Meet the Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy (Video)

Video no longer available.

Twelve years ago, Slashdot interviewed Brad Kuhn in his then-role as VP of the Free Software Foundation. Kuhn is still involved with the FSF, but has gone on, after a stint as CTO for the Software Freedom Law Center, to concentrate his efforts as President, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy. The Conservancy offers organization and support to copylefted and permissively licensed software, and Brad explains in the video below what that entails, as well as where the Conservancy fits in the expanding landscape of organizations that help protect the rights of software developers. Brad makes no bones about wishing for a world where all software is Free software, but that's a big-picture goal. In the meantime, there's a lot of work to go around, just making sure that developers' chosen licenses are intelligently selected, and properly respected.

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ironic that an interview about freedom is locked up in Flash, an insecure and unfree technology.

Re:

[blahplusplus]

"It's ironic"

Nothing ironic about it, the world works on inertia, energy, habit and gravity. Think of steam and all the other digital download services, steam is still the big one. So big that Brad wardell gave up his Impulse game store/service to gamestop because he knew it was pointless because people form habits and communities around software. People don't want to have to change once they find something that serves their needs/interests.

Re:

[Meneth]

Yeah! Where's my OGV file?

Re:

[bkuhn]

I asked the Slashdot folks to make the video available in a format viewable with Free Software. I've sent an email to ask to make sure that happens. Unlike RMS, I don't necessarily object to videos of me being available in proprietary formats, as long as they are *also* available in a format viewable with Free Software.

I suspect this was just a communication problem between me and the interviewer. It should get resolved.

No transcript either

[tepples]

All I'm looking for is a transcript. Usually these videos embedded in Slashdot stories have a link below the video to expand or collapse the transcript, but not this time for some reason.

Re:

[king neckbeard]

Actually, I don't think it would be all that difficult to have a FOSS model for gaming. There is plenty of engine reuse already, and if major studios dropped half as much into funding FOSS development of these engines as they do for licensing, they could probably get much better engines out of it.

However, you seem to be implying that the FOSS model doesn't work in the real world. However, in many of the markets where there is more or less equal footing, such as most anything web based), FOSS projects d

Re:

[smooth wombat]

dropped half as much into funding FOSS development of these engines as they do for licensing,

How does this make the software free? Someone is still paying for it. All you're suggesting is they shift the burden from licensing to funding something else.

Re:

[king neckbeard]

Companies pay their devs to scratch their own itch or pay outside devs to scratch it for them. They put less in and get more out. Indie devs can make use of it even if they can't afford to pay anything up front, but if successful, might fund development in the same way. It's the same model for many FOSS projects, including the Linux kernel and web browsers.

Free platforms

[tepples]

Free software licensing works great for software on which other software is built. For example, applications run on free Linux. The server side of web applications runs on free Apache, Perl, Python, PHP, etc., and the client side runs on free Firefox or Chromium. People install these platform-type free software packages in order to run things that build on them. Likewise, game engines might be free, such as any five-year-old Id engine. But with games, people don't expect to buy a (commodity) engine and prem

Re:

[king neckbeard]

I will acknowledge the concern over consoles, although FOSS doesn't have to be copyleft, if that's a big enough concern. However, I see no reason why needing a complete package would be prohibited by a FOSS model. Unreal is a commodity engine, and it's part of countless complete packages. There were a number of id engine based games that were complete packages, included the beloved Chex Quest. FOSS visual novel engines have been used in popular VNs, sold as part of complete packages (Fate/Stay Night usi

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[tepples]

However, I see no reason why needing a complete package would be prohibited by a FOSS model.

The developer of an engine that has only non-free mission packs, or which promotes the use of non-free mission packs, will likely find the engine quarantined into the distribution's ghetto of packages depending on a non-free package. Popular free software distributions' package managers tend to hide such packages by default: F-Droid has "NonFreeAdd", Debian has "contrib", Ubuntu has "multiverse", and Fedora just doesn't carry it at all. So how should a developer fund creating a high-quality first Free missi

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[king neckbeard]

Stallman himself probably wouldn't have a problem with such a thing, as I don't believe he treats the 'mission pack' as software. Likewise, I can't think of any packages put into that kind of status merely because they are not useful without non-free non-software elements. Media players, image and comic viewers are going to be used overwhelmingly with non-free video and images. Gnash is actually in debian-main and is a GNU project.

The JavaScript trap

[tepples]

Stallman himself probably wouldn't have a problem with such a thing, as I don't believe he treats the 'mission pack' as software.

That depends on whether NPC scripts and set piece scripts are "software". Consider what Mr. Stallman wrote about the JavaScript trap [gnu.org] where web sites get to run non-free scripts on your machine. In this analogy, a web site is a mission pack for a web browser.

Media players, image and comic viewers are going to be used overwhelmingly with non-free video and images.

Overwhelmingly, but not exclusively. Media players can be used with the short films Big Buck Bunny and Sintel or with homemade videos. My Archos 43 Internet Tablet, for example, came preloaded with Big Buck Bunny in its "Demo videos" folder. Most video g

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[exomondo]

Stallman himself probably wouldn't have a problem with such a thing, as I don't believe he treats the 'mission pack' as software.

Wouldn't that depend on what the 'mission pack' actually is? I would think it would contain a great deal of scripting at the very least but in the real world probably quite a lot of code extending the basic engine, which would then likely be incompatible with the GPL.

Zero to proven

[tepples]

AKA fund something like this via a kickstarter /w proven developers

So how should a developer become proven in the first place? Does becoming proven require years of experience in the mainstream proprietary software industry?

Re:

[tepples]

You could get into a project with a few known and favored names

How should I go about getting noticed by these "known and favored names" and invited to such a project? How should I go from zero to contacts?

You could take a different path of making small games, posting them for free

That's what I've been doing. But some of my critics have been criticizing my projects to the effect "You're not only living in your mom's basement but also living in the past. Freeware 2D games inspired by 1980s arcade games won't get you anywhere. In fact, many established dev houses are likely to consider the particular choices you made for your portfolio to be a st

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[tepples]

seriously you post that every time somebody suggests methods of entry into the game development industry

I ask that because I want to get into the industry, and I want to know what resources I'll need before I get started.

and saving up for relocation

I'm aware of that. I wanted to know how much I would first need to save up.

OK, I'll bite. What's the difference between...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

OK, I'll bite. What's the difference between the Free Software Foundation, the Software Freedom Law Center and the Software Freedom Conservancy?

I'm guessing all of them offer their services for free, of course...

SFC alternatives

[Lord Crc]

A GPL-based project I contribute to wanted to become a member of the SFC, however it seems they have a large backlog of applications and are understaffed. It's been over 2.5 years since we've applied and we've yet to hear anything.

So, does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives?

We're not large, but could grow if we could get some framework for donations going. As such the financial side is our primary interest. We've decided against personal paypal accounts etc as we've had bad experience with this in the past, hence wanting something tied to the project.

Re:

[bkuhn]

Lord Crc,

We've just about completed our backlog and have started taking new projects. You should expect an invitation by the end of the year. Conservancy has been very careful not to accept new projects until we're absolutely sure we have the resources to take care of them.

Re:

[Lord Crc]

Thank you for the reply, we're really looking forward to this.