 Given that I know exactly who everyone is in the audience should I really do my talk or should we just communicate about let's have a conversation It feels rather strange. I guess my talks aren't controversial enough anymore Maybe that's what it is because now you people used to show up because I say such controversial things or so they say Well, you know they I guess they buried me in the schedule. This is not going to trip over that so so I was thinking about this because I'm in the south I grew up in Baltimore and It's kind of halfway between the south it was it's south of Mason Dixon south of the north It's south of Mason Dixon line, but it was on the side of the north during the war between the states so I People who've in the north think I grew up in the south and people in the south think I grew up in the north and that's always the way it's been for me and There is a certain southern sensibility that I see down here in New Orleans very similar to what it's like in Baltimore it has that kind of southern charm to it in a lot of ways and And my mother gave me some very probably southern advice that you should never ever discuss religion or politics and polite company You never do that You might guess you might have already guessed that I was rather rebellious young man and so I think a lot of things that are important are always mired in very complicated politics because Any time there is an important issue reasonable people will disagree and That's what really creates a lot of politics is when reasonable people have two different positions that are diametrically opposed This happens all the time. I Finally really started understand gpl compliance when I understood this that there are lots of people who reasonably disagree about the policy question of Gpl itself and Because of that disagreement a whole myriad of complex issues kind of fall right out of it and a lot of it's based in personal beliefs And I in nothing on this slide can I say is a provable scientific fact? It's what I believe is right through various experiences. I've had my life I believe everybody should have the right to copy share modify and redistribute all their software I believe it's a fundamental and alienable human right In other words, I believe that universal software freedom is something we should work to achieve It won't happen in my lifetime. It was a very depressing week when I finally realized at some point about 10 years ago That I would die in a world with proprietary software in it, and I probably will I'm almost certainly well But I believe that's what we should be working to sort it's towards I Think that licenses should be used to maximize that software freedom that I think it's the right thing to do to use The software license to try and get as much software freedom in the world as we can It's a belief that in other words means I believe in strong copy left And I think every developer does have a right to choose which free lot of software license they want You'll find an essay I wrote with Richard Stalman If 14 years ago now a long time ago In response to some things Tim O'Reilly said about how the right to proprietary software is for and I don't think people Should have a right to proprietary software But I do think people should probably have a right to choose which soft free software among all the OSI approved F7 approved licenses. They should be able to pick which one they like the best I don't have any problem with people picking permissive licenses. They're okay If you like a permissive license, that's free software. You should choose it I prefer a copy left license as you might guess and All of this is a set of moral beliefs. It's it's a moral code. It's not scientific fact People who disagree with me also have a separate moral code that disagrees with me But that's where sort of the the political disagreement begins. There's a different set of beliefs. I think that That's the fundamental issue that we disagree in the world about some moral beliefs regarding this issue of software freedom and I Think the debate of whether copy left makes sense whether we should have copy left in the world I don't think it's a debate that should be avoided. I think it's okay to have that debate On the other hand, I'm sick of having to constantly defend the idea of copy left. I find myself almost constantly in the last Three to five years having to defend why we should have copy left at all. I didn't used to have to do that There's always been the permissive versus copy left debates going back to I think I found the first one on Usenet in 1987 1986 somewhere around there, but I Think both types of projects have a right to exist and should exist Conservancy the organization that I spend my day job running has both types of projects We have plenty of permissive light licensed projects more than half of our projects are permissively licensed but we also have copy lefted projects and Our job as a fiscal sponsor organization for open source and free software projects is to do the things That our projects want to do and if they've picked a license They've picked a license because they believe in its policy decision So I want to help the permissively licensed projects be permissively licensed projects in the world and I want to help the copy lefted projects be copy lefted projects in the world and We could have created the Apache Software Foundation, but it already existed. There isn't an organization You can go to a few only like permissive licensing. You never want copy left Conservancy is welcoming all comers and if we didn't deal with compliance issues if we didn't do GPL enforcement, we'd be doing a disservice to our projects that have come to us and said Please help us with that issue. Please help us with GPL enforcement So some there's multiple people in this room who actually know that it's a wonderful life is my favorite movie a Couple years ago. I watch it every year, of course I usually twice a year the watch it end of watching twice in December at some point and there's this interesting exchange during the film between Spoiler alert, I don't know if I need to do a spoiler for a movie that came out in 1946 But I will anyway, so leave the room if you haven't seen it's a wonderful life and plan to see it but George is this guardian angel here of Of our of our illustrious George Bailey, by the way, I've often said I want to be the George Bailey of free software That's my life long goal but he has this this discussion with Clarence because they go into this bar and and Clarence is just saying hey I'm an angel. How's it going and people think this is weird and George is trying to tell him don't don't tell people You're an angel. Yeah, don't tell that. He's like, well, they don't believe it. Oh, they don't believe in angels here Okay, sorry, they don't believe in angels. He's not really believe in angels Why would they be surprised to see one and this is how I feel about copy left as people say because there are people out there So yeah, I like copy left and I tell them I do copy left enforcement and they say, oh, that's horrible Why did you do that? Well, if you believe in copy left, why are you surprised that people have to uphold copy left? It's not magic. I Don't believe in angels. So if I saw an angel, I would be surprised But if I believed in angels, why would I be surprised to see one? Why are people surprised to see copy left? Enforcement if they say they support copy left yet most people are many people are not most but many people are Many people are think this is the world's ending because copy left being enforced And it's the position of most for-profit companies in the Linux base. They are opposed to non-profit organizations doing enforcement of copy left. I Don't think it's logically consistent because many of those companies say they're supportive of copy left Some of them are against it which then it's logically consistent Um The fact of the matter is they're acting in their own self-interest. That's what companies do. I Put on a slide earlier at a Related conference that was here on site this week that oh they act in the interest of their shareholders And they're legally bound to do so somebody told me that wasn't quite right So the fact is they do generally act in their own corporate financial self-interest and They even use GPL enforcement when it suits them We've seen multiple cases of this of companies that otherwise we're not supportive of enforcing the GPL But they use GPL enforcement on their own copyrights when it suits them and In fact, I had a very strange experience with a very with a representative of a very large corporation At this conference last year and we walked around that marina in San Diego Where where it was where this conference was last year and this representative turns to me It says you don't understand if you don't stop doing GPL enforcement on Linux and busybox and Samba my company will stop using that software and I said you kind of flatter me that I Doing enforcement on three programs can change the business strategy of some big company Don't really see how that can be true I'm you I'm not that important in the world by far and as we get back and we're walking up the steps into the Venue he says oh, but by the way if you see any violations of our competitors let us know because we'll help you enforce there This seems pretty hypocritical to me Needless to say even though I've found violations among his competitors. I haven't gotten in touch So here's what I talk about religion So I went to I used to be a Catholic. I'm an atheist now but I went to a Catholic College and We I took a class on Flannery O'Connor and there's this interesting piece in in her habit of being where she talks about debating with Protestants regarding the issue of transubstantiation Karen may be the only person in the room who knows what transubstantiation is so I might have to explain it Catholics believe that the Eucharist is literally the blood and body of Christ like genetically it's a Catholic belief most Protestants don't share it and This fellow your account is having this arguing argument with a Protestant and and the Protestant says it's a beautiful symbol That's what matters. It's a symbol Flannery says this that's how I feel about the GPL if it's just a symbol of oh, we're gonna we're gonna support software freedom So we've slapped the GPL on our code to say Let's support software freedom But that's all you do with it You don't actually try to make sure that people comply with the license and give people software freedom Why bother with it at all to hell with the GPL if that's all you're gonna do with it I think We might as well use the Apache license if we're not going to enforce the GPL when people violate it and Unenforced copy left is functionally equivalent to a permissive license Because the only time the copy left parts matter is when somebody fails to comply voluntary compliance happens all the time in the permissive License communities people voluntarily give upstream to Apache projects all day long Beautiful contribution to our community. It's wonderful that they choose to do that It's their choice. They're not required People do the same for GPL projects lots of people even if it weren't GPL they would give upstream But there are people who choose to prioritize free software when they do it with Apache license software It's fully permitted when they do it with GPL software. It's not and when they do we should do something about it So Why are you making me give this talk because you most of the room knows this and I feel very weird I'm talking on this slide. This is the history of the busybox enforcement briefly Okay, that's fine. That's fine. You've never seen this slide. I use this slide a collab summit This is the exact the rest of my slide deck from here on out is the exact slide deck from collapse on it That early stuff was the only new stuff. So now this is my collapse on the top. Ah, there you go Okay, okay, okay, so it just feels weird. I know you all so well What's that I'm more nervous giving this talk to this group Than I would be if it was full right because it's all these people who know me. Well, right? It's very bizarre But I sit in the back of the room and you guys you guys fill rooms I can't I can't even get you know, you know people who aren't personally Have personal conversations with me today in this room. I've had a personal conversation with each one of you today It's a little weird. Okay, it's You know, I'm more nervous than you've probably ever seen me giving a talk. I mean really it's weird So so so the history of busybox, which you all know is is Erica Anderson rewrote it from scratch more or less Starting around 2001 after it had been used in the Debbie and project for a while because he realizes it can be used for embedded systems and what happens is over the next Six or seven years is it quickly becomes the standard for building embedded systems But Linux with busybox and you can build an embedded system operating system very very easily have every basically everything you need for the operating system It's the peanut butter and jelly in my view of operating systems, but it's almost always used out of compliance With both the busybox license GPL and the Linux license so for years I did enforcement for the busybox project as you all know and A little while ago. Oh, this doesn't the title doesn't make any sense because the oh, no It's I was supposed to carry that picture over so the C says it's degrading, right? So I don't know I think that it's okay for what we were doing in busybox enforcement, which was we had the busybox developers lined up to do enforcement and We would ask and I've talked about this in my talks before that under section four of the GPL when you lose your distribution rights to a program you lose them forever effectively under version two of the GPL and Only the copyright holders can restore them One of the things the busybox developers decided to do Was say we want before we restore your rights for busybox we want to see compliance on all the GPL programs in The embedded system and of course Linux was there because it's the peanut butter and jelly of embedded systems that busybox and Linux go together a number of people got upset about this and The people the funny thing is is and I've talked about this in other talks Among the people who were upset about the situation after while we're the busybox developers themselves because While they were asking for comprehensive compliance as part of what they wanted to require over time They kind of became a little Upset that they were the poster child the Linux project was annoyed as well. So This whole thing happens this big story. I have a link on the slides You all read the the John Corbett's LWN article a tempest in a toy box And so as this is happening This is where Dennis really starts who's the current maintainer visitors say wait, you know we're the poster child for GPL and He says to me more people as I'm walking through Brussels before Fosdom 2012 Dennis says to me More people know my project for GPL enforcement than for the technology and it bothers me Because I care about the GPL, but I want to be known for writing great code that happens to be GPL not having a GPL project That's code, right? And so I said that makes sense and he convinced me in the end that we should have Linux developers involved He was also sort of annoyed. He's like why am I why am I doing the enforcement work for Linux guys? Why don't this guys do the enforcement work themselves? Because they should be here with us. Why are they standing with us together if they care about the GPL? They should stand with us if they don't care about the GPL and sort of a flannery reconnaissance Although he didn't literally say this. I'm thinking tell with them if they don't care about the GPL, right? Well, like why go why go out on a limb for Linux? So Dennis says well, why don't you talk? To Linux people and people, you know in the Linux community and start enforcing for them now the thing Dennis didn't know when he says this to me is that Various Linux developers particularly Matthew Garrett, but plenty other developers have been asking me for years Why won't you enforce for me? I'm like, well, I don't really have a project for you Busybox is a member of Conservancy and Linux obviously is not a member of Conservancy So I don't know how to structure it, you know, I have to figure out how to structure it in the right way and What we did is we sat down with our board of directors and our lawyers and said can we structure a project? It's just about compliance. That's what we did. That's what the GPL compliance project for Linux developers is So what we did as part of that was we sort of got all the projects together who GPL and we talked to all of them and said How do you feel about compliance? Do you want to be are you concerned about whether people violate the GPL? And pretty much all of them agreed Basically all of them that are GPL and LGP out agreed that we should get a source release that works from GPL violators If one of our projects is violated and if the GPL is infringed copyrights infringed violating the GPL we should get that and what we came to was Basically agreements with all our projects that Conservancy will do the work we we collaborate with the copyright holders involved we just have a mailing list and We talk every time there's a compliance matter. We talk about it and decide how we're going to proceed Now it turns out as we would expect busybox and Linux are the mostly violated Samba actually has a lot of violations on it as well once we started doing compliance for Samba We've had a number of different Samba matters. We've done one or two for other projects We've had one for Inkscape once we've done a few for For Mercurial there's been a few times when when Mercurial's GPL has been violated and we just work together with the copyright holders and Any copyright holder can join they sign an agreement with Conservancy It has to be approved by the project's leadership committee so that so we make sure that there's agreement among everybody that we're going to be doing that And then Linux developers can join as well Now I want to be very clear that Linux is not part of Conservancy in the way the busybox and Inkscape and Samba and Mercurial are part of Conservancy It's just a very narrow project specifically tuned to those Linux developers who hold copyrights in the Linux kernel who want to enforce the GPL with us and we have 16 I think now with us who are major copyright holders in Linux and The most important thing when we talk to violators and all of you know this because all of you know about this compliance activity I don't understand why I'm giving this talk, but It's really a collaboration with the party who violated the goal is to talk with them and to get compliance Now the fact of the matter is is that So many of them and I've talked about this in my talks that you've all seen before have insisted on confidentiality and said We'll come into compliance. Well, we'll do the right thing with GPL But we don't want anybody ever know we violated because it's too embarrassing and I've been agreeing to those confidentiality agreements for years and years Ironically, I am probably under more NDAs than most of you now not NDAs for generally useful technical information So it's I'm not under NDA for the source code I'm under NDA for the details of who violated when and how they came into compliance Which is not the technical information the technical operation they released a source code on their websites But they always ask for this and it really is frustrating because people question my methods question my motives question everything I am a pariah in the world because I enforce the GPL All the time. I've lost jobs over it. I have been called names over it I mean you name it. I've I've taken it for the GPL and and It's very hard for me because I can't go out and say well look look at this company It came into compliance and they let they were they were glad and we work with them and so forth until recently Samsung actually agreed to let us say publicly that we had worked with them and helped them come into compliance and they did an amazing job and The amazing thing about what happened with Samsung is that? Not too long ago 2008. I was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Samsung over GPL violations in their TVs, which is public and Samsung did an amazing job in that source release and that's that I can talk about because it's public that source release generated a Alternative firmware community for Samsung TVs called the Sammy go community It's on the internet you can go and look at it and they've literally taken the Samsung Release which by the way has some of the best GPL compliance release I've ever seen they've modified it and they've made it so you can put a DVR on the SD card and plug it into the Samsung TV And now you can't get that directly from Samsung, but they've actually shown how GPL compliance can make a community of developers making those Samsung devices more valuable than they were the day They ship from Samsung which only helps Samsung to have devices that people can hack and improve and on this new situation Samsung was very quick to respond worked with us very well They GPL the code that they were supposed to GPL. They put it out there It's I mean clients matters take a long time and this was a complicated one And within weeks they had the source code up there And they wanted to make a public notice and say go ahead tell everybody publicly what happened and that it worked out Well, so I'm really appreciative of that Now the last thing I'm gonna talk about which this is gonna be more of a revelation with more people in the room But I pretty much talked about this issue with all of you at one point So I used to avoid this this elephant in the room that we have which is this question of our modules a derivative work of Linux and You know what I think you talked about with all day Yeah, most of you anyway, you know that I believe that they're almost always and I've talked to plenty of lawyers and I've had more conversations with Dan Ravershire about derivative works of copyright than than anything and We believe that it's pretty difficult to create us an issue a situation where a Linux module isn't a derivative work The limit the module with the kernels not a derivative whole Many corporate lawyers disagree Karen can tell you the case law is very limited on this We both sides believe they're correct and there isn't a general rule. It's gonna matter the details are gonna matter And oh, it's cut off a little bit and the people who are the political opponents of GPL enforcement say this is going to be That says the ground war of GPL That that's where we're gonna have this big fight And we probably will I think at some day have to have this fight Linux's licenses at a crossroads. There's no question in my mind. We're at a crossroads now There are lots and lots of copyright holders and Linux who believe the GPL means what it says that they contributed under the terms of GPL version 2 only that it says derivative works need to be licensed as a whole under this license and That modules have to be free software There are other copyright holders who disagree with that. There are copyright holders out there who have literally said to me I wish Linux were LGPL. It should have been LGPL. They've said It's not that's why we had this disagreement When I started this compliance thing It's hard to get Linux Linus to talk about Licensed stuff Karen must know this he doesn't like to have those kinds of conversations So I cornered him at the Google party in 2012 right after we'd announced this program Because I kind of felt I needed to get his blessing and I said to him Linus You know I launched this compliance program for Linux developers I learned how you feel about it and this is what he said to me He said I you used to push copyright assignment I hate copyright assignment You know that and the reason that I didn't want to do copyright assignment in Linux is because I felt one of the reasons He said is I felt that every developer should make their own decisions about the GPL And I want each developer to have their own copyright and make their own decisions So I feel like I've got the blessing from Linus that I need to feel like I'm doing the right thing by the project Leader lots of other major contributors are working with us. The question is what happens next. I don't know what's going to happen next But whatever it is, I won't do any action myself without the support of developers ultimately Conservancy is an organization to serve our developers and do what they tell me to do and my only veto powers If the IRS says it's wrong, that's the only veto power I have when I do actions to the Conservancy the rest of it the developers tell me what to do and I say yes It's okay with the IRS or no, it's not that's my job And I'm working with developers who have significant copyrights in Linux So we have to figure out what happens next So I left plenty of time for Q&A Expecting there be people here a lot more people here who would want to like give me a hard time I don't think most of you probably want to give me a hard time. So why don't we have the discussion? I proposed we have instead of my talk And I'll take my mic off and we'll just like have a conversation