Free as in Freedom

Episode 0x1E: Our Non-Profits Considered

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Karen and Bradley discuss recent debates about the value of

non-profit organizations for Free Software.

Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:34)
  • Fontana
    • (and other Red Hat employees) pointed out some imprecision in what
    Bradley said in Episode
    0x1D about Debian non-free. (01:07)
  • A call for
    • participation has been
    announced for the Legal
    and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2012. Please submit a
    proposal by 30 December 2011 (04:30)
  • A recent debate about non-profits started, initiated by a blog post
    • called Apache
    Considered Harmful. (12:55)
  • Karen and Bradley briefly mentioned that some now believe
    • that Considered Harmful Considered Harmful
    (13:16)
  • A long thread on this issue occurred on the FLOSS Foundations mailing
    • list (13:45)
  • Bradley made an official Conservancy Blog post about the value of
    • non-profits for Free Software (14:17)
  • Sourceforge
    • became proprietary software in 2001, as is well-described in this
    by The Sourceforge
    proprietarization debacle is well described in an article by Loïc
    Dachary. (19:19)
  • Bradley mentioned FaiFCast Episode 0x11,
    • which discussed the OpenOffice.org/Apache/LibreOffice
    situation. (44:35)
  • Bradley pointed out that this debate conflates a lot of different
    • issues, and tried to list all the conflated questions here:
    • Should a non-profit home decide what technical infrastructure is
      • used for a software freedom project? And if so, what should it be?
    • If the projects doesn't provide technological services, should
      • non-profits allow their projects to rely on for-profits for
      technological or other services?
    • Should a non-profit home set political and social positions that
      • must be followed by the projects? If so, how strictly should they be
      enforced?
    • Should copyrights be held by the non-profit home of the project, or
      • with the developers, or a mix of the two?
    • Should the non-profit dictate licensing requirements on the
      • project? If so, how many licenses are ok?
    • Should a non-profit dictate strict copyright provenance
      • requirements on their projects? If not, should the non-profit at least
      provide guidelines and recommendations?

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