The open source techie who means business

Alan Cox is so well thought of in the open source community that he can pull together a crowd of eager techies to discuss theoretical software stability on a Sunday afternoon — as he did at last year's FOSDEM conference in Brussels.

Cox wrote much of the original networking subsystem in Linux over a decade ago and has contributed code towards and maintained various kernel releases. Now employed by Linux vendor Red Hat, he is a leading figure in the open source software community and has frequently spoken out against issues that he feels jeopardise freedom, such as software patents and the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

ZDNet UK spoke to Cox last week, following his talk at the Trusted Computing conference in London , about a wide range of topics, including the next version of the GPL, software patents, the kernel development process and Linux on the desktop.

Q: The first public discussion draft of GPL 3 a couple of weeks ago. What are you initial thoughts on it?
The majority of it looks very sensible, such as letting copyright information be displayed in an About box, rather than relying on command line instructions [as is the case in GPL 2]. Some of the more contentious stuff has sensibly been made optional. One of the other nice things is the work to make the GPL compatible with other licences. That's really important — it will allow people to share more code.

What do you think about the new provision in the GPL 3 draft that opposes digital rights management (DRM)?
From the kernel perspective it doesn't really matter. DRM is generally used by applications, so it's more a question for things like the [GNU] C library. (Editor's note: Shortly after ZDNet UK spoke to Alan Cox, Linux founder Linus Torvalds spoke out against GPL 3, saying that he won't convert Linux to the new version, as he objects to the proposed digital rights management provisions.)

Last year, Sony BMG was criticised after it was discovered that some CDs automatically install copy-restriction software that is hidden using a rootkit. In your talk at the trusting computing conference, you said that the potential problem with DRM was highlighted by the recent Sony debacle and that there is going to be "an almighty power struggle" between the content industry and users. Where do you think the balance of power is at the moment?
I'm not sure where the balance of power is. There is a lot of evidence that it's on the music and computer industry's side. But, I think Sony has learned its lesson and it's been quite an expensive lesson. There needs to be a clear understanding of what's allowed — a computer is private property, but we don't know what this means legally. I think some of it's going to come down to government competition regulation — how you may or may not use DRM, in particular if you're in a monopoly position.

Last year, thethe software patent directive was rejected by European Parliament, but the debate around such patents has now reopened, with the EC's launch of a public consultation into how the patent system should be changed. As one of the people who campaigned against software patents first time round, how do you feel about the fact that they're back on the agenda?
I'm astounded. On one hand, we have Microsoft...

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