We just published an article about contribution agreements for free software projects from our president Richard Stallman. You should read it if you haven't already, but put briefly, it makes the point that organizations that collect contribution agreements for free software projects should not make that software proprietary, and recommends you ask for specific language in the contributor agreements you sign to ensure that your code is always available as free software.
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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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1 year 33 weeks 6 days 11 hours ago
RTLinux, software patents and the GPL
In the case of RTLinux, maybe this could avoid the use of patent licenses... Am I wrong about this? Anyway, business practice seems bad for copyleft...
« RL: Could that potentially be used to block RTAI from being LGPL?
Yodaiken: RTLinux is released under the GPL. I have an agreement with Linus that nobody who uses RTLinux with Linux will have to pay royalties. And we're considering how other licenses are going to work out. I'm very much in favor of making sure that people who are doing GPL work or noncommercial research work don't have to go through any paperwork or pay. We're in the process of formalizing how that's going to work out so that we don't get into trouble later on. And this is an area that nobody knows how all these laws interact. But in the meantime, people who use the system, who use RTLinux, don't have anything to worry about -- there's a definite commitment there. »
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