Free as in Freedom

By Free as in Freedom

A bi-weekly discussion of legal, policy, and other issues in the open source and software freedom community (including occasional interviews) from Brooklyn, New York, USA. Presented by Karen Sandler ... more

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FAQs about Free as in Freedom:

How many episodes does Free as in Freedom have?

The podcast currently has 111 episodes available.

Free as in Freedom episodes:

July 05, 2023 FOSSY 2023
Come to FOSSY 2023!
Show Notes:
FOSSY 2023 will happen next week in Portland, OR, USA.
Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
6min
March 09, 20210x6C: Even More DMCA Exemption Requests!
Karen and Bradley discuss two other DMCA exemptions filed by Software
Freedom Conservancy during the 2020/2021 Triennial Rulemaking Process at
the copyright office: one for wireless router firmwares and one for
privacy research.
Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:39)
Supporters of
Conservancy can join this
mailing list to hear and see live recordings of every show!

Segment 1 (06:30)
Conservancy filed a DMCA
exemption request for wireless routers, and updated it with their long
comment on the issue.

NPR's
Planet Money had a show that discussed how recycling plastic in
the USA was somewhat of a large con game funded by the plastics industry.
Both audio
a transcript is
available. (19:32, 20:44)
Segment 2 (29:10)
Bradley and Karen discuss the third exemption request that Conservancy
filed, for
research to find privacy flaws, and updated it with a long
comment on the issue.

Karen and Bradley noted that individuals
can file reply comments before the deadline of Wednesday 10 March 2021 at
23:59 US/Eastern. Note that the “neutral comment”
requirement appears to no longer be listed; the 2021-03-10 (47:20)
Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
53min
January 14, 20210x6B: GPL Enforcement Investigation DMCA Exemption Request
Software Freedom Conservancy filed multiple exemptions in the USA
Copyright Office Triennial Rulemaking Process under the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA). In this episode, Karen and Bradley explore the
details of Conservancy's filing to request permission to circumvent
technological restriction measures in order to investigate infringement of
other people's copyright, which is a necessary part of investigations of
alleged violations of the GPL and other copyleft licenses.
Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:39)
Bradley claims that you'll now love the audcast more than ever
(02:51)

Conservancy filed many exemptions as part of the currently ongoing
triennial DMCA Process. (02:50)

Segment 1 (04:22)
Everyone in the Free Software community wishes the USA's Digital
Millennium Copyright Act didn't exist. (05:24)

Bradley is currently doing research going to the year 1790 that shows
the foundations of the copyright act, but Karen points out that Bradley
isn't a professional copyright historian (yet). He points out he
is an amateur copyright historian (05:45)

DMCA is the USA's implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT),
but is more a restrictive copyright act than the WCT requires. (06:50)

Bradley mentioned that the three videos from the Copyright Office,
which
are linked to from Conservancy's blog post on the subject that, while
they are Copyright Office propaganda, that are helpful to explain the
DMCA (10:57):
A Legal Overview of § 1201 (PDF slides only).

The Triennial Rulemaking Process for §1201 (PDF slides only).

Streamlined Petitions for Renewed Exemptions (PDF slides only).

Conservancy filed the most
exemption requests in the 2020/2021 Rulemaking Process (21:25)
Segment 2 (28:07)
Conservancy filed an exemption request
and a “Long
Form” comment in support of it that was labeled
“Class 16: Computer Programs &—; Copyright License Investigation”
by the Copyright Office (29:00)
Bradley
mentioned that people can get arrested just for giving talks under the DMCA,
referring to Dmitry Sklyarov. Adobe simply called the FBI and got him
arrested under DMCA. (38:50)
Segment 3 (34:36)

If you are a Conservancy Supporter as well as being a FaiFCast listener,
you can join this
mailing list to receive announcements of live recordings and attend
them through Conservancy's Big Blue Button (BBB) server.
Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
52min
March 31, 20200x6A: Live Show from SeaGL 2019
The first live podcast of Free as in Freedom, hosted at SeaGL
2019 in November 2019. Hear questions from the studio audience and
answers from Bradley and Karen.
Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:38)

Producer Dan speaks on mic to introduce that this is a live show.

Segment 1 (01:17)
This is a live show from SeaGL 2019, a
community-organized FaiP
(02:15)

Carol Smith from Microsoft asked about being a charity in the USA
under recent tax changes regarding tax deduction and, and asked about Conservancy's
annual fundraiser which had completed by the time this show
was released. (04:53)

Deb took a photo during the show (07:30)

A questioner asked about the so-called “ethical but-non-FOSS
licenses”. Bradley gave an answer that is supplemented well by
this blog post (10:15) and Karen mentioned at CopyleftConf
2020 there was a discussion about this. (15:15) The follow up question
was also related to these topics (15:44).

Eric Hopper asked about how Conservancy decides when a project joins,
and what factors Conservancy considers in projects joining (18:14)

A written questioner asked how to handle schools requiring proprietary
software as part of their coursework. (22:00)

Michael Dexter asked about Karen's teaching at Columbia Law
School. (27:25)

A written questioner asked about copyleft-next's
sunset clause. (29:22) Karen mentioned “Copyleft, All wrongs
reversed” as it appeared on n June 1976 on Tiny BASIC, which
inspired the term copyleft to mean what it does today. (30:45)

Karen spoke about the issues of copyright and trademark regarding
Disney, that is supplemented by
this blog post. (32:52)

Carol Smith asked what Karen and Bradley thought were Conservancy's
and/or FOSS' biggest achievements in the last decade. (35:20) Karen
mentioned Outreachy was a major
success. (37:08)

A questioner asked about using the CASE Act to help in GPL
enforcement. Bradley discussed how it might ultimately introduce problems
similar to arbitration
clauses. (41:42) Since the podcast was recorded, the CASE Act has
also passed the Senate, but does not seem to have been signed by the
President. (47:30)

Bradley noted that Mako Hill has pointed out that FOSS
has not been involved in lobbying enough. (48:10)

A questioner in the audience asked about the Mozilla Corporation
structure would allow Mozilla to do lobbying for FOSS. (50:57) Karen
explained the Mozilla corporate legal structure (51:35).

A questioner in the audience asked about Mako
Hill's keynote and how individuals can help further the cause of software
freedom. (54:53)
Michael Dexter asked if software patents are still as much of a threat as
they once were. (1:01:30)
Carol asked about the supreme court hearing the Oracle v. Google case
(1:09:04)
Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
1h 22min
November 12, 20190x69: Microsoft's E-Book Platform and Other DRM Disasters
Karen and Bradley discuss the end to Microsoft's e-book platform and
generally the dangers and disasters that Digital Restrictions Management
(DRM) cause for software users and developers.
Show Notes:

Karen and Bradley discuss the end to Microsoft's e-book platform and
generally the dangers and disasters that Digital Restrictions Management
(DRM) cause for software users and developers.
Segment 0 (00:35)
Bradley mentioned that Microsoft ended
their e-book platform. He said this was “last month” but
we ended up releasing this show late, so it was in August 2019
(01:31).

Bradley mentioned the analog hole. (09:50)

Karen discussed the exception
process under DMCA, which Conservancy
participated in regarding “Smart” TVs. (12:30)

Bradley mentioned this historical
burning of the Library of Alexandria as a Roman weapon, comparing it
to DRM. (15:07)

Bradley talked about how Netflix
and Microsoft used Silverlight initially as the method of DRM, and
that Microsoft was a leader in the entertainment industry in providing DRM
(20:00)

Segment 1 (26:31)
Bradley and Karen discuss how DRM and other lock-down of devices,
including medical devices, are creating problems in society generally.

Karen noted that the role of for-profit companies is not to
safeguard the public interest. (41:10)

Bradley mentioned you can turn
off DRM on the Google Play store for your book (as the
publisher). (43:04)

Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
47min
May 31, 20190x68: Molly De Blanc at CopyleftConf 2019
Bradley and Karen enjoy and discuss Molly De Blanc's keynote at the
first annual CopyleftConf, entitled The Margins of Software Freedom, followed by an exclusive interview with Molly!
Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:37)
Bradley mentioned (without the title) the film, When
a Stranger Calls, which is indeed a real movie, not a TV movie,
and was from the late 1970s —
although Bradley saw it on TV sometime in the 1980s. (02:15)

Segment 1 (04:11)

A recording of Molly De
Blanc's keynote at the first annual (2019) CopyleftConf, entitled entitled
The Margins of Software Freedom. Slides
for Molly's talk are available on her gitlab account.
Segment 2 (20:11)

Bradley and Karen talk about the keynote and set up the interview.
Segment 3 (23:56)

Extended interview with Molly from on site at CopyleftConf 2019!
Segment 4 (34:06)
Bradley and Karen discuss what ideas Molly's interview got them
thinking about.

Bradley wrote a blog post about Delta's
anti-union marketing. (40:50)

Molly De Blanc is now an employee at
the GNOME Foundation and President
of the Open Source Initiative (52:53)

Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
59min
May 11, 20190x67: Analysis of Two Backports of GPLv3 Termination Provisions to GPLv2
Bradley and Karen discuss two additional permissions that can be used
to “backport” the GPLv3
Termination provisions to GPLv2
— the Kernel Enforcement Statement Additional Permission, and the
Red Hat Cooperation Commitment. A blog post on Conservancy's site summarizes the discussion on this show.
Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:35)
Bradley mentioned irregardless
is not actually a word, but it does appear to be slang, which dates
back to 1795! (03:23)

The
additional permission system was codified as a formal part of
GPLv3, but are generally more informal under GPLv2. (05:24)

Karen explained what the Principles
of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement. (07:49)

Karen mentioned that Daleks terminate!
(08:51)

Segment 1 (13:04)
Bradley mentioned the inbound=outbound FOSS licensing
contributor assent system (18:15)

Segment 2 (26:10)
Karen and Bradley discuss the term “non-defensive” and what
it means.

Bradley mentioned the Twin
Peaks lawsuit as a non-hypothetical case where the RHCC would not
apply where GPL enforcement was used by Red Hat itself as a retaliation
tactic. (29:23)

The Kernel
Enforcement Statement and the RHCC
are available online.

Segment 3 (38:40)

The next episode of will be an interview with Molly De Blanc and
recording of her keynote at CopyleftConf 2019
Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
42min
April 22, 20190x66: The End of Hellwig vs. VMware
Bradley and Karen discuss the details of the completion
of the lawsuit (which Conservancy supported) between Christoph Hellwig and
VMware in Germany.
Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:37)
Bradley mentioned the episode of Red Dwarf,
White
Hole, where the characters
are speaking too slowly or two quickly due to time
differentials. (01:30)

Bradley explained that the
Hellwig vs. VMware suit in Germany has concluded. (03:30)

German is a civil law
legal system. (05:15)

Christoph Hellwig announced
on his website that he has decided not to appeal. (07:18)

Bradley did a technical
analysis how much of Christoph's code appeared in the infringing VMware
product. (07:50)

Till Jaeger
was Christoph's lawyer; Till was also the lawyer for Harald Welte's
(currently defunct) gpl-violations.org
project. (09:04)
Segment 1 (09:26)
“Trolling”
refers to being a non-practicing entity. Patrick McHardy is specifically
a practicing entity, since he upstreamed a lot of code in
Linux. (09:50)

Bradley was thinking of the patent troll, Intellectual
Ventures. (10:40)

Bradley that the Eastern
district of Texas hears many patent cases in the USA. (10:50)

Bradley mentioned a This
American Life, Episode 411, which discussed patents. Show
hosts/producers Laura Sydell and Alex Blumberg visit one of those
“empty-but-not” office buildings in the Eastern District of
Texas. (11:18)

Bradley
and Karen wrote about Patrick McHardy's behavior back in July 2016
— Conservancy was the first to talk about it publicly. Bradley
sought to prevent the “compliance industrial complex” from
using knowledge of Patrick's behavior to unduly scare people. (13:10)

Conservancy (with FSF) also published the
Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement (15:10)

The rest of the Netfilter team,
except for Patrick McHardy, endorsed the
Principles. (16:30)

The VMware suit started 2015-03-05, and began before Patrick McHardy
started his problematic behavior. While the VMware suit was working its
way through the court, McHardy had filed many inappropriate
lawsuits. (18:30)

German court decisions are very rarely published, but thanks to hard
work by everyone involved, the appeal
decision, and the lower
Court's decision (the latter of which was also translated
into English.) (27:30)
Segment 2 (33:01)

In the next episode, Karen will discuss the Kernel Enforcement
Statement Additional Permission, and the Red Hat “Cooperation
Commitment”. (35:40)
Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
39min
April 02, 20190x65: Linux Foundation's Community Bridge
Bradley and Karen discuss and critique the new initiative by the Linux Foundation called
CommunityBridge. The podcast includes various analysis that expands
upon their
blog post about Linux Foundation's CommunityBridge.
Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:36)
Conservancy helped Free Software Foundation and GNOME Foundation begin
fiscal sponsorship work. (07:50)

Conservancy has always been very coordinated with Software in the
Public Interest, which is a FOSS fiscal sponsor that predates Conservancy. (08:26)

Conservancy helped NumFocus get started as a fiscal sponsor by providing
advice. (08:53)

The above are all 501(c)(3) charities, but there are also 501(c)(6)
fiscal sponsors, such as Linux Foundation and Eclipse
Foundation. (10:00)

Bradley mentioned that projects that are forks can end up in different
fiscal sponsors, such as Hudson
being in Eclipse Foundation, and Jenkins
being associated with a Linux Foundation sub-org. (10:30)

Bradley mentioned that any project — be it SourceForge, GitHub, or
Community Bridge — that attempts to convince FOSS developers to use
proprietary software for their projects is immediately suspect
(12:00)

Open Collective, a
for-profit company seeking to do fiscal sponsorship (but attempting to
release their code for it) is likely under the worst
“competitive” threat from this initiative. (19:50)

Segment 1 (21:23)
Projects that use CommunityBridge are
required to act in the common business interest of the Linux Foundation
members. (27:30)

Board of Directors seats at the Linux Foundation are for sale,
according to their by-laws. (28:50)

Bradley advises that you should not put anything copylefted into
CommunityBridge — given Linux Foundation's position on copyleft and
citing the ArduPilot/DroneCode example. (29:50)

CommunityBridge appears to
only allow governance based on the “benevolent dictator for life
model” (31:40), at least with regard to who controls the money
(34:30)

Bradley mentioned the LWN
article about Community Bridge. (33:22)

Segment 2 (36:54)
Karen mentioned that CommunityBridge also purports to address
diversity and security issues for FOSS projects. (37:00)

Bradley mentioned the code hosted on k.sfconservancy.org and also the Reimbursenator
project that PSU students wrote. (42:00)

Segment 3 (42:44)

Bradley and Karen discuss (or, possibly don't) discuss what's coming up
on the next episode. Fact of the matter is that this announcement wasn't written yet when we recorded this episode and we weren't sure if 0x65 would be released before or after that announcement was released. We'll be discussing that topic on 0x66.
Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
48min
March 27, 20190x64: Our Producer Dan Lynch Interviewed at Copyleft Conf 2019
Bradley and Karen interview their own producer, Dan Lynch, on site at Copyleft Conf 2019.
Show Notes:
Segment 0 (00:46)
Karen now teaches teaches a
course at Columbia University. (03:40)

In addition to being the producer of Free as in Freedom,
Dan Lynch was the host of Rat
Hole Radio, the co-host of Linux
Outlaws, and currently co-hosts Hollywood
Outlaws. (04:30)

Segment 1 (5:19)
Dan helps co-organize Oggcamp
which is having its tenth-anniversary event on Saturday 19
October 2019. (08:00)

Bradley mentioned the phrase from IT Crowd
quote: Did you see that ludicrous display last night? (11:08)

Dan talked about The
Manchester Ship Canal. (13:16)

Dan promoted Hollywood
Outlaws where he and his co-host Fab talk about Bosch.
(23:18)

Dan promoted his own podcast about comics called Tales of the
Unattested. (23:27)

Dan Lynch has a personal website,
which has his blog. (23:55)

Bradley referenced the phrase You
are no Jack Kennedy which was stated by
Bentsen on Wednesday 5 October 1988 during the VP debate between
Quayle and Bentsen for the 1988 USA Presidential campaign. Details and
background of this are explained by NBC in
this story. (26:30)
Segment 2 (28:23)

Bradley and Karen briefly dissect the interview with Dan.
Segment 3 (32:22)

Karen and Bradley mention that they'll discuss the Linux Foundation
initiative, “Community
Bridge” in the next episode. If you want a preview Bradley and
Karen's thoughts, you can read
their blog post about Linux Foundation's “Community Bridge”
initiative.
Send feedback and comments on the cast
to .
You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and
by following Conservancy on
identi.ca and and Twitter.
Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch
of danlynch.org.
Theme
music written and performed
by Mike Tarantino
with Charlie Paxson on drums.
The content
of this
audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
...more
36min

FAQs about Free as in Freedom:

How many episodes does Free as in Freedom have?

The podcast currently has 111 episodes available.