WEFTies

In 1984, Richard Stallman founded a social movement known as the free software movement. The free software movement fights for the ability to control our computers as a cooperative community (as opposed to being under the rule of software proprietors where users have only as much control over their computers as the proprietor allows).

On May 1, 2008, Stallman gave a talk in Manchester, England on “Free Software in Ethics and Practice” and the newly formed Manchester Free Software group recorded this talk and released it under a license that allows sharing.

This talk is quite engaging; Stallman gets into why schools must run exclusively free software, touches on international politics, and addresses the secondary issue of why free software matters for business (secondary in importance, that is, as society shouldn’t organize around business interests).

• High quality Ogg Theora+Vorbis
• Medium quality Ogg Theora+Vorbis
• Low quality Ogg Theora+Vorbis
• Audio in Speex format (more information about Speex)
• License

1. Blackbird Evan Rachel Wood Across the Universe
2. Don't Cry for Me Argentina Sinead O'Connor am I not your girl
3. My Mind is Out to Get Me Margie Adam Best of
4. Sunday Morning Elizabeth Cook Balls
5. Eulogy for My Next Lover Brenda Kahn Goldfish Don't Talk Back
6. Tapestry Carole King Tapestry
7. Love is Wide Carrie Newcomer Betty's Diner
8. One Woman and a Shovel Carrie Newcomer Betty's Diner
9. Lost Voices Cathy Winter Breath on My Fire
10. Democrazy Chaka Khan group Come 2 My House
11. Damaged Goods Christine Lavin Future Fossils
12. If You Could Read My Mind Connie Kaldo Beautiful: Gordon Lightfoot Tribute
13. Would You Like to Dance Deidre McCalla With a Little Luck
14. Oscar Song Rebecca Pronsky departures & arrivals
15. Diamonds and Rust Joan Baez Diamonds and Rust
16. Wake Up Little Sparrow Lizz Wright Dreaming Wide Awake
17. I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter Madeleine Peyroux Dreamland
18. Lifetime of Song Heather Alexander Everafter
19. Two Tongues at One Time Mariee Sioux Faces in the Rocks
20. For the Benefit of Time Lisabeth Weber Maggie Marshall The Firetower Sessions
21. And So It Goes Priscilla Herdman Ragtime Gal
22. Free to Be Marlo Thomas and Friends Free to Be…You and Me
23. Not Until the Wind Changes Maggie's Farm Glory Road
24. Second Fiddle Mother Folkers Live at the Arveida Center
25. Safe, Strong and Free Judy Fjell Livin' on Dreams
26. As Cool As I Am Dar Williams Mortal City
27. House of the Rising Sun Nina Simone Nina Simone Sings the Blues
28. If I Was the Woman You Wanted Nanci Griffith There's a Light Beyond These Woods
29. Getting Older Katie Moore Only Thing Worse
30. Velveteen Kathy Mar Plus Ca Change; Plus C'est La Meme Chose (2cd set)
31. Little Green Eyes Kathy Mar Plus Ca Change; Plus C'est La Meme Chose (2cd set)
32. Displacement Pamela Hines Trio Return
33. I Just Want to Make Love to You Heart The Road Home

At Fordham Law School’s annual so-called “Intellectual Property” Law Conference on March 28, 2008, Ray Beckerman of Recording Industry vs. The People debated Kenneth Doroshow, a Senior Vice President of the Recording Industry Association of America, a corporate label lobbying group.

An interesting point of contention was whether it ought to be considered copyright infringement to make copies of copyrighted works available when one doesn’t have license to distribute that work. The RIAA says “making available” is copyright infringement, as this reduces the work the RIAA has to do to successfully sue ordinary people who allegedly infringe RIAA’s client’s copyrights. Beckerman contends “making available” isn’t infringement; copyright holders should have to prove that an illicit copy of their copyrighted work was made, not merely offered. The moderator of the debate, Professor Hugh C. Hansen, the keynote speaker, Michael Schlesinger, and a lot of the lawyer-filled audience apparently believed that “making available” constituted copyright infringement.

They were wrong.

Beckerman explains:

[T]his panel discussion took place on the business day before Elektra v. Barker and London-Sire v. Doe 1 came down, both rejecting a making available right. And of course a month later Atlantic v. Howell was handed down, rejecting the ‘making available’ theory from pillar to post.

Read the transcript of the event. Unfortunately this transcript doesn’t include Schlesinger’s remarks but Beckerman summarizes those remarks just before the transcript.

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a proprietary program probably best known these days for two things: showing people videos (YouTube) and making animated interactive graphics on the web (many ads are require Flash). Flash documentation was also, until recently, only available if one agreed to rather onerous non-disclosure terms which restricted how many people could write their own Flash player.

The most widely used Flash implementation is proprietary and not available for all kinds of computers and operating systems. A free software Flash player program was needed so that people could use their computer in freedom without having to forgo visiting a number of popular websites.

One free software Flash player, Swfdec (pronounced “swiff deck”), has been in active development for some time, and generally becoming more capable. Another free software Flash player, Gnash (the GNU Flash player), offers considerable capability to play Flash websites. Gnash has also been in active development.

Today Adobe announced that they have released documents which describe the structure of Flash files one finds online. These documents are restrictively licensed—sharing the document files is not allowed, not even verbatim non-commercial sharing—but the information is available without agreeing to the non-disclosure terms. There’s no clear indication that Adobe holds patents on the ideas one needs to implement their own Flash software and no clear license granted for such patents.

I think that when free software gets to a point where it can perform sufficiently well, competitors take notice and react. The free software competition doesn’t have to be a drop-in substitute to be an effective means of applying pressure which engenders more software freedom.

Is Microsoft’s Silverlight responsible for pushing Adobe to make their documentation available to more people? If so I doubt it played a very big role because Silverlight exerts little pressure; hardly anyone uses Silverlight (so users are unlikely to come across a Silverlight-based website) and Silverlight doesn’t come with Microsoft’s currently most popular variant of Microsoft Windows so it’s not widely installed by its target audience.

Adobe isn’t divulging very much. Adobe isn’t changing the license for its Flash implementation; that’s still proprietary software. Adobe isn’t even distributing their Flash player for all kinds of consumer-grade computers in use today, there’s no 64-bit Flash player program. But Adobe has taken one step toward making it possible for more hackers to contribute to free Flash software players.

Adobe could be providing a trap as well. If there are any Adobe patents covering ideas described in the documentation, Adobe gives no indication that you are licensed to deal in those patents. So this raises (at the very least) questions about whether Adobe is trying to trap people into implementing something that they couldn’t distribute as free software. Adobe could grant a license to implement anything covered by those patents, but the larger problem would remain for patents Adobe doesn’t control. The real fix for this is simple: end software patents.

People in countries that don’t have software patents don’t have to fear losing a patent infringement lawsuit, but software patents have put quite a chill on users who deal with software (which is virtually everyone and every organization). Software innovation happens without government intervention. So we don’t need to worry that people will stop improving computer software if software patents were no longer enforceable. Everyone who uses a computer is at risk with software patents. Around 1990, Paul Heckel threatened Apple over a patent of his that covered something in Apple’s Hypercard program. After Heckel told Apple he’d sue Apple’s users, Apple realized that for the price of licensing Heckel’s patent (paying him off), Apple could avoid becoming known as the computer company that will put its customers at risk of losing a patent infringement lawsuit. Apple paid Heckel an undisclosed sum and Heckel went away. But the example Heckel set remains a potent demonstration of the power of software patents.

Adobe didn’t release much of interest to Swfdec. Benjamin Otte, the chief swfdec developer, said that Adobe’s release today isn’t valuable:

For Swfdec the Flash playe it means pretty much nothing. Swfdec already implements everything that is written down in that specifications. This is just the Adobe version of http://www.m2osw.com/swf_alexref.html

For Swfdec the project it’s nice that people will stop asking “Did you read the forbidden specs? Are you sure what you’re doing is legal?” Even though these where pretty much non-issues before. It also means we now have a document to show newcomers that want to hack on Swfdec. It seems nicer as an introduction text than the link above.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such a reaction on the part of a major proprietor. Sun Microsystems distributed their proprietary Java software for years and recently liberated it. At about the time they had announced their plan to liberate their Java software, free software Java implementations were coming of age. It was increasingly likely that one could run a free software Java program without relying on Sun’s proprietary Java software.

In late 2006, Philip Langdale wrote about a similar move with SD card readers (those devices that read the media you might use with a digital camera, digital audio player, or personal digital assistant). When Pierre Ossman reverse-engineered the relevant standard that allowed him to use his SD card reader and then shared his software, we all benefitted. Subsequently the SD Association released a version of the specification that helped filled in some gaps Ossman’s software didn’t include. Langdale explains:

Although I can’t prove it, I feel that the subsequent publishing of the ’simplified’ spec (without the DRM bits that we don’t care about) by the SD Association was provoked by his efforts (Why bother hiding it now?) Thanks to those specs, Pierre was able to polish the driver up even more and support a wider range of implementations (of course, there are some that are so out there that even having the SDHCI spec isn’t enough to get them working).

A GNU/Linux computer operating system that contains only free software—software you are free to run, inspect, share, and modify—is out and ready for you to try on your ordinary PC (Intel or AMD-based computer).

The hackers who make gNewSense (pronounced “guh-NEW-sense”) GNU/Linux started with Ubuntu GNU/Linux and removed all the software that doesn’t come with these freedoms, including software most people doesn’t know is in their operating system like firmware (software used to control various computer devices) and drivers.

• A disk image you can burn to a CD-R, boot up, and try without installing anything on your computer (638MB). If you like it, you can run the installer which is on the screen.
• The source code for all the software on the disk image (1.6GB).
• …or go to the gNewSense GNU/Linux mirror archive and get the software from there.

Ubuntu GNU/Linux has a handy set of helpful instructions.

1. Xenophobia A'Lea Great Big World
2. How to find a rainbow Adie Grey …how to find a rainbow
3. Beautiful Songs Amanda Mabro Superwoman in the Making
4. Are You Experienced Belly Stone Free-a Jimi Hendrix tribute
5. Matthew Janis Ian Billies Bones
6. One and One Makes Three Jennifer Berezan Borderlines
7. Storms Never Last Jessi Coulter I've Always Been Crazy (tribute to Waylon Jennings)
8. Parlez-moi D'amour Linda Ronstadt Ann Savoy Adieu False Heart
9. Get Together Lizz Wright Dreaming Wide Awake
10. 19 Miles to Baghdad Lizzy West & the New Buffalo Spreading the Seeds-10th Anniversary
11. Living in the Moment Meg Christian Best of Meg Christian
12. Lovin' You Minnie Riperton Best of
13. Song For Rembered Heroes Nanci Griffith There's a Light Beyond These Woods
14. Love Letters Nora O'Connor Til the Dawn
15. Hymn to Her Pretenders Isle of View
16. Little Perennials Indigo Girls Despite Our Differences
17. If I Had a Heart Joni Mitchell Shine
18. Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) Melanie Best of Melanie
19. Gone Rebecca Pronsky departures & arrivals
20. Obviously soNIA No Bomb is Smart
21. The Winter It Is Past Susan McKeown Sweet Liberty
22. Foot of the Bed Tres Chicas Sweetwater
23. Don't Think Twice Waifs Magnetic Love
24. A New Marilyn Vonda Shepard Vonda Shepard
25. Magic Tina Dico Live Sessions (itunes exclusive)
26. May Queen Three Weird Sisters Hair of the Frog
27. Thanking the Universe Nicole Mitchell Black Unstoppable

play or download (right click, save as…): complete-modbit-show41.mp3

1.  Edgar Varese: Integral (1925)
2. Gyorgy Ligeti: String Quartet #2 (1968)
3. Morgan Powell: Old Man (1967)
4. Christophe Bertrand: Dikha (2001)
5. Morton Feldman: I Met Heine on the Rue Furstenberg (1971)
6. Iannis Xenakis: Pleiades - Peux (1978)
7. Rick Burkhardt: Una Corda (1995)
8. Milton Babbitt: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1985)