The Growing Body of Proprietary Infrastructure for FOSS Development: Repeating Bad History
Karen M. Sandler, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC)
Denver Gingerich, Director of Compliance, SFC
Bradley M. Kuhn, Policy Fellow & Hacker-in-Residence, SFC
Bradley sends his regrets; he tested positive for COVID-19 this morning and is quarantined.
FOSDEM 2025, Sunday 2 February 2025
đ·
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
— Immanuel Kant
Bradley asked us to share the quote above and read this statement.
FOSS Now Has a Long History
History doesn't repeat itself … but it often rhymes.— Samuel Clemens (nom de plume: Mark Twain)
The VA Linux / Sourceforge Debacle
Search âDachary FSF Europe Sourceforge driftingâ to find https://fsfe.org/news/2001/article2001-10-20-01.en.html & read in real time.
Post-Sourceforge Diaspora
- Berlios
- Gna!
- Savannah
There have even been academic whitepapers written about this situation as late as 2011.
An Old bkuhn Slide
• Tom Preston-Werner
•the “open source almost everything” guy
•claimed at OSCON 2013:
•“The GPL is a license of restrictions; I donât like restrictions. just use MIT”
Microsoft Acquires GitHub
• Microsoft Acquired GitHub in 2018-10
• … but Microsoft was always very excited about
non-copylefted FOSS
• They've been trying for 30 years to reduce the amount of
copylefted code in FOSS.
• GitHub was the obvious partner to help them do it.
Follow-Up / Talk License
Please donate to become a Conservancy Sustainer: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/
Presentation and slides are: Copyright © 2024, 2025 Bradley M. Kuhn, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Some images included herein are ©âed by others. I believe my use of those images is fair use under USA © law (which I also believe is the country of 1st publication under Berne). However, I suggest you remove such images if you redistribute these slides.