...these unintended consequences. We've only extended the ability of the GPL — we're not changing any promises we have previously made. The DRM provisions are nothing new — we are still aiming to protect freedom.
Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and the maintainer of its development kernel, has said he doesn't like the DRM provisions in GPL3. What do you think about this?
He hasn't sent a comment in through the official process, but we've seen his comments. We don't mind if people shout and scream — it adds to the process. But if people think we'll change the four freedoms, they're wrong. The DRM provision protects one of those freedoms.
How many employees are working for the FSF at the moment? What sort of things do they work on?
We currently have myself and about 10 staff. All are paid staff, and two are part-timers. The FSF is the main sponsor of the GNU project so there are a lot of developers to cater for. We have two full-time and one part-time system administrators, and we have an administrator who works for the GNU Press shipping books and software.
We also have a copyright administrator, who collects the paperwork from developers working on GNU projects — developers sign copyright to us, and we register ourselves as the author of the work with US copyright office. There's also a GPL compliance engineer who runs a compliance team. He receives reports about potential compliance issues and then investigates whether there has been a violation. If there has been, he will write to the organisation involved and ask them to start complying.
Your work towards ensuring people comply with the GPL has been criticised by some people. For example, Forbes once referred to you as 'Linux's Hit Men'. How do you feel about this?
What's particularly annoying about that article was that we have nothing to do with Linux — we're GNU. It also made us sound aggressive, when in fact we only want people to comply with terms of the licence. We don't ask for legal fees from people and we only ask for our costs to be reimbursed, which is only a couple of hundred bucks. We've never taken anyone to court.
With copyright law, there are no contractual issues at stake — you either accept the terms, or you don't use the copyrighted material. That's why we've always thought it stupid that people make comments about whether the GPL will stand up in court. It's only the licence that gives you rights, otherwise the software belongs to the copyright holder. If you don't have rights, there's nothing to take to court.
In the case brought by Daniel Wallace against the FSF last year [where he complained that the GPL's requirement to make code available at no cost is tantamount to price-fixing], the judge said that the GPL "acts as a means by which certain software may be copied, modified and redistributed without violating the software's copyright protection" and that the "GPL encourages, rather than discourages, free competition" and "benefits include lower prices, better access and more innovation".
This a Federal Court Judge, who in a few minutes can work out that free software has huge advantages.
As far as I am aware, most other free software or open source projects do not actively pursue compliance or ask developer to sign over copyright. Why is this so important to you?
The FSF prides itself on being a very cautious, sincere, legally-minded project. We've always been very aware of the fact that the people who dislike us most can easily seek legal recourse on issues. The FSF has always felt that securing our assets — our copyrights on the GNU project — was very important. The whole purpose of the GPL is to protect computer user's freedoms. We must protect our role in that — we're the guardian of those freedoms.
No other project goes as far as we do in collecting copyrights. A lot of distributions leave copyright in the hands of individual authors, but most individuals don't have the time, inclination or finances to go after violation reports. We keep everyone honest.
How does the Free Software Foundation get its funding?
We have four or five sources of revenue. The main source is our membership program — we made $250,000 from this last year. We also get general donations — people donated...
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