Free Software Linux

With Independence Day coming up, I want to do a series of posts about freedom and what "free software" actually means. The English language is weak in the area of freedom, so when somebody says "free software" they think "free of charge" or "gratis" (to use the Latin term for the concept), which can really throw you, since most free software is available to anyone without monetary cost.

"'Const' has *never* been about the thing not being modified. Forget all that claptrap. C does not have such a notion," began Linus Torvalds, responding to a query about why kfree() takes a const pointer. He continued, "'const' is a pointer type issue, and is meant to make certain mis-uses more visible at compile time. It has *no* other meaning, and anybody who thinks it has is just setting himself up for problems." He offered two explanations, beginning with simple C semantics, "from a very obvious and very *real* caller perspective, 'free()' really doesn't change the thing the pointer points to. It does something totally different: it makes the *pointer* itself invalid." He then added his second reason, "anything that *can* take a const pointer should always do so. Why? Because we want the types to be as tight as possible, and normal code should need as few casts as possible." When it was pointed out that GCC 4.2 displays warnings when casting a const pointer to a non-const, Linus replied:

"Openness" may be reaching hyperbolic proportions in Silicon Valley, but the idea is relatively good natured at heart. The practice is rooted in the notion that sharing various assets (i.e., underlying code, operating and communication standards) benefits both consumers and businesses. However, one could argue that the current fad of openness is little more than a Trojan horse

Regular visitors of my blog know that nothing outrages me more than people who apply these guerrilla tactics. Whether it is Ian Ferguson who said that "the flaming Linux bigots should take a backseat", Mohit Joshi, who equaled GNU to communism or the more recently Bruce Byfield, who obviously couldn't take the heat anymore and decided to proclaim unilaterally that all bloggers who don't agree with him are automatically "conspiracy theorists".

What is a derivative work of open source software? "The answer is I don't know -- and the fact is most people don't know," Jason Wacha, general counsel for MontaVista Software, said in a recent webinar. "The 'derivative works' definition hasn't been that well defined. There are 12 U.S. circuits, and each has its own definition -- some have none."