Felipe Contreras

I read Christian Schaller’s post which says essentially that Google is evil because it’s using FFmpeg in Chromium and arguing the legality of it by using an unusual interpretation of LGPL. because Google is using an unusual interpretation of LGPL.

Let’s step back for a second and see this through the point of view of FFmpeg developers. Probably they, just like any other FOSS developer, just want to code kick-ass software, and the license (LGPL) is just a tool to make sure their software is not stolen, so if a company chooses to use FFmpeg, they must contribute the changes back.

Google is contributing back their changes, they are publicly available in their repo. So how could FFmpeg developers loose? Their code will be used in an amazing product, that they will probably use too, it’s a win-win situation. This subject was brought up on the mailing list and nobody complained; Chromium is not listed in FFmpeg’s hall of shame.

Now, is it legal? The only way to know is to bring the issue to court and see the resolution, but who will bring this to court? FFmpeg developers? No. Perhaps H.264 patent holders, but only in countries with wicked patent laws (USA), and who cares about them? If Google looses in court against H.264 patent holders, I wouldn’t consider it evil, quite the contrary.

And finally, Google lawyers said that what the FSF thinks about this movement is irrelevant… damn right! They wrote the license, so? FFmpeg choose the license, and FFmpeg can choose another license if they so wish, in fact, they can re-license to Google in any other license they see fit because they have the copyright. Of course there’s no need for that because LGPL works fine, and the explanation of Google lawyers is completely logical to me.

Personally I cheer the Google Chromium team for such a bold movement, and congratulate FFmpeg developers for making kick-ass software that might soon be even more widely used.

Commenting on the Richard Stallman’s comment on cloud computing:

“One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”

Nonsense, the minute I find a better alternative to Gmail I can move all my data there, how exactly am I defenseless?

“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,”

Based on what? Your fallacious arguments?

First of all he is generalizing cloud computing into the usual services, like Gmail. There are other kinds of cloud computing, like OpenID, if I use myopenid.com I would be in his simplistic “locked state”, but I can setup my own server with my own OpenID provider, and link them together. I’m in complete control.

Same with identi.ca, a twitter-like open “service”. And there’s also the DataPortability movement that aims to put people in control of their data.

To me his position is obvious: everyone should stop using anything that is not FSF blessed and wait until we come up with the only sane alternative, otherwise you are stupid. Perhaps we should stop being productive, stop using Linux and wait for Hurd… I’ll better just ignore him.

Other interesting responses:

• Why Stallman is wrong when he calls cloud computing stupid
• Richard Stallman is officially confused
• Stallman’s Hype Machine About Cloud Computing