The hacker approach: the deve- lopment of free licenses IPNM 2007 Kaido Kikkas This document uses the GNU Free Documentation License (v1.2 or newer).

in the beginning... ●...there were hackers ● The Jargon File: ● hacker: n [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.

the Hacker Ethic ● From the original 50s MIT to today's thinkers (Himanen, Castells, Benkler, Lessig and many others) ● "The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible."

the days of old ● MIT at the end of 50s: “computer science” == “rocket science” ● John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky ● Tech Model Railroad Club and its S & P subcommittee ● 1959 – first course on computer science ● 1959 TX-0, 1961 PDP-1 ● 1963 Project MAC, 1970 MIT AI Lab

no place for business ●... and no place for intellectual property: – an elite thing for the elect few – military connections – bureaucracy was kept separate – resources were scarce – hardware-specific software

the playful cleverness ● MIT AI Lab as the birthplace of hacker ethic – information is something that has value only when distributed – artificial obstacles to spreading information are evil and must be removed – due to the scarcity of resources, work results must be shared in order to prevent duplicate efforts

arrival of business ● end of 70s / beginning of 80s: – more user-friendly solutions – growing horizontal market – improving portability (e.g. Unix) – legal maneuvres (e.g. AT & T in 1984)

The lesson from IBM PC ● 1981 – the IBM 5150 (“Personal Computer”) ● off-the-shelf parts (“LEGO”) with open architecture, the BIOS was copied by others ● the IPR controversy – others started to produce “PC-compatibles” without paying revenues ● Others had no chance on market (even technically more advanced Macs) ● The king of personal computer landscape for over 20 years by now

Richard M. Stallman ● The last of true hackers (Levy) ● 1979 breakup of the AI Lab – LMI vs Symbolics ● One-man war ● 1983 – GNU project ● 1985 – the GNU Manifesto ● 1989 – the initial version of GNU GPL

Return of the hackers ● Linus Torvalds 1991 ● GNU license, used many parts of the GNU system => speedy development ● – the BSD family ● 1995 – LAMP ● 1996 – KDE and GNOME ● Mozilla ● OpenOffice.org....

GNU GPL ● Development: – 1989 – initial version – 1991 – v. 2.0 – 2007? - v 3.0 ● Based on author's rights, but stresses the user rights rather than proprietary conditions for use ● Used for about 70% of free software

Four basic rights ● the right to use, copy and distribute the work for any purpose (including business!) ● the right to study the work - for software, demands inclusion of the source code ● the right to modify the work and develop new works based on it ● the right to distribute the derived works under the same conditions

Copyleft ● “Copyleft: all rights reversed” ● the main idea behind the later “free culture” ● while different, can be legally enforced just as proprietary licenses

in short ● GPL-ed software can be freely copied, changed and redistributed provided that – the same rights are exercised on derivatives - therefore, it is not possible to use GPL-ed software to develop a proprietary product – the source code must be available - usually it is distributed with the work, but the license also permits on-demand distribution. In this case, the software must include clear guidelines how to obtain the source (e.g. by or web)

some points – if a GPL-ed product is changed only for 'in- house' use, publishing the changes is not mandatory. However, as soon as the derivative will be distributed outside, the source must be made available. – GPL directly forbids any discrimination on use - this also means that all commercial use is fully legal. Both original and derived software can be sold (done by e.g. Red Hat). – GPL has a clause about the work being distributed 'as is', i.e. having no warranty. Actually, the market for these services is completely open!

why Bill hates it ● it does not let him to use free software authors as unpaid labour force for developing their proprietary applications (ct. BSD) ● it can clearly be enforced ● it is resistant to EEE

Other free licenses ● BSD (Apache, MIT, X11) ● LGPL ● lots of others ● Two schools of thought – FSF vs OSI

final words ● Old ethic, new technology ● Different, but legally enforceable ● Base for the emerging free culture