Alan Cox is so well thought of in the open-source community that he can pull together a crowd of eager techies to discuss theoretical software stability on a Sunday afternoon -- as he did at last year's FOSDEM conference in Brussels.
Cox wrote much of the original networking subsystem in Linux over a decade ago and has contributed code towards and maintained various kernel releases. Now employed by Linux vendor Red Hat, he is a leading figure in the open-source software community and has frequently spoken out against issues that he feels jeopardise freedom, such as software patents and the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
ZDNet UK spoke to Cox last week, following his talk at the Trusted Computing conference in London , about a wide range of topics, including the next version of the GPL, software patents, the kernel development process and Linux on the desktop.
Q: The first public discussion draft of GPL 3 a couple of weeks ago. What are you initial thoughts on it?
The
majority of it looks very sensible, such as letting copyright
information be displayed in an About box, rather than relying on
command line instructions [as is the case in GPL 2]. Some of the more
contentious stuff has sensibly been made optional. One of the other
nice things is the work to make the GPL compatible with other licences.
That's really important -- it will allow people to share more code.
What do you think about the new provision in the GPL 3 draft that opposes digital rights management (DRM)?
From
the kernel perspective it doesn't really matter. DRM is generally used
by applications, so it's more a question for things like the [GNU] C library. (Editor's note: Shortly after ZDNet UK spoke to Alan Cox, Linux founder Linus Torvalds spoke out against GPL 3, saying that he won't convert Linux to the new version, as he objects to the proposed digital rights management provisions.)
Last year, Sony BMG was criticised after it was discovered that some CDs automatically install copy-restriction software that is hidden using a rootkit.
In your talk at the trusting computing conference, you said that the
potential problem with DRM was highlighted by the recent Sony debacle
and that there is going to be "an almighty power struggle" between the
content industry and users. Where do you think the balance of power is
at the moment?
I'm not sure where the balance of power is. There
is a lot of evidence that it's on the music and computer industry's
side. But, I think Sony has learned its lesson and it's been quite an expensive lesson.
There needs to be a clear understanding of what's allowed -- a computer
is private property, but we don't know what this means legally. I think
some of it's going to come down to government competition regulation --
how you may or may not use DRM, in particular if you're in a monopoly
position.
Last year, the software patent directive was rejected by European Parliament, but the debate around such patents has now reopened, with the EC's launch of a public consultation
into how the patent system should be changed. As one of the people who
campaigned against software patents first time round, how do you feel
about the fact that they're back on the agenda?
I'm astounded. On one hand, we have Microsoft being threatened with multi-million pound fines by the EU and on the other hand they're being offered software patents -- Microsoft is one of the big influencers of this issue.
It is worrying that they're back on the agenda. It's a sign of more fundamental problems in the EU. The democratic process [of the European Parliament] is being devolved [to the unelected European Commission]. It's what people call policy laundering -- 'it's a good idea, but we'll never get it past the electorate, so let's slip it through and then pass it on to the individual governments.'
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