Ciarán's free software notes

For anyone looking to understand the proposed changes to the GPL for addressing DRM or software patents, I've made two documents:

• DRM and GPLv3
• Patents and GPLv3

I just got the relevant proposed changes to the licence, and attached public comments made specifically about each proposed change by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen. Simple? Hopefully.

I had the idea because I wanted to look at just the software patent parts while doing research for a presentation. I realised then that I'm surely not the only one that wants to look at specific parts, so the first doc I made was for DRM - since that seems to be the one with the most public interest - and then I made the software patent document I wanted.

I prioritised making these, and made nice printable version, because the 2nd international GPLv3 conference takes place on April 21st and 22nd. I'll be going, and I thought it would be good to have some print outs to get informed discussion going.

The public comments came from the transcripts of Moglen's GPLv3 launch presentation, Stallman's GPLv3 presentation at FOSDEM, and Stallman's recent GPLv3 presentation in Turin. There's more information about GPLv3 on FSFE's GPLv3 project page.

From 17h20 until 19h00 I was standing outside the building of the EU vs. MS anti-trust case hearing, talking to Sean Daly. Sean was previously a journalist and recently moved to Brussels. He contacted me to lend a hand with the PR side of the MS anti-trust case. There were 15 or so other press people also hanging around.

Someone comes out. It's Brad Smith, Microsoft's lawyer. He's smiling and talking about the great dialogue that was missing until now, and the great breakthrough that has happened, and how finally the requirements on them have been clarified.

What's all that about? Well, Microsoft face fines of up to 2 million euro per day which can be back dated to last December. To avoid paying them, I guess they'll argue that their non-compliance was all down to a little communication problem, and now that's fixed. Water under the bridge. I don't know if they'll get away with that.

Myself and Sean were waiting for FSFE's lawyer, Carlo Piana. When he came out, we helped put him talking to some journalists, then waited until that was finished and we took him aside to record an interview. That should appear on Groklaw.net soon. (update: it's there now)

Before going to the anti-trust venue, I had been working on FSFE's response to the European Commission's questionnaire "On the patent system of Europe". It's been approved, marked up, emailed, and hand-posted, and is now also online: fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/fsfe-patstrat-response.pdf .

I went back to the office, updated FSFE's GPLv3 webpages, contacted the FSF India main mailing list to pass on info about GPLv3, and discussed the GPLv3 consultation process with a lawyer in the Philippines, helped Sean with the transcript of the interview, informed Carlo, sent some emails about the GPLv3 process and the international GPLv3 conference to be held in Europe later this year.

People ask me what my average day is. It's not always like this - there are days when I answer email all day long, but there's no average day. It's 08h40, I've been working for just over 23 hours. Saturday could be a day off :-)

UPDATE: Groklaw now has the Carlo Piana interview.