Eräitä huomioita

The Ministry of Trade and Industry of Finland has switched to Mozilla Firefox as the browser of choice. The decision is an outcome of an internal project to enhance security of the operating environment at the Ministry. Internet Explorer can still be used for sites that have been proven secure or that require browser specific features.

I think this means about 300 people, but it seems the Finnish government is slowly moving to free solutions.

The announcement in Finnish

Nokia, one of the biggest software patents lobbyists in the EU, surprisingly shows some support for free software. According to the statement, “Nokia hereby commits not to assert any of its Patents (as defined herein below) against any Linux Kernel (as defined herein below) existing as of 25 May 2005.” This means any Nokia patents can be used in the kernel. This would be wonderful - if it was for real. The statement goes on:

The aforesaid non-assertion shall extend to any future Linux Kernel to the extent that Nokia does not declare any new functionality embodied in such Linux Kernel to be outside the scope of this Patent Statement. Nokia shall issue such declaration through its website no later than one hundred and twenty (120) days after the official release of such Linux Kernel. (Emphasis added.)

You’re allowed to use my patents - unless I tell you not to. A trap is also included: because you’re only allowed to use those patents in the official kernel, if such code is copied to any other software (say *BSD), the patent license doesn’t apply anymore.

In other news, Nokia announced a Linux-based device.

Mikko Välimäki has published his PhD disseration on open source licensing on the web. The book is called The Rise of Open Source Licensing. A Challenge to the Use of Intellectual Property in the Software Industry. The book is on different licensing models but also has bits on history of the movement and history of copyright and patents. It looks very interesting. I recommend you to take a look.

Is software work or is it labor, asks David M. Berry in the Free Software Magazine. He refers to Hannah Arendt’s distinction of labor and work.
Following the Ancient Greek tradition, Arendt defines labor as something done of necessity. Labor used to be the duty of slaves, now it has become the life of the masses, something that docile bodies do to “make their living”. Work is seen as an activity that creates something that lasts. Work is important because it makes politics possible:

This is important because it is only by escaping necessity (i.e. the constant requirement to produce things we need) that we can begin to communicate and become human as political animals. For Arendt, Work is a prerequisite for the possibility of Action – the realm of great deeds and great words.

Berry argues (like Marxists and the critical theory before him) that in today’s society, we’re all caught in a spiral of laboring and consuming and always alienated from the product of our work. Free software is promising in this respect because the products of free software activities are work - something that lasts - and also commons, i.e. something everybody has access to.

Free software certainly has liberating potential but what makes hacking possible, economically? Free software might turn labor into work, but at whose expence? While we build an information society here in the North, we’re at the same time “outsourcing” the labor into the South in the form of production of food, clothing and electronics. And often on not so fair terms.

grex replied to my previous post:

Interestingly enough the Creative Commons people try to have licenses translated and valid in each of the countries. I really don’t know how this can (and if it will) cause problems some time in the future… Maybe the reason for this different strategies is because of the different origin of the main members of these communities (Stallman as a programmer and Lessig et al. as lawyers).

Taking a look at some of the international CC licenses, it seems careful work has been done in adapting the license to the local jurisdiction but I believe that just translating/localizing the license risks creating loop holes that didn’t exist in the original. Moral rights could be one. I see moral rights more as a potential loophole could could be used by the copyright holder to prevent some use of the software than a problem of protection.

Take Zynaddsubfx for instance. The author has licensed his program under the GPL but has an extra wish: “Please don’t use this program to make music that is against God and Jesus Christ. Realize that the only way to the Salvation is Jesus Christ. Please don’t lose this chance and don’t make others to lose it!”

What if somebody took Zynaddsubfx and turned it into a (GPL-licensed) program called Satanic Synthesizer that was designed to create death metal type of music? Would this be a breach of the original author’s moral rights? Could the author sue based on his moral rights, although there was no GPL infringement?

Lessig has admitted that “In many jurisdictions that protect moral rights, you can’t just automatically give away the moral right, without knowing something about how, or in what context, the work is to be used. For those jurisdictions then, a Creative Commons-like mechanism just wouldn’t work.” He goes on saying that CC wasn’t created for these jurisdictions.

With regard to Stallman vs. Lessig I think it is more about their ideological background. Lessig seems to be constitutionalist whose argument is based on the idea of individuals’ rights, freedom of speech etc. while Stallman is more a communitarianian/anarchist type for whom voluntary co-operation and non-hierarchical society are primary goals.