[DotGNU]Official statement of Philosophy (DotGNU Manifesto)

[S11001001]

To resurrect the idea of a unique "DotGNU Manifesto". I have previously 
stated the reasons for this; the most important is that for most people, 
DotGNU has the opportunity to introduce the notion of Free Software 
philosophy first. That is, they haven't read anything in /philosophy. So 
we had a little discussion on developers 
<http://subscribe.dotgnu.org/pipermail/developers/2002-April/thread.html#6639> 
about this, but died when people got stuck on religious discussion. So 
then came Peter Minten's PHILOSOPHY file, which became a chapter to put 
in all DotGNU manuals. But I still believe some kind of Manifesto, be it 
nb's or silvernerd's, should be officially endorsed, and the two should 
be merged. I have not addressed this issue yet.

With that in mind, I have converted nb's first draft to Texinfo, and 
made a bunch of changes and added comments for things to change based on 
some of the following discussion, and attached it. (to reinforce the 
point, I made the attachment at this point in the message.)

Don't bother generating it, because there's lots of stuff you need to 
read in commented regions. It wouldn't work, anyway.

Please comment.

--
Stephen Compall
DotGNU `Contributor' -- http://dotgnu.org

Right now the hoarders essentially claims the power to render a
person's computer useless. There used to be people in the US, most
commonly about fifty years ago, they were in the Mafia, they would go
up to stores and bars, especially bars when bars were illegal of
course. They would go up and say: "A lot of places around here have
been burning down lately. You wouldn't want your place to burn down,
would you? Well we can protect you from fires, you just have to pay us
a thousand dollars a month, and we'll make sure you don't have a fire
here." And this was called "the protection racket". Now we have
something where a person says "You got a nice computer there, and
you've got some programs there that you're using. Well, if you don't
want those programs to disappear, if you don't want the police to come
after you, you better pay me a thousand dollars, and I'll give you a
copy of this program with a license," and this is called "the software
protection racket".
        -- RMS, Lecture at KTH (Sweden), 30 October 1986

@c paste the following in the @including document, except for the ignore
@c tags
@ignore
@c change chapter type to suit your document
@node The DotGNU Manifesto
@unnumbered The DotGNU Manifesto
@end ignore

@ignore
If the Manifesto is unnumbered, put this in your document before the
include:

@set DGMANIFESTO-TYPE-unnumbered

If it is a chapter, do:

@set DGMANIFESTO-TYPE-chapter

If an appendix, do:

@set DGMANIFESTO-TYPE-appendix

If none of these, define the dgmanifesto-subsection macro to something
exactly one level below what you include it as. i.e., if it is a
@section, do

@macro dgmanifesto-subsection {secname}
@subsection \secname\
@end macro

If you don't follow these instructions, your build will fail. If in
doubt about what to use, choose the @heading type. If in doubt about
where to put the manifesto, put it at the beginning :)
@end ignore

@ifset DGMANIFESTO-TYPE-unnumbered
@macro dgmanifesto-subsection {arg}
@unnumberedsec \arg\
@end macro
@end ifset
@ifset DGMANIFESTO-TYPE-chapter
@macro dgmanifesto-subsection {arg}
@section \arg\
@end macro
@end ifset
@ifset DGMANIFESTO-TYPE-appendix
@macro dgmanifesto-subsection {arg}
@appendixsec \arg\
@end macro
@end ifset

@macro GNU
@acronym{GNU}
@end macro

@alias caps = acronym
@alias endash = minus
@c not emdash, which you make with ---

@noindent
@i{The DotGNU Team}

@ignore
This document was originally created by Norbert Bollow, at Stephen
Compall's suggestion.
<http://subscribe.dotgnu.org/pipermail/developers/2002-April/006639.html>

It was enhanced with the help of Barry Fitzgerald, Stephen Compall,
and Richard M. Stallman.
@end ignore

@c Mention here that DotGNU is part of the GNU project and follows Free
@c Software ideals. Give a relatively brief (maybe 1 page) intro of Free
@c Software ideals. Remember that this is a ``first'' document; as in the
@c first thing reader has ever read about Free Software at all!

It is often said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  This
truth was popularized by Thomas Jefferson (1743 @endash{} 1826).  The
original source seems to be a speech by John Philpot Curran, who said:

@quotation
``It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a
prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to
man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at
once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.''

---John Philpot Curran: @cite{Speech upon the Right of Election},
1790.  (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)
@end quotation

@dgmanifesto-subsection{What licenses we use and why we use them}

One important element in defending the freedom of Free Software is to
use a so-called @dfn{copyleft} license, such as the @GNU{} General
Public License (@acronym{GPL}) and the @GNU{} Lesser General Public
License (@acronym{LGPL}).  These licenses grant the user of the
software very significant rights to redistribute the software, in
original or modified form, but only under the condition that the
recipient will also have these rights.

The significance of copyleft is that it prevents any entity from just
taking the software, making some changes, and then distributing it in
a way that denies the users essential freedom rights.

@c put discussion of non-copyleft FS licenses here

@dgmanifesto-subsection{An Attack on Freedom}

So copyleft is a major defense of Free Software against unscrupulous
people that wish to take the work of the community and use it to
subjugate that community.
 
Any entity which wants to make a major attack against Free Software
will attack this defense first, and try to destroy it, or make it
ineffective.

Microsoft Corporation is now making such an attack.

@ignore
RMS: To some extent yes, but I think that is basically unrelated to
.NET and thus not directly related to DotGNU.
@end ignore

This DotGNU Manifesto calls Free Software developers and Free Software
users worldwide to understand the strategy behind this attack, and to
help preventing it from being successful.

The following two sections explain the strategy of Microsoft's attack,
and how you can help defend the freedom of the internet.

@dgmanifesto-subsection{The Strategy of Microsoft's Attack Against Free 
Software}

Software patents are a centerpiece of Microsoft's attack plan against
Free Software.  Any program that uses a patented algorithm cannot be
Free Software unless it is somehow made sure that the patent is in
some way licensed so that everyone who receives a copy of the program
will have rights to run it for any purpose, and to redistribute it in
orginial or modified form.

Here is one way how Microsoft uses patents to specifically attack
copyleft Free Software licenses, such as the @GNU{} General Public
License (@acronym{GPL}): In the recently-published ``Royalty-Free
@acronym{CIFS} Technical Reference License Agreement'', Microsoft
defines the @GNU{} @acronym{GPL} (and any other copyleft license) as
an address@hidden Impairing License'' and requires companies not to
distribute their implementations of the @acronym{CIFS} specification
``in any manner that would subject such Company Implementation to the
terms of an @acronym{IPR} Impairing License.''

This attack is clearly aimed at the successful @acronym{GPL}'ed
@acronym{CIFS} implementation, Samba, and it is based on Microsoft
having rights to some patents that will necessarily be infringed by
any implementation of @acronym{CIFS}.

A similar attack against Free Software applications in general is
possible if and only if those application programs are in some way
locked into using some technology on which Microsoft holds patent
rights.

@ignore
Following para RMS:

It isn't clear to me that a replacement for .NET, such as DotGNU, will
solve that kind of problem.  Rather, there is the danger that the
patents will be used to prohibit DotGNU.

DotGNU serves a useful and important purpose: to the extent users
adopt .NET methodology and to the extent we can find our way through
the patents, we can give those users a free software platform.  But
that is a different story.
@end ignore

For this reason, we need to be vigilant to prevent Microsoft from
being successful with establishing the address@hidden platform as a de
facto standard for internet-based applications.  That would for
example allow them to establish a patented protocol as the de facto
standard for authentication, and then Microsoft would be able to
control what kinds of licenses can be used for programs which use the
internet for anything that requires such authentication.

Now how can Microsoft be prevented from taking control of the
internet, especially commercial use of the internet which invariably
requires some form of authentication?

@dgmanifesto-subsection{How You Can Help Defend the Freedom of the Internet}

The DotGNU project seeks to build a complete and fully Free Software
replacement for the address@hidden webservices platform.  It will be
compatible to popular software platforms by allowing to run
address@hidden applications written in C#, as well as Java applications.
At the same time, we want to provide innovative development tools,
libraries, webservice components, and server software, so that DotGNU
will be clearly better than its proprietary competitors.

Please help us with making this software so good, and building it so
quickly, that it will prevent Microsoft from successfully establishing
their address@hidden platform, or any patent-encumbered protocols, as a
de facto standard for internet-based applications.

Contributions to the DotGNU project can be in the form of volunteer
work or in the form of donations to the Free Software Foundation.  For
larger amounts it is possible to set up a ``restricted grant'' that
gives you more control on how your financial contribution will be
used.

Please help us by taking a stand for Free Software in general,
informing people about the ethical objections against creating or
using proprietary software.

Please help us by letting others know why the DotGNU project is
important, and how they can help.

Please help us with activism against software patents.

@c moved to bottom per discussion
@dgmanifesto-subsection{A short history of the @GNU{} Project---and why DotGNU 
has chosen to be a GNU Project}

The @GNU{} project has taken a stand for the freedom of computer
users, by making a complete operating system available where every
component is Free Software, so that its users can freely modify and
share it.

@ignore
RMS says about the preceding paragraph:

Rather, we developed a free operating in service of the stand.  A
stand is an abstraction.  You don't take a stand by doing an action,
you take a stand and therefore you do an action.
@end ignore

To many people this goal seemed impossibly ambitious, and yet it has
been reached.  In combination with the operating system kernel called
Linux, the @GNU{} system now has millions of users.  An alternative
kernel named Hurd is still under development.

@ignore
Following sentence appears self-contradictory.  You need to make the
two points more specific so it will be clear they do not contradict
each other.
@end ignore

The @GNU{} project has achieved its goal, but with this the work of
@GNU{} is not finished.

@c aieee! fix the dangling end left by moving #include <gnu> to end