The League for Programming Freedom, "an organization that opposes software patents and user interface copyrights" founded by Richard Stallman in 1989, is back and open for membership.

From their recent announcement:

We are pleased to announce the return of the League for Programming Freedom, the membership organization founded by Richard Stallman two decades ago to fight against software patents and user interface copyright. The LPF has been dormant since 1996, but we have completed all the legal paperwork necessary to exercise the full abilities of a 501(c)(4) non-profit tax-exempt corporation. Thanks to the stewardship of Treasurer Aubrey Jaffer, we have funds to get things going again.

Hi, my name is Tal Schechter, and I am the new campaigns intern at the FSF for the Fall of 2009. I am currently enrolled full-time at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, as a third-year student concentrating in science communication and ancient Jewish text scholarship. I have been playing with computers since my parents got an Apple II Classic in the early nineties. Questions of "Tal, why does this not work anymore?" were soon to follow. Finally, at 13, I broke away from Macs, with the first PC to enter the household. Both before and after the new PC, I had been going to computer camp, where I had first heard about Ubuntu, Gentoo, and other things people called "Linux."

An avid "Linux" user for some time, it was not until my first year of college that I encountered the concept of GNU/Linux and free software as different from open source. With the aid of the GLUG there, I learned about the importance of the user's freedoms. While I had been aware of the openness of the operating system I was using, it was not until I learned about the freedom aspects of free software that I was propelled into a proactive projection to convince other people that GNU/Linux is a better choice of operating system for them from moral, ethical, social, and economic standpoints.

At this point in time, I reach out to both avid computer users and to those who feel they don't know anything about computers, to try and educate them about the merits of using free software. As a person concentrating in science communication, I am concerned with the lack of lay explanations of free software. I hope that in my work as an intern at the FSF and beyond, I will help to explain the importance of user freedom to everyone, regardless of prior computer knowledge.

Even though sharing knowledge is one of the most basic principles of science, and even though much scientific research is funded by public institutions or universities, the vast majority of scientific papers end up in inaccessible troves controlled by private journals. AcaWiki is a brand new project to change that, using free sotfware and with freely licensed contributions.

From their announcement: "Currently, it can cost up to $35 to download an academic paper—a significant cost, especially because thorough research on any topic usually entails downloading many papers. AcaWiki’s approach takes advantage of the fact that copyright does not apply to ideas, only to the written expression of those ideas. Scholars can thus post summaries of their or others’ research online as long as they are not copying verbatim beyond what fair-use laws permit."

In other words, scholars can now access long, meticulously detailed summaries of the articles they're interested in. Summaries can be written by any community member with access to the original article, or by the original team of researchers themselves. Even if academics face strong incentives or requirements to publish in private journals, nothing in copyright law prohibits them from republishing a summary elsewhere.

AcaWiki is built on Semantic MediaWiki, which is free software available under the GNU GPL (it's the same software the FSF uses for LibrePlanet). But beyond just using free software, AcaWiki takes a free software approach: rather than waiting for journals make papers more available, they're organizing a community of experts to build a free equivalent that will be just as useful to students and scholars.

If you'd like to be an advocate for AcaWiki in your institution, or help summarize key papers in your field of expertise, get involved.

In a related story about people making progress against limits on the sharing of ideas, see the FSF's amicus brief in the Supreme Court "Bilski" case.

by Richard M. Stallman
President

Many in our community are suspicious of the CodePlex Foundation. With its board of directors dominated by Microsoft employees and ex-employees, plus apologist Miguel de Icaza, there is plenty of reason to be wary of the organization. But that doesn't prove its actions will be bad.

Someday we will be able to judge the organization by its actions (including its public relations). Today we can only try to anticipate what it will do, based on its statements and Microsoft's statements.

The first thing we see is that the organization ducks the issue of users' freedom; it uses the term "open source" and does not speak of "free software". These two terms stand for different philosophies which are based on different values: free software's values are freedom and social solidarity, whereas open source cites only practical convenience values such as powerful, reliable software. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html for more explanation.

Evidently Microsoft would rather confront the practical competition of open source than the free software movement's ethical criticism. Its long standing practice of criticizing only "open source" does double duty: attacking one opponent while distracting attention from the other.

CodePlex follows the same practice. Its stated goal is to convince "commercial software companies" to contribute more to "open source". Since nearly all open source programs are also free software, these programs will probably be free, but the "open source" philosophy doesn't teach developers to defend their freedom. If they don't understand the importance of this freedom, developers may succumb to Microsoft's ploys encouraging them to use weaker licenses that are vulnerable to "embrace and extend" or patent co-optation, and to make free software dependent on proprietary platforms.

This foundation is not the first Microsoft project to bear the name "CodePlex". There is also codeplex.com, a project hosting site, whose list of allowed licenses excludes GNU GPL version 3. Perhaps this reflects the fact that GPL version 3 is designed to protect a program's free software status from being subverted by Microsoft's patents through deals like the Novell-Microsoft pact. We don't know that the CodePlex Foundation will try to discourage GPL version 3, but it would fit Microsoft's pattern.

The term "commercial software companies" embodies a peculiar confusion. Every business is by definition commercial, so all software developed by a business—whether free or proprietary—is automatically commercial software. But there is a widespread public confusion between "commercial software" and "proprietary software". (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.)

This confusion is a serious problem because it falsely claims free software business to be impossible. Many software companies already contribute to free software, and these commercial contributions are quite useful. Perhaps Microsoft would like people to assume these facts are impossible.

Based on these facts, we can see that CodePlex will encourage developers not to think about freedom. It will subtly spread the idea that free software business is impossible without the support of a proprietary software company like Microsoft. However, it may convince some proprietary software companies to release additional free software. Will that be a contribution to computer users' freedom?

It will be, if the software thus contributed works well on free platforms, in free environments. But that is just the opposite of what Microsoft has said it seeks to achieve.

Sam Ramji, now president of CodePlex, said a few months ago that Microsoft (then his employer) wanted to promote development of free applications that encourage use of Microsoft Windows (http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3811941). Perhaps the aim of CodePlex is to suborn free software application developers into making Windows their main platform. Many of the projects hosted now on codeplex.com are add-ons for proprietary software. These programs are caught in a trap similar to the former Java Trap (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html).

That would be harmful if it succeeds, because a program that doesn't run (or doesn't run well) in the Free World does not contribute to our freedom. A non-free program takes away its users' freedom. To avoid being harmed in that way, we need to reject proprietary system platforms as well as proprietary applications. CodePlex free add-ons to a proprietary base increase society's dependence on that base — the opposite of what we need.

Will free software application developers resist this attempt to undermine our progress towards freedom? Here is where their values become crucial. Developers that adhere to the "open source" philosophy, which does not value freedom, may not care whether their software's users run it on a free operating system or a proprietary one. But developers who demand freedom, for themselves and for others, can recognize the trap and keep out of it. To remain free, we must make freedom our goal.

If the CodePlex Foundation wishes to be a real contributor to the free software community, it must not aim at free add-ons to non-free packages. It needs to encourage development of portable software capable of running on free platforms based on GNU/Linux and other free operating systems. If it tries to seduce us into going in the opposite direction, we must make sure to refuse.

However good or bad the CodePlex Foundation's actions, we must not accept them as an excuse for Microsoft's acts of aggression against our community. From its recent attempt to sell patents to proxy trolls who could then do dirty work against GNU/Linux to its longstanding promotion of Digital Restrictions Management, Microsoft continues to act to harm us. We would be fools indeed to let anything distract us from that.

Copyright 2009 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.

Xander has primarily been working on Valix, a new operating system with a simple and integrated approach. Working in assembler and C, he has begun creating an operating system that already has an integrated graphics system and a programming language in the works.

Initially, Xander didn't believe that his operating system would be welcomed by the FSF in fear that it would draw attention away from GNU/Linux. In fact, the opposite could be said! By creating a free operating system, Xander is drawing attention to the importance of having an operating system to use, study, and hack, especially one less massive and differently structured than the Linux kernel. Xander has documented Valix thoroughly on valix.co.nr so that the project is not only about his own exploration in writing an operating system, but also helping others explore doing the same. Xander has also been one of those people we can rely on to consistently be on IRC and contribute his knowledge.

Thank you to all the GNU Generation participants. It was not easy to select only one from such a great group of applications!

Also, if you are approximately aged 13-18, and would like to (or already do) contribute to free software, learn more about GNU Generation.