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Software Freedom Conservancy Calls for GitHub Boycott

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC),  a non-profit that provides infrastructure support for free and open source software projects, is urging developers to stop using GitHub and move their projects to other platforms. The organization has historically had a number of public grievances with GitHub, which it outlines on its Give Up On GitHub site. GitHub’s public launch of Copilot last week was the final straw for SFC.

“We are ending all our own uses of GitHub, and announcing a long-term plan to assist FOSS projects to migrate away from GitHub,” SFC Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn said. “While we will not mandate our existing member projects to move at this time, we will no longer accept new member projects that do not have a long-term plan to migrate away from GitHub.”

The SFC’s member projects include BusyBox, Git, Homebrew, OpenWrt, Buildbot, Houdini, and phpMyAdmin, to name a few. The organization is financially supported by Google, Mozilla, and Redhat, among others.

Kuhn said the SFC has been actively communicating with Microsoft and GitHub for a year about concerns regarding Copilot. He claims GitHub ignored invitations to discussions on the moral implications of AI-assisted software, and neglected to answer the SFC’s questions.

“Launching a for-profit product that disrespects the FOSS community in the way Copilot does simply makes the weight of GitHub’s bad behavior too much to bear,” Kuhn said.

Specifically, the SFC is demanding GitHub cite legal precedent for its former CEO’s claims that “(1) training ML systems on public data is fair use, (2) the output belongs to the operator, just like with a compiler.”

The two other questions the SFC could not obtain answers for are as follows:

  • If it is, as you claim, permissible to train the model (and allow users to generate code based on that model) on any code whatsoever and not be bound by any licensing terms, why did you choose to only train Copilot’s model on FOSS? For example, why are your Microsoft Windows and Office codebases not in your training set?
  • Can you provide a list of licenses, including names of copyright holders and/or names of Git repositories, that were in the training set used for Copilot? If not, why are you withholding this information from the community?

The SFC contends that Microsoft and GitHub are exploiting FOSS for profit and that its behavior, relative to its peers (Amazon, Atlassian, and GitLab), is markedly worse when it comes to supporting FOSS.

“GitHub also has a record of ignoring, dismissing and/or belittling community complaints on so many issues, that we must urge all FOSS developers to leave GitHub as soon as they can,” Kuhn said.

The SFC formed a committee earlier this year to investigate copyleft implications of AI-assisted programming. They are exploring a preliminary finding that AI-assisted software development can be done in a way that respects FOSS licenses.

“While Microsoft’s GitHub was the first mover in this area, by way of comparison, early reports suggest that Amazon’s new CodeWhisperer system (also launched last week) seeks to provide proper attribution and licensing information for code suggestions,” Kuhn said.

So far SFC’s call for action has received a tepid response. Although Copilot remains a controversial tool to many, its use of open source code is perceived differently by those who have embraced it as a utility.

“It’s been really useful in beta when I had to make some config files in Ruby, which I rarely use and often forget,” software engineer Joe Mattiello said. “FOSS is give and take. The point of open-source is to be open. Though any projects that use non-commercial licenses shouldn’t be included if it’s a paid project.”

Another prevailing opinion is that GitHub didn’t misuse open source software in training its AI on OSS projects but rather allowed AI to read the source code and learn from it. In this context, the SFC’s fervent crusade against GitHub for using shared code appears more absurd.

For the time being, it appears the SFC is content to continue research with the help of its committee, but part of the organization’s work is to assist member projects in enforcing the terms of FLOSS licenses, including through litigation. Its heavy focus on copyleft compliance, including enforcement of the GPL, may come to bear on Copilot in the future, as the SFC’s committee learns more about the copyleft implications of AI-assisted programming.

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Software Freedom Conservancy Receives Court Ruling Affirming GPL as Both Copyright License and Contractual Agreement

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC),  a non-profit that provides infrastructure support for free and open source software projects, has received a favorable ruling in its right-to-repair lawsuit against Vizio, an American TV manufacturer. The SFC alleges that Vizio has demonstrated “repeated failures to fulfill even the basic requirements of the General Public License (GPL),” after the company refused to provide the source code for software with copyleft licenses that it bundles with its products.

Vizio had filed a request to “remove” the case from California State Court into U.S. Federal Court. After hearing oral arguments from both sides, the court has granted SFC’s motion to remand the case back to California State Court.

In the ruling, US District Court judge Josephine L. Staton stated that the GPL introduces “an additional contractual promise separate and distinct from any rights provided by the copyright laws:”

The Court finds Versata’s reasoning persuasive, and it finds here, as the court
found there, that the enforcement of “an additional contractual promise separate and distinct from any rights provided by the copyright laws” amounts to an “extra element,” and therefore, SFC’s claims are not preempted. Id. at *5. There is an extra element to SFC’s claims because SFC is asserting, as a third-party beneficiary of the GPL Agreements, that it is entitled to receive source code under the terms of those agreements. There is no right to receive certain works—or source code in particular—under the Copyright Act; indeed, the Act’s primary purpose is to limit who may reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, and display protected works. As SFC points out in its briefing, the right to receive the source code would appear to be “the very opposite” of those exclusive rights. (Reply, Doc. 26, at 17.) The fact that SFC claims status as a third-party beneficiary to the GPL Agreements and not the actual copyright holder—and therefore, has no authority to impose limitations on the reproduction and distribution of the software—only underscores that the contractual right at issue is qualitatively different from the rights under the Copyright Act. Thus, there can be no question that the extra element—that SFC is third-party enforcing its right to receive source code under the terms of a contract—transforms the nature of the action.

One of the functions of the SFC is to assist member projects in enforcing the terms of FLOSS licenses, including through litigation. This particular case is unique because the organization is presenting this lawsuit on behalf of individual consumers, as opposed to the traditional path of defending copyright holders of the GPL code in question.

“The ruling is a watershed moment in the history of copyleft licensing,” SFC executive director Karen Sandler said. “This ruling shows that the GPL agreements function both as copyright licenses and as contractual agreements.”

SFC contends that many electronics products are built for planned premature obsolescence and that companies often do this by violating the GPL. If the product is bundled with copyleft software, a consumer has the right to modify, improve, and repair the software. For this the be possible, the companies producing the products must make the source code available. This also enables consumers to find skilled people to repair their products when a device fails after updates have been disabled so that products do not become nonfunctional. This ruling is not just a major win for the GPL but also for consumers who may not know that companies violating the GPL significantly impact their ability to find repairs for electronic products.

“Software Freedom Conservancy looks forward to our opportunity to prove, in state court, our third-party beneficiary right to the complete, corresponding source code as defined by the GPL and related agreements,” Sandler said. “This claim is central to the right to software repair, as it allows users to exercise the right to copy, share, modify, and reinstall the software on the devices that they receive.”

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Software Freedom Conservancy Takes On Vizio in Lawsuit Alleging GPL Violations

Inside of a Vizio TV – Model V435-J01 – photo credit: Software Freedom Conservancy

The Software Freedom Conservancy announced that it is suing Vizio, an American TV manufacturer, for what it alleges are “repeated failures to fulfill even the basic requirements of the General Public License (GPL).”

The 501(c)(3) charity organization is a non-profit that provides infrastructure support for free and open source software projects, defending users’ rights under copyleft licenses and the GPL. A few of its member projects include BusyBox, Git, Homebrew, OpenWrt, and phpMyAdmin. As part of its mission, the Conservancy assists member projects in enforcing the terms of FLOSS licenses, including through litigation.

The Software Freedom Conservancy contends that Vizio’s TV products contain software with copyleft licenses but the company refused to provide the source code after multiple attempts at contact since 2018. Vizio also did not inform its customers about the rights included with the software it was bundling.

“We filed suit as a purchaser of TVs to stand up for copyleft,” Software Freedom Conservancy Executive Director Karen Sandler said. “There was no source or offer for source even after we’d been working with them for a long time on older products. Copyleft can help us take control of our tech in a meaningful way, it’s a huge benefit to consumers.”

In a new twist on GPL enforcement, the organization is presenting this lawsuit on behalf of individual consumers, as opposed to the traditional path of defending copyright holders of the GPL code in question.

The Software Freedom Conservancy contends that Vizio’s alleged noncompliance prevents consumers from being able to repair their devices, improve and control them, as well as curtail surveillance and ads through modifications. The full text of the complaint includes examples of how consumers might benefit from having access to the source code:

Vizio is unlikely to unilaterally implement features that prevent the collection of such user data, as such user data is valuable to Vizio. Access to the Source Code of the Linux kernel, the other SmartCast Programs at Issue, and for the Library Linking Programs, as used on Vizio smart TVs, would enable software developers to preserve useful but obsolete features. It would also allow software developers to maintain and update the operating system should Vizio or its successor ever decide to abandon it or go out of business. In these ways, purchasers of Vizio smart TVs can be confident that their devices would not suffer from software-induced obsolescence, planned or otherwise.

In the organization’s announcement of the lawsuit, Sandler highlighted the environmental impact of denying consumers access to the code.

“The global supply chain shortages that have affected everything from cars to consumer electronics underscore one of the reasons why it is important to be able to repair products we already own,” says Sandler. “Even without supply chain challenges, the forced obsolescence of devices like TVs isn’t in the best interest of the consumer or even the planet. This is another aspect of what we mean by ‘ethical technology.’ Throwing away a TV because its software is no longer supported by its manufacturer is not only wasteful, it has dire environmental consequences. Consumers should have more control over this, and they would if companies like Vizio played by the rules.”

The complaint alleges that Vizio is in breach of the GPLv2 and the LGPLv2.1 every time they distribute a smart TV without the source code or a written offer to provide it. It claims that none of the smart TVs Vizio has introduced in the US market in the past four years have been accompanied by the source code.

Open source leaders from affiliate organizations commented on the unique approach of this lawsuit, where the Conservancy is acting on behalf of consumers as the plaintiff, as opposed to prevailing upon the copyright holder to defend its users. The complaint states:

No one other than the purchaser has both the information and motive to enforce the Source Code Provision. Purchasers will both know whether the Source Code Provision has been honored and have a desire to examine and further develop the corresponding source code.

“If this consumer-rights-based approach succeeds, the main excuse for copyright assignments to organizations like the FSF will be gone and we can unambiguously treat a CLA as a red flag,” Open Source Initiative Director of Standards/Policy Simon Phipps said.

The complaint states that the “Plaintiff and other members of the class of persons intended to benefit from the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 have been damaged in an amount that cannot be readily determined.” Vizio’s alleged noncompliance has effectively stunted the source code’s potential for improvements from consumers for years. It has also robbed consumers of the control of their electronics and given Vizio an unfair advantage that protects their corporate interests at the expense of users’ freedoms. The Conservancy is not seeking an exact amount for damages but rather leaving it to the judgment of the court.

“This lawsuit has the potential to empower many consumers, radically changing the landscape of consumer technology,” Open Source Initiative Executive Director Stefano Maffulli said.

The Conservancy’s case will be an important one to watch, as its decision could set a precedent for GPL enforcement in the future. If nothing else, it should signal to companies benefiting from GPL-licensed code that they must also respect consumers’ rights. If consumers are the intended third-party beneficiaries of the license agreement, then they have a right to the source code.

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Stockfish Contributors Sue ChessBase for GPL Violations

image credit: Sebastian Voortman

A legal reckoning is brewing in the world of open source chess engines. Stockfish, a GPL-licensed chess engine widely recognized as one of the strongest in the world, has filed a lawsuit against ChessBase. The German-based company makes and sells chess software that relies heavily on the Stockfish engine, maintains a prominent chess news site, and runs a chess server for online games.

Stockfish’s announcement, published this week on International Chess Day, claims that ChessBase has violated the GPL by not releasing the corresponding modifications of its products that are derivative works:

We have come to realize that ChessBase concealed from their customers Stockfish as the true origin of key parts of their products. Indeed, few customers know they obtained a modified version of Stockfish when they paid for Fat Fritz 2 or Houdini 6 – both Stockfish derivatives – and they thus have good reason to be upset. ChessBase repeatedly violated central obligations of the GPL, which ensures that the user of the software is informed of their rights. These rights are explicit in the license and include access to the corresponding sources, and the right to reproduce, modify, and distribute GPLed programs royalty-free.

In 2020, Stockfish added support for NNUE (Efficiently Updatable Neural Networks). ChessBase’s Fat Fritz 2 product includes a neural network that the company has not released. Stockfish’s previous statement on Fat Fritz 2 identifies these net weights as a derivative:

“This chess engine is a Stockfish derivative, with a few lines of code modification (engine name, authors list and a few parameters), and a new set of NNUE net weights considered proprietary,” current Stockfish maintainer Joost VandeVondele said. “ChessBase’s communication on Fat Fritz 2, claiming originality where there is none, has shocked our community. Furthermore, the engine Fat Fritz 2 fails to convince on independent rating lists, casting doubt on the usefulness of those modifications. Indeed, we feel that customers buying Fat Fritz 2 get very little added value for money. Claims to the contrary appear misleading.”

The GPLv3 permits ChessBase to sell its chess engine but requires the company to make its modifications available, along with all information needed to build the program. Stockfish informed Albert Silver, author of the neural net in Fat Fritz 2, of the license violation, resulting in ChessBase releasing its C++ sources but not the net weights. “Obviously, we condemn the approach taken,” VandeVondele said.

Stockfish contributors have been working with a certified copyright and media law attorney in Germany to enforce their license and were able to force a recall of the Fat Fritz 2 DVD and the termination of the sales of Houdini 6. They are now pursuing the Termination clause of the GPL that would shut down ChessBase’s ability to distribute Stockfish in its products.

“Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently,” the Stockfish team said in the most recent statement. “However, ChessBase is ignoring the fact that they no longer have the right to distribute Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products.”

In a post titled, “Fat Fritz 2 is a rip-off,” published earlier this year, the Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero, and Lichess teams called out the product as a Stockfish clone, repackaged with a different neural network and “minimal changes that are neither innovative nor appear to make the engine stronger.”

“It is sad to see claims of innovation where there has been none, and claims of improvement in an engine that is weaker than its open-source origins,” the teams wrote. “It is also sad to see people appropriating the open-source work and effort of others and claiming it as their own.” 

Lichess, a free and open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization that also uses Stockfish as a critical part of its infrastructure, has published multiple posts in support of Stockfish revoking ChessBase’s license to sell derivatives of the popular engine. Lichess also publishes the source code of everything they create using Stockfish so its users can see, modify, and redistribute it.

Even if you’re not a connoisseur of chess drama, Lichess’ most recent statement of support for Stockfish identifies why this case is important to the greater open source community:

Free open-source software offers essential freedoms that benefit developers and users alike, and those freedoms should have been extended to users of Fat Fritz 1, 2, and Houdini. Failing that, free-software licenses are only meaningful if they are enforced, making this an important case not only for Stockfish, but also for the open source community as a whole. We are happy that the Stockfish developers have the will and means to take action.

Stockfish’s lawsuit may become an important landmark case for proving that the GPL can be enforced. It will also be interesting to see whether the courts regard the neural network weights that ChessBase trained as a derivative work that must be released as source code in order to be in compliance with the GPL.

Stockfish has gained broad support from the project’s maintainers and developers who have stated they “have the evidence, the financial means, and the determination to bring this lawsuit to a successful end.” The team has promised to update their statement once the case makes progress.

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Proposal and Steps To Dual-License Gutenberg Under the GPL and MPL

The GPL is so embedded into WordPress that it is not just the license the platform is under but a part of the community’s culture. Friends have been gained and lost over discussions of it. Bridges burned. Battles waged. People cast out to the dark corners of the web that “we don’t talk about.” There was even a time when one could expect a fortnightly GPL dust-up in which the inner WordPress world argued the same points over and over, ad nauseam.

It might be hard to imagine a world where — outside of third-party libraries — direct contributions to the software are under anything other than the GPL. However, the wheels are now in motion. The Gutenberg project, which is the foundation of WordPress going forward, may soon be under both the GNU General Public License (GPL) v2 and the Mozilla Public License (MPL) v2.0.

The goal is to allow Gutenberg to be used in proprietary applications, particularly in the mobile space, where it can be a hurdle to ship GPL code.

Mobile Team contributor Maxime Biais proposed the change in July 2020. “Gutenberg supports two main platforms, the web and the native mobile apps. The GPL v2.0 license is a blocker for distributing the Gutenberg library in proprietary mobile apps.”

At the moment, the WordPress for Android and WordPress for iOS apps use Gutenberg. Both of these apps are also licensed under the GPL, so it is a non-issue for them. However, it is uncommon for mobile apps to use the GPL. Thus, it limits Gutenberg’s potential reach.

“Rich text editor libraries in the mobile space are lacking,” wrote Biais. “There is no well known open source rich text editor for Android or iOS. We believe that Gutenberg could be a key library for many mobile apps, but that will never happen with the GPL v2.”

The proposal was announced on the Make Core blog in September 2020. It garnered three comments. WordPress project lead Matt Mullenweg was in favor of the change, pointing out that it could help Gutenberg become a cross-CMS standard.

“Right now it’s easy to distribute Gutenberg with web apps that aren’t GPL, due to the way browsers link and bundle things, but embedding Gutenberg inside a native app on desktop, iOS, Android, or beyond is not possible unless the entire application is also GPL,” he wrote. “Allowing people the option to embed Gutenberg under the MPL I think will increase its usage outside of WordPress, bring more contributors to the core experience, and continue the Cambrian explosion of blocks that will give Gutenberg users more tools to fully express their creativity and vision.”

The problem with switching licenses is that Gutenberg needs permission from every contributor who has added code to the project to make this change. The GitHub repository lists 721 individual contributors since the project began in 2016. To change licenses, each one must consent because they still own the copyright to their code.

Some of these people may not be involved any longer and not respond to the consent request. Others may refuse — as is their right. In either case, the Gutenberg team will need to either remove or rewrite the code.

The proposal outlines four stops on the timeline before Gutenberg can be officially dual-licensed:

  • March 19: All future contributions will be under both the GPL and MPL.
  • April 2: Seek consent via GitHub from past contributors and contributors from open pull requests.
  • Three months later: Begin removing or rewriting code that cannot be relicensed.
  • Future: Once all removed or rewritten code is squared away, update Gutenberg as a whole to a GPL/MPL dual license.

For a licensing discussion, only a few people have chimed in. However, some have brought up concerns.

“WordPress has historically strongly believed in the GPL,” wrote core WordPress contributor Aaron Jorbin in the comments. “It has gone so far as to call the Four Freedoms of the GPL it’s ‘Bill Of Rights.’ And now what is being said is that only sometimes do you get these freedoms. Anyone is welcome to take the code and remove these freedoms. Instead of empowering users, this move is empowering the removal of freedom. To me, this feels like a very pro-business move and a very anti-user one.”

The MPL is not considered viral in the same way as the GPL. Applications built with GPL-licensed code must allow for the same freedoms or more. App developers can distribute MPL-licensed code as long as it is in a separate file from their proprietary code. This lets businesses restrict parts of the codebase. Users might not have the freedom to use, fork, modify, and share all of an application’s code.

Most who have commented on the official threads so far have been excited or OK with the proposal. It can open Gutenberg to a new market. If developers in the mobile space begin using it for their apps, it could bring in fresh talent to the WordPress project as a whole.

“Our app sorely lacks a WYSIWYG editor,” wrote Radek Pietruszewski, the tech lead for Nozbe Teams, on the GitHub ticket in July 2020. “We had a working implementation on web, but we decided to scrap it because there was no way to port it on iOS and Android. There are pretty much no viable rich text editors for iOS or Android, let alone both. But even then, shipping three completely separate, but somehow compatible editors would be a vast amount of work. And you know yourself, making a good rich text editor from scratch is incredibly hard. It’s not something we could do ourselves. Gutenberg could solve this problem for us if it wasn’t for the licensing.”

How things move forward comes down to the 700+ contributors. Will the Gutenberg team be rewriting swaths of code? Or, will most developers sign off on the license change?

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GNU Project Maintainers Move to Oust Richard Stallman from Leadership

GNU Project maintainers are working to oust Richard Stallman from his position as head of the organization. In a joint statement published yesterday morning, a collection of 22 GNU maintainers and developers thanked Stallman for his work and declared that he can no longer represent the project:

We, the undersigned GNU maintainers and developers, owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Stallman for his decades of important work in the free software movement. Stallman tirelessly emphasized the importance of computer user freedom and laid the foundation for his vision to become a reality by starting the development of the GNU operating system. For that we are truly grateful.

Yet, we must also acknowledge that Stallman’s behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission when the behavior of its leader alienates a large part of those we want to reach out to.

We believe that Richard Stallman cannot represent all of GNU.

Stallman’s personal website continues to prominently display his intentions to remain in the leadership role. He added the header to his site, following the publication of remarks he made regarding a 17-year old victim of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which precipitated his resignation from both MIT and the Free Software Foundation:

The Stallman saga has continued to grow stranger in the aftermath of his resignations, as many were concerned that he would be homeless after his website featured a notice that he was “Seeking Housing,” accompanied by a link leading to his specific requirements for a temporary residence. His personal site was also reportedly vandalized nine days ago with a message that he was stepping down from the GNU.

The defacement with the false GNU resignation message was reverted shortly thereafter on September 30, and replaced with the header saying he continues to be “Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project” with no intention of stopping soon. Stallman has not yet publicly acknowledged the statement from the GNU maintainers. He has also not yet responded to our request for comment.

Yesterday the Free Software Foundation (FSF) published a statement indicating it was re-evaluating its working relationship with the GNU project, which has provided some of its technical infrastructure, fiscal sponsorship, and copyright assignment:

GNU decision-making has largely been in the hands of GNU leadership. Since RMS resigned as president of the FSF, but not as head of GNU (“Chief GNUisance”), the FSF is now working with GNU leadership on a shared understanding of the relationship for the future. As part of that, we invite comments from free software community members.

Stallman responded the next day, indicating he wanted to work with FSF on restructuring the relationship between the two organizations:

I recently resigned as president of the FSF, but the FSF continues to provide several forms of crucial support for the GNU Project. As head of the GNU Project, I will be working with the FSF on how to structure
the GNU Project’s relationship with the FSF in the future.

The FSF maintains some critical responsibilities in that it currently holds the copyrights to enforce the GPL. Stallman has recently called on people to continue supporting the FSF’s work, despite his resignation from the organization.

The small contingency of GNU project maintainers who penned the statement published yesterday seem to be on the same page with FSF in its rejection of Stallman’s leadership. Their message concludes with their intention to overhaul the leadership of the free software movement to be more inclusive of the people who have been alienated by Stallman’s behavior over the years:

“We think it is now time for GNU maintainers to collectively decide about the organization of the project. The GNU Project we want to build is one that everyone can trust to defend their freedom.”

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GPL Author Richard Stallman Resigns from Free Software Foundation

Richard Stallman, free software movement activist and originator of the “copyleft” concept, has resigned from his position as director of the board and president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which he established in 1985. This resignation comes on the heels of his resignation from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) after remarks he made regarding a 17-year old victim of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, characterizing her as seeming “entirely willing.”

Stallman blamed media coverage for misinterpreting his comments as a defense of Epstein two days before announcing his resignation from MIT on his personal blog:

To the MIT community, I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.

The remarks in question were sent on a department-wide CSAIL mailing list in response to an MIT student email calling for a protest against Jeffrey Epstein’s donation to the school. Selam Jie Gano, the MIT graduate who exposed Stallman’s comments in a post on Medium, also leaked the full thread to Vice.

In the email thread, which was also circulated to undergraduate students, Stallman became pedantic about the definition of assault and the use of the term ‘rape’ after a student pointed out the laws of the location and the victim’s age:

I think it is morally absurd to define “rape” in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.

These comments caused media organizations to dig up old posts from Stallman’s blog where he demands an end to the censorship of “child pornography” and says he is “skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children.”

Why Stallman felt it necessary to lend his controversial views to public comments on rape, assault, and child sex trafficking on a public mailing list is a mystery, but he has a long history of being outspoken when it comes to politics and civil liberties.

This particular incident seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, unleashing a flood of outrage from the the free software and broader tech communities who demanded Stallman’s removal from the FSF. Critics cited two decades of behaviors and statements that many have found to be disturbing and offensive. The Geek Feminism Wiki maintains a catalog that includes some of these references.

“The free software community looks the other way while they build their empires on licenses that sustain Stallman’s power,” Software engineer and founder of RailsBridge Sarah Mei said in a Tweetstorm calling on the FSF to remove Stallman from his positions of influence.

“Your refusal to part ways with him – despite well-known incidents that have pushed women and others out of free software for decades – might have been ok 10 years ago. Maybe even two years ago. It’s not ok now.”

The Software Freedom Conservancy also issued a statement calling for Stallman’s removal, titled “Richard Stallman Does Not and Cannot Speak for the Free Software Movement:”

When considered with other reprehensible comments he has published over the years, these incidents form a pattern of behavior that is incompatible with the goals of the free software movement. We call for Stallman to step down from positions of leadership in our movement.

We reject any association with an individual whose words and actions subvert these goals. We look forward to seeing the FSF’s action in this matter and want to underscore that allowing Stallman to continue to hold a leadership position would be an unacceptable compromise. Most importantly, we cannot support anyone, directly or indirectly, who condones the endangerment of vulnerable people by rationalizing any part of predator behavior.

In a 2017 Twitter thread, Mei shared some context on her perspective of how Stallman’s influence has had a ripple effect of damage throughout the free software and open source communities:

In the 90s, Richard Stallman’s attitude towards women alienated me (and many others) from any interest in or support for “free software.” Viewing software through the Richard Stallman/GNU/”free as in freedom” lens would have run our industry into the ground. But it was the only alternative to proprietary software for ~20 years. So lots of folks worked on it despite finding Stallman problematic. This was the period when women largely declined to be part of computing, despite having pretty reasonable representation through the 80s.

In the early 2000s, “open source” was a breath of fresh air. All of the usefulness! None of the built-in arrogance, privilege, or misogyny! But just because it wasn’t built in doesn’t mean it disappeared. As folks converted, the behaviors normalized by Stallman and others followed. Our drive now for diversity/inclusion wasn’t even conceivable until we discarded GNU, Stallman, and “free software” in favor of “open source.” It’s not an accident that the communities who still, today, embrace that outdated philosophy are the least diverse and the most hostile.

Stallman is the author of the GPL, which he wrote with the help of lawyers. For the most part, the free software community is able to objectively separate the license from the man who conceived it. The FSF’s sister organization in Europe welcomed Stallman’s resignation, echoing the sentiments of many who value his contributions but are unwilling to support his public representation of the organization:

On 16 September, one of our independent sister organizations, the US-based Free Software Foundation (FSF), announced the resignation of Richard M. Stallman as its president. While we recognize Stallman’s role in founding the Free Software movement, we welcome the decision.

The FSF has the opportunity to redefine itself after the resignation of its founder and supporters are hopeful that the free software movement can find a better way forward without Stallman’s influence.

“I believe in Free Software and have published most of my work open source under LGPL/GPL/AGPL (notably including Cydia, Cycript, WinterBoard, ldid, and now my work on Orchid),” software engineer Jay Freeman said. “I’m glad to see Richard Stallman leave, and hope this starts a new era for the Free Software Foundation.”

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Why is WordPress Free? Who Pays For It? How Much Does It Cost?

Millennia ago, a cool compassionate dude took a few loaves of bread and fish and multiplied them to feed thousands of hungry folks. Or so the myth/belief goes, depending on how you view it.

Almost 2 thousand years later, humans would invent technology that would pretty much allow the same: Code.

So, “what does this have to do with WordPress?” you may wonder.

A lot, actually! We’ll come back to this in a bit.

Is WordPress Really Free?

This is a question many who are looking to create their first website ask.

And the answer is YES.

WordPress is a free and open-source software (FOSS) that you can use, modify, and redistribute as you wish.

Note: By WordPress here, I mean WordPress.org, the self-hosted, free, open-source platform. Not WordPress.com, it’s a related but totally different commercial cousin. You can read more about their differences here.

“But I Still Have to Spend Money to Use It, Right?”

Also YES.

While WordPress, the software, is free, using it to create a live website does incur some costs.

This isn’t a limitation of WordPress as such. All websites hosted online work this way, whether you use WordPress to build them or not.

You need to rent resources on a web host to serve your WordPress site to the world.

WordPress hosting costs as little as $4/month to 1000s of dollars depending on your site’s needs. Most website owners settle for something in between, striking the perfect balance between value and cost.

Note: If all you want to do is try WordPress out, just to experiment or learn, you can do it without spending any money by installing WordPress locally on your PC.

But Why is WordPress Free?

This is easier to grasp by reading the license.txt file included with every WordPress download.

“This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.”

What Exactly Does “Free Software” Mean Though?

To understand this, we have to go back in history and take a look at the origin of free software movement (FSM). It’s a social movement with a goal to guarantee certain freedoms to software makers and users alike.

It’s inspired heavily by the traditions and philosophies of the 1970s hacker and academia culture, which encouraged sharing knowledge and DIY.

FSM was founded in 1983 by Richard Stallman by launching the GNU Project at MIT. It was (and still is) a mass-collaboration, free-software movement, the likes of which humanity had never seen before.

Its turning point came in 1985 when Stallman established the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to support FSM. A few years later, in 1989, Stallman wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL or GNU GPL) for use with programs released under the GNU Project.

But Why Free?

Code isn’t like tangible goods. For instance, if you have an apple, and I take it from you, I now have an apple and you don’t have one. However, if you have software and you share it with me, we both have the software now.

In a way, code is an intangible thing like knowledge or ideas. You don’t lose your knowledge or ideas if you share them with others. On the contrary, it only makes them even more widespread. Free software is meant to do the same.

Another ethical argument put forward by FOSS advocates is that since the software can be copied and distributed at scale with minimal resources, the super high profit margins make it unjustifiable beyond a certain point.

Most of the richest companies in the world today are software companies. Many of them use FOSS tools in their daily work, while still keeping their core software locked. And they keep getting richer and richer.

These two arguments are essentially the main reason why FSM activists want code to be free.

On GPL and Free Software

GPL has gone undergone two major revisions since its inception in 1989 (v2 in 1991 and v3 in 2007). But its core philosophy has remained the same. It’s defined by its adherence to 4 Fundamental Freedoms that are considered essential to any “free software”:

  • Freedom 0: Run the software for any purpose.
  • Freedom 1: Study how the software works through open access to its source code, and change it to do what you want.
  • Freedom 2: Redistribute copies of the software to anyone without any restrictions.
  • Freedom 3: Modify the software, and redistribute the modified software to anyone.

WordPress.org lists these freedoms as their philosophy too.

One core tenet of GPLv2 license is that if you make any modifications to the software licensed under it, the modified code MUST also be licensed under GPLv2, and released along with build & install instructions.

Note: As per FSF’s definition, not all open-source software is “free software” (free as in freedom, not free as in beer). But all “free software” is by definition open source.

Some prominent software licensed under the GPL include:

  • Linux Kernel — powers the Linux OS, which in turn powers most web servers
  • MediaWiki — the wiki software on which Wikipedia runs
  • Android OS (major parts of it) — the most used mobile OS in the world, uses the Linux kernel
  • WordPress — powers more than 33% of all the websites

With these stats, I’m not exaggerating when I say that free, open-source software has changed the world.

WordPress as a Free Software

WordPress was born out of the same philosophy as FSM. It was created in 2003 by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg.

They started it by forking a popular-but-abandoned blogging platform called b2/cafelog.

You may find this hard to believe, but the most popular blogging platform today was itself conceived in a blog post by Matt, and its co-founder Mike, was the first one to comment in support of it.

"Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michel would be working on right now if only he was around. The work would never be lost, as if I fell of the face of the planet a year from now, whatever code I made would be free to the world, and if someone else wanted to pick it up they could. I’ve decided that this the course of action I’d like to go in, now all I need is a name. What should it do? Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right?"

– Posted on January 24, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg on his b2/cafelog blog.

"Matt,
If you’re serious about forking b2 I would be interested in contributing. I’m sure there are one or two others in the community who would be too. Perhaps a post to the B2 forum, suggesting a fork would be a good starting point."

– Comment by Mike Little on Matt’s post

They could fork b2/cafelog because it was released under the GPLv2 license, so anyone was free to do with it as they wished. As such, WordPress was also released under the same GPLv2 license (and still is to this day).

The WordPress founders established The WordPress Foundation in 2010 as a charitable organization to further the mission of open source, GPL software.

It’s also a way to distance themselves from it to avoid conflicts of interest since they also have a commercial service running in parallel called WordPress.com.

Today, WordPress is updated continuously and maintained by The WordPress Foundation and thousands of contributors from all walks of life.

What About WordPress Themes and Plugins?

As per GPLv2 license, all derivative works, such as plugins or themes of WordPress, should inherit the license too.

Drupal (another popular CMS platform), which uses the same GPL license as WordPress, has a well-drafted Licensing FAQs page that explains what a “derivate work” means clearly.

However, in practice, this is much harder to enforce. There’s some legal gray area when it comes to what’s derivative work or not. According to WordPress.org’s licensing page: “we feel strongly that plugins and themes are derivative work and thus inherit the GPL license.”

How Do People Who Make WordPress Make Money Then?

This is a question that has been troubling many FOSS developers for decades.

How does one make money while providing the code they work on for free?

The simple answer is that you don’t make money by selling the code alone. There are many other ways to do so.

WordPress contributors and developers can follow any of the business models of open-source software. They can use their knowledge and expertise to serve as consultants and/or provide support. Or perhaps, they can build custom applications on top of WordPress for clients ready to pay for their professional services.

Some WordPress developers also make money by creating valuable themes and plugins. These can be completely free (supported by voluntary donations or crowdfunding), free with restricted features (paid premium add-ons), or totally pay-to-use.

A few of these developers have gone on to found successful multi-million dollar enterprises. Some even offer hosting solutions optimized for WordPress.

Automattic Inc., a company started by WordPress founder Matt, is the perfect example of this. It’s notable for its WordPress.com platform, which provides an easy way for everyone to build a website without worrying about hosting and other tech-heavy stuff.

WPMU DEV, the company whose blog you’re currently reading, is another example of a successful business built around WordPress. If you’re looking for more inspirations, here’s a list of some of the most successful WordPress businesses.

Hello, WordPress!

WordPress marches on as the most popular platform to build websites. Whether you want to build a simple personal blog or a complex website selling thousands of products, WordPress can do it all with ease.

There are 54,000+ free plugins listed on WordPress.org’s repo alone, some of which are exceptionally excellent. As our commitment to the free software movement’s mission, we’ve released free versions of our most popular pro plugins on WordPress.org.

You can also find many beautiful free themes for WordPress and build any kind of website in minutes. And if you want to go even further, WPMU DEV offers top-notch premium plugins and supercharged hosting, not to mention our stellar 24/7 support.

If you’re using WordPress in any way, take pride in knowing that the spirit of the free software movement lives on through you!

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New GPL-licensed Quirk App Open Sources Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Quirk is a new GPL-licensed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) app for iOS and Android built in React Native/Expo. The app helps users challenge their “automatic thoughts,” a term that refers to thoughts that come to a person spontaneously in response to a trigger, which can often be negative.

Quirk lets users record a quick thought and will automatically narrow down a list of potential ways these thoughts are distorted. The distortions were inspired by the ones popularized in Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. The user is then invited to challenge those distortions and write an alternative thought.

Quirk demo

Evan Conrad, a software engineer at Segment, created Quirk as a non-commercial, personal project to make it easy for people to take control of their irrational thoughts using a common CBT technique. Quirk is not a substitute for a trained therapist but rather a tool for people to use on their own. Left unchecked, negative automatic thoughts can become emotional weights and lead to distorted thinking. Quirk is a simple app that helps people experience the world in a less negative way and develop more rational thinking patterns.

“It’s super useful for day-to-day stuff,” Conrad said in response to comments on Hacker News. “Take a thought like ‘I took too many hints in that interview question.’

“That thought might lead to ‘I must have failed that interview,’ which leads to ‘I’ll fail all the rest of my interviews,’ which leads to ‘I’ll never get another job,’ which leads to ‘I must be really bad at this, I should just give up.’

“Each step seemed kind of logical at the time, but one thought led to the next and now you feel awful.

“CBT is a counter measure to this; it stops you at that first point and gives you a bunch of common logical fallacies that help you recognize why your thought is overreaching. You don’t know if you really flunked that interview, besides flunking one is good practice to pass the next one.”

Conrad said these types of thought processes aren’t exactly a mental health issue but are common struggles for many people. Quirk can be a useful tool for anyone looking to recognize and remove their own cognitive biases.

The iOS version of the app currently works better than the Android one, as the author said he doesn’t have an Android phone and finds it difficult to support the app on that platform. However, fixes are being pushed out regularly and many of the issues with crashing are getting resolved.

How the GPL Protects Users in Mental Health Tech

The code for Quirk can be found on GitHub and is open source under the GPL-3.0, which is not a popular choice for licensing mobile apps. I asked Conrad why he opted for the GPL license, as opposed to other popular open source licenses.

“Mental Health tech is a really weird world,” Conrad said. “There’s a lot of folks who want to do the right thing, but end up doing really sketchy stuff.

“For example, a lot of apps collect the thoughts you’re recording for ML (Machine Learning) or NLP (Natural Language Processing). The stated purpose of this is to help better identify suicide, depression, etc. Partially because of the subject matter, many apps aren’t clearly telling their users that this is happening.

“So what ends up happening is a bunch of well intended researchers get access to your most sensitive thoughts. Which is fine, but they frequently aren’t aware of how valuable of a target they’re holding to a nefarious actor. Because it’s not like a database of passwords or credit card numbers, they tend to not think about security.

“But thoughts are super valuable and dangerous for abusers and blackmailers; plus most people would rather give you their password in plaintext than show you their mental health thoughts.

“So if I made Quirk MIT, I would worry that someone would take Quirk and launch their own version for research that tracks and stores user thoughts. Because the license doesn’t follow them, they could do it without telling a user and there would be little way for an average person to /know/ that this is happening.”

Conrad has taken an inspiring, user-centric approach to licensing and privacy that ensures users of his app (and any derivatives) will have access to the code and a better understanding of where their data is being stored. In a recent Twitter thread, he outlined the privacy principles that underpin Quirk’s architecture:

In Quirk, FOSS and privacy isn’t a focus, it’s a given. Outside the tech world, Quirk is not trying to be a FOSS CBT app, it’s trying to be a really good CBT app that happens to be FOSS. It’s not coming out and saying “hey we don’t store your deepest darkest secrets on some server somewhere.” User’s don’t care. It’s a given. It doesn’t store things on the device because it’s trying to sell you on privacy, it does it because it’s the correct engineering decision.

Regular people don’t look at the Golden Gate bridge and think about the structural quality of the bolts. They pull out their phones and take a picture. The responsibility of software is to make things frictionless and reduce the stuff someone has to think about before buying in.

Conrad said he would like to see other developers build things using the app and conduct research, as long as they do so ethically. The project’s GitHub repo has a detailed writeup of its design and engineering logic. It includes specific goals the code was built around in order to respect users’ privacy and mental health, such as:

  • Thoughts are more valuable than passwords, treat them that way.
  • Be extremely cautious about making engagement your core metric.
  • But be clear and obvious within the app about what’s going on with the user’s data.

“I really do want to see people use Quirk for research,” he said. “I just want it to follow more ethical practices of consent and data security. Someone should willingly give a researcher their thoughts and as little information should be given about the person as possible. When it’s stored, it should be stored safely and not on a publicly exposed DB for example. But for that to happen, it has to be open.”

Beyond GPL-specific licensing, making the app open source has many other benefits. Quirk has already been translated into six different languages. One of the byproducts of making a useful app open source is that it energizes contributors and speeds up the process of bringing the app to new audiences.

Feedback on the app so far has been mostly positive. One commenter on Hacker News thanked Conrad for open sourcing the app because he wasn’t able to continue in-person CBT due to the cost:

I’ve been through CBT and stopped because of the cost. I feel that an app like this can complement those of us that have had face to face time but stopped for whatever reason.

Quirk is an inspiring example of how open source software can help people with every day problems. Its carefully-considered implementation respects users’ sensitive information and doesn’t encourage an unhealthy attachment to the app.

If you like Quirk and want to contribute, you can find the app on GitHub, including directions for translating it into different languages. Mental health professionals who want to contribute are encouraged to audit the descriptions of the cognitive distortions. Users can report bugs as GitHub issues or directly to the app’s creator via email to Humans @ usequirk.com.

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Why is WordPress Free? What are the Costs? What is the Catch?

One of the most often asked question by our users is “Do I have to pay to use WordPress?”. We tell them that WordPress is a free and open source software, which is usually followed by, “Why is WordPress Free?”.

In this article, we will discuss why is WordPress free, what’s the cost of running a WordPress site, and what’s the catch?

WordPress is free

WordPress is an open source software. It is free in the sense of freedom not in the sense of free beer. You may ask what is the difference between these two?

Open source software comes with the freedom for you to use, modify, build upon, and redistribute the software in any way you like without paying any fees.

However, there might be costs involved in other areas. We will discuss the cost of using the open source WordPress software later in this article.

Why Don’t They Sell WordPress as a Software?

We often get asked, why don’t people and companies behind WordPress sell it? If WordPress is as good as everyone says, then they would obviously make a lot more money by selling it.

This statement would make sense, if a single company or an individual owned WordPress.

WordPress is an open source community project where tens of thousands of talented people have made contributions to make it into a great software that it is today.

There is a core team of developers that lead the project development, but anyone can contribute patches, fix bugs, make features, suggest features, etc.

Furthermore, project leaders change from one version to another. If you get deeply involved in the community, then you can become a core contributor to WordPress as well.

The Philosophy behind Open Source Software

The philosophy behind Open Source software movement is that software are not like other tangible products. Once a software is created, it can be copied many times with little cost.

Let’s take the example of a toy factory. Each toy manufactured has different parts and each part has a cost. The manufacturing cost of these parts can be calculated by the factory to decide a reasonable profit margin for the product.

On the other hand, the cost of creating software and making copies of it is not the same. Some groups believe that with each copy sold, the profit margin of the software becomes more unfair.

To understand more about open source software ideals, check out GNU’s Philosophy.

How Do People Make Money with WordPress?

The two main profitable parts of any open source software are products and services based on the same open source software.

People often confuse WordPress with WordPress.com, but they’re actually two different things. WordPress (often referred to self-hosted WordPress or WordPress.org) is a free blogging platform and website builder.

Matt Mullenweg, co-founding developer of WordPress, launched a company called Automattic which provides “restricted” free blog hosting service at WordPress.com, and you can pay / upgrade to unlock features and remove ads.

However, to get the full power of WordPress on WordPress.com platform, you’ll need to sign up with their WordPress VIP service. This costs over $5000 per month for hosting + $5000 set up fee.

Automattic has raised a total of $317.3M in funding over 7 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jan 1, 2015 from a Venture round. (Source)

Other developers have also gone ahead to build successful multi-million dollar businesses around WordPress by creating commercial plugins, commercial themes, and even offering WordPress hosting.

Some examples of successful multi-million dollar WordPress companies are:

Related: See our list of 20 top WordPress companies.

Good WordPress developers and consultants also make a comfortable full-time income by building custom websites, applications, and plugins around WordPress for their clients. A lot of them are making over six-figures in annual earnings by themselves.

Is WordPress Copyright Free?

No, WordPress is not copyright free. It is licensed in a way that allows everyone to use it, but each contribution made to the software is copyrighted.

It is released under GPL, so you are free to use, modify, and redistribute the code. You will have the copyright to modifications you make to the software, not the entire code.

GPL requires that any derivative work you release or distribute should be licensed under GPL as well. You may have the copyright to do anything you like, your derivative work automatically inherits the GPL license, so others are free to use, modify, and redistribute your code in any way they choose.

Does this mean that all premium WordPress Themes and Plugins are Licensed GPL?

According to an official blog post on WordPress.org, themes are GPL too. Images, CSS and Javascript used inside themes and plugins can be excluded, but all PHP and HTML parts of themes and plugins extensively use WordPress functionality thus they are a derivative work therefore are licensed under GPL.

While some folks do not agree with that, most trusted WordPress businesses follow and abide by the community guidelines.

The Content Published with WordPress also inherits GPL?

No, you are entitled to license your content any way you like. Unless the content you are publishing is actually a derivative work of WordPress or any other GPL licensed work.

For example, if you are sharing your articles, photos, or any other artwork on your blog, then you own full copyrights of it.

However, if you are writing a blog post showing people how to use a WordPress function with examples, then that particular blog post could be licensed differently. The code used in examples is actually derivative work and automatically inherits the GPL license.

The WordPress Trademark

The code of WordPress as a software is released under GPL but the words WordPress, WordCamp, and the WordPress logo are registered trademarks owned by the WordPress Foundation.

To distinguish between a site or resource that is official or community run, the foundation asks folks to not use “WordPress” in their domain name.

This is the reason why our site is called WPBeginner instead of WordPressBeginner. Any website, training course, or resource that you see has WordPress in their domain name is probably being run by someone who doesn’t know enough about WordPress. This means you probably shouldn’t pay them any of your money :)

Most legit businesses built around WordPress are aware of the trademark policies, and they respect the rules.

Cost of using WordPress

WordPress as a software is free for you to download and use. However, to use WordPress on the web, you will need WordPress Hosting.

You can use WordPress.com to create a free blog, but be aware that there are some differences. See our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.

The cost of using WordPress is relatively minimal and hold true for running any other type of website as well. The only real cost is web hosting ($7.99 per month) and domain name ($14 / year).

However WPBeginner users can get a free domain name and 60% off web hosting from Bluehost which means you can start a website for as low as $2.75 per month. Bluehost is an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Related: How to Start a WordPress Blog (Ultimate Guide)

Additional costs could be commercial WordPress themes also known as premium WordPress themes. However, you are not required to use those because there are over 6000+ free WordPress themes that you can use.

People often use commercial plugins, but you are not required to use those as well because there are over 54,000+ free WordPress plugins available.

We have created a detailed guide on how much does it really cost to build a WordPress website with instructions on how to start a website on a budget and save money.

We hope that this article answered your questions about WordPress licensing, the costs of running a WordPress site, and the business around WordPress. You may also want to see our list of easy to start online business ideas that actually make money.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Why is WordPress Free? What are the Costs? What is the Catch? appeared first on WPBeginner.

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Busting 5 Myths about OSS and Software Licenses

There are a few historical myths about free and open source software licenses that I would like to bust.

Myth 1: Open Source Software = Free Software

This is not always true. Price-wise, not all free software (more accurate term — proprietary freeware) is open source. Freedom-wise, not all open source software is free.