m sure
I could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant; they wouldn’t
hire me; but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say
to me, “the people who hire programmers demand [that I write
proprietary software] and if I don’t do [it], I’ll starve”. It’s
literally the word they use. Well, as a waiter, you’re not going to
starve.

RMS’ point is not merely to expose the
false dilemma
inherent in: I have to
program, even if my software is proprietary, because that’s what companies pay me to
do, but also to expose the sense of entitlement in assuming a
fundamental right to do the work you want. This applies not just to
software authorship (the work I originally trained for) but also the
political activism and non-profit organizational work that I do now.

I’ve spent most of my career at charities because I believe deeply that I
should take actions that advance the public good, and because I have a
strategic vision for the best methods to advance software freedom. My
strategic goals to advance software freedom include two basic tenets: (a)
provide structure for Free Software projects in a charitable home (so that
developers can focus on writing software, not administration, and so that
the projects aren’t unduly influenced by for-profit corporations) and (b)
uphold and defend Free Software licensing, such
as copyleft, to ensure software
freedom.

I don’t, however, arrogantly believe that these two priorities are
inherently right. Strategic plans work toward a larger goal, and pursing
success of a larger ideological mission requires open-mindedness regarding
strategies. Nevertheless, any strategy, once decided, requires zealous
pursuit. It’s with this mindset that I teamed up with my
colleague, Karen Sandler, to
form Software Freedom
Conservancy.

Conservancy, like most tiny charities, survives on the determination of
its small management staff. Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s Executive
Director, and I have a unique professional collaboration. She and I share
a commitment to promoting and defending
moral
principles in the context of software freedom, along with an
unrelenting work ethic to match. I believe fundamentally that she and I
have the skills, ability, and commitment to meet these two key strategic
goals for software freedom.

Yet, I don’t think we’re entitled to do this work. And, herein there’s
another great feature of a charity. A charity not only serves the
public good; the USA IRS also requires that a charity
be funded primarily by donations from the public.

I like this feature for various reasons. Particularly, in the context of
the fundraiser that
Conservancy announced this week, I think about it terms of seeking a
mandate from the public. As Conservancy poises to begin its tenth year,
Karen and I as its leaders stand at a crossroads. For financial reasons of
the organization’s budget, we’ve been thrust to test this question: Does
the public of Free Software users and developers actually want the
work that we do?.

While I’m nervous that perhaps the answer is no, I’m nevertheless
not afraid to ask the question. So, we’ve asked. We asked all of you to
show us that you want our work to continue. We set two levels, matching
the two strategic goals I mentioned. (The second is harder and more
expensive to do than the first, so we’ve asked many more of you to support
us if you want it.)

It’s become difficult in recent years to launch a non-profit fundraiser
(which have existed for generations) and not think of the relatively recent
advent of gofundme, Kickstarter, and the like. These new systems provide a
(sadly, usually proprietary software) platform for people to ask the
public: Is my business idea and/or personal goal worth your money?.
While I’m dubious about those sites, I do believe in democracy
enough to build my career on a structure that requires an election (of
sorts). Karen and I don’t need you to go to the polls and cast your
ballot, but we do ask you consider if what we do for a living at
Conservancy is worth US$10 per month to you. If it is, I hope you’ll
“cast a vote” for Conservancy
and become a Conservancy
supporter now.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/28/vw-detail.html

[ A version of this blog post
was crossposted
on Conservancy’s blog. ]

Would software-related scandals, such as Volkswagen’s use of proprietary
software to lie to emissions inspectors, cease if software freedom were
universal? Likely so, as
I wrote last week. In a world where regulations
mandate distribution of source code for all the software in all devices,
and where no one ever cheats on that rule, VW would need means
other than software to hide their treachery.

Universal software freedom is my lifelong goal, but I realized years ago
that I won’t live to see it. I suspect that generations of software users
will need to repeatedly rediscover and face the harms of proprietary
software before a groundswell of support demands universal software
freedom. In the meantime, our community has invented semi-permanent
strategies, such as copyleft, to maximize software freedom for users in our
current mixed proprietary and Free Software world.

In the world we live in today, software freedom can impact the VW
situation only if a few complex conditions are met. Let’s consider the
necessary hypothetical series of events, in today’s real world, that would
have been necessary for Open Source and Free Software to have stopped VW
immediately.

First, VW would have created a combined or derivative work of software
with a copylefted program. While many cars today contain Linux, which is
copylefted, I am not aware of any cars that use Linux outside of the
on-board entertainment and climate control systems. The VW software was
not part of those systems, and VW engineers almost surely wrote the
emissions testing mode code from scratch. Even if they included some
non-copylefted Open Source or Free Software in it, those
licenses don’t require disclosure of any source code; VW’s ability to conceal
its bad actions with non-copylefted code is roughly identical to the situation
of proprietary VW code before us. As a thought experiment, though, let’s
pretend, that VW based the nefarious code on Linux by writing a proprietary
Linux module to trick the emissions testing systems.

In that case, VW would have violated the GPL. But that alone is far from
enough to ensure anyone would catch VW. Indeed, GPL violations remain very
prevalent, and only one organization enforces the
GPL for Linux (full disclosure: that’s Software Freedom Conservancy, where
I work). That organization has such limited enforcement resources (only
three people on staff, and enforcement is one of many of our programs), I
suspect that years would pass before Conservancy had the resources to
pursue the violation; Conservancy currently has hundreds of Linux GPL
violations queued for action. Even once opened, most GPL violations take
years to resolve. As an example, we are currently enforcing the GPL
against one auto manufacturer who has Linux in their car. We’ve already
spent hundreds of hours and the company to date continues to fail in their
GPL compliance efforts. Admittedly, it’s highly unlikely that particular violator has a
GPL-violating Linux module specifically designed to circumvent automotive
regulations. However, after enforcing the GPL in that case for more than
two years, I still don’t have enough data about their use of Linux to
even know which proprietary Linux modules are present — let
alone whether those modules are nefarious in any way other than as
violating Linux’s license.

Thus, in today’s world, a “software freedom solution” to
prevent the VW scandal must meet unbelievable preconditions: (a) VW would
have to base all its software on copylefted Open Source and Free Software,
and (b) an organization with a mission to enforce copyleft for the public
good would require the resources to find the majority of GPL violators and
ensure compliance in a timely fashion. This thought experiment quickly shows how much more work
remains to advance and defend software freedom. While requirements of
source code disclosure, such as those in copyleft licenses, are necessary
to assure the benefits of software freedom, they cannot operate unless
someone exercises the offers for source and looks at the details.

We live in a world where most of the population accepts proprietary
software as legitimate. Even major trade associations, such as the
OpenStack Foundation and the Linux Foundation, in the Open Source community
laud companies who make proprietary software, as long as they adopt and
occasionally contribute to some Free Software too. Currently,
it feels like software freedom is winning, because the
overwhelming majority in the software industry believe Open Source and Free
Software is useful and superior in some circumstances.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the aspirational ideal of voluntary Open
Source, I find in my work that so many companies, just as VW did, will
cheat against important social good policies unless someone watches and
regulates. Mere adoption of Open Source won’t work alone; we only yield
the valuable results of software freedom if software is copylefted and
someone upholds that copyleft.

Indeed, just as it has been since the 1980s, very few people believe that
software freedom is of fundamental importance for all software users. Scandals,
like VW’s use of proprietary software to hide other bad acts, might slowly
change opinions, but one scandal is rarely enough to permanently change
public opinion. I therefore encourage those who support software freedom
to take this incident as inspiration for a stronger stance, and to prepare
yourselves for the long haul of software freedom advocacy.