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Interoperability is one of the current Holy Grails of the tech world. It is also favored by copyright law. Section 1201(f) provides immunity from the anti-cracking rules for activities designed to promote software interoperability, which is defined as "the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged."
So an oddity of the debate over GPLv3 is that the open source community, or at least the Free Software Foundation part of it, is fighting hard for a closed system, one that permits interaction only among a limited set of programs produced under FSF-specified rules.
The proprietary software producers, on the other hand, especially the baddest bear in the forest, Microsoft, are fighting for an open system, one that allows for interaction among programs whatever their derivation.
The explanation of this apparent paradox, I think, is that FSF is actually far more imperial in its ambitions than Microsoft. As I wrote last Fall in TCSDaily:
Some commenters suggest a devious Redmond plot to destroy Linux, but the idea that Microsoft has any hopes along these lines is absurd. Linux is supported with big money and in-kind help from IBM, HP, Sun, Dell, Google, and a roster of other major players. Customers want it available. These factors will not change, so Linux will thrive. . . .
Microsoft may not want to destroy the open source movement, but the open source movement, at least as embodied in FSF, certainly wants to destroy Microsoft, as a step toward its ambition of eradicating property rights in software, root and branch, not to mention rights in other forms of content. The world's biggest software company is an obvious impediment to this ambition.
From the FSF point of view, the fact that the customers want interoperability is a bug, not a feature. The FSF does not want interoperability, unless this is interpreted to mean that the open sourcers get to use Microsoft code without granting reciprocity. It wants to force a choice between open and proprietary code, with the former winning, perhaps with the help of a few thumbs on the scale from various governments. The unending accusations by FSF that Redmond is engaging in FUD and trying to destroy "the community" seem to me to be itself largely FUD (FUD by accusing others of FUD -- it is almost Sicilian) or else straight-out psychological projection.*
In any event, as noted yesterday, GPLv3 is a license that has delusions of grandeur, and thinks it is government regulation. (There is something about the opacity and convoluted language of GPLv3 that brings out the shrink in me.)
But why it should be allowed to claim precedence over real government policies and laws that favor interoperatibility and interaction is a bit of a mystery. Public policy allows for both models of software production, as it should, and should also encourage interaction between them. The FSF is not yet the Software Regulatory Authority.
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* From DrSanity: "Projection - attributing one's own unacknowledged feelings to others; includes severe prejudice, severe jealousy, hypervigilance to external danger, and "injustice collecting". (EXAMPLES) (remember that projection is a primitive form of paranoia, so it is common in today's world)."
posted by James DeLong @ 2:37 PM | Software
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