Programming radical puts left in copyright

In an era when companies are circling the wagons and hurrying to copyright and patent products and ideas, iconoclastic software developer Mr Richard Stallman seems entirely out of place. But such a view would be short-sighted.

Mr Stallman is a famed American computer programmer, perhaps best known in the computing world for developing the lion's share of the GNU operating system 17 years ago. GNU - which enigmatically stands for GNU's Not Unix - is a variation of the popular Unix operating system and serves as the bedrock of the freely available operating system package known commonly as Linux.

Mr Stallman, rather famously, prefers to see it more properly referred to as GNU/Linux.

Out of an unflinching and unorthodox belief that good software programming should benefit society, Mr Stallman also strenuously argues that the software code for all programs should always be available for public examination and use. To that end, he established the Free Software Foundation and came up with the concept of copyleft - as opposed to copyright.

Copyleft software conforms to the foundation's general public licence, which allows users to run, modify, copy and distribute software as long as the program's source code remains publicly accessible. Free software is not necessarily free of charge but developed under the notion that its source code will be freely available.

Anyone who believes that this is an idea whose time has not come (and never will) need only read back through Microsoft's testimony in its antitrust suit. In it, the software giant stated it recognised that Linux (or GNU/Linux) posed a serious threat to its position as dominant market player.

In the past year or two, the free software movement and the related open source software movement have become among the hottest topics in computing, with general public licences. Copyleft is at the centre of philosophical debates that often embroil developers in violent email wars of words in online discussion forums.

With his long hair, beard and colourful shirts, Mr Stallman looks like a programmer sent out by central casting. And with his strong and often abrasive opinions, able debating style and commitment to surprisingly old-fashioned concepts such as freedom, principles and ethics, Mr Stallman is a seminar organiser's dream.

Thus, one could have expected a lively session when he arrived in Dublin last Tuesday to argue in support of copyleft and the general public licence. He did not disappoint.

During a half-day seminar at UCD on "Copyleft and Open Source Software: History, Applications and Legal Issues", Mr Stallman argued that the concept of copyright was inappropriate to the digital age and restricted freedom and innovation. "Copyright today is a system inflicted on the public, not a system that benefits the public," he said.

He encouraged programmers to keep software in the public domain by using copyleft. Mr Stallman said the general public licence and copyleft helped guarantee that "freedom, principle and ethics" are part of the software developer and user community. "We have to think of the social consequences of our work," he said.

However, Mr Paul Lambert, a lawyer with LK Shields Solicitors in Dublin, argued that even with copyleft "as a fundamental concept, copyright remains, because copyleft can't work without copyright".

If a creative work was of sufficient quality and uniqueness, "copyright manifests automatically", he said. "It's created by statute - you can't get away from that." Therefore, copyleft was not "the end of copyright as we know it", as some critics had argued, he said. Software developers can thus not disclaim copyright, but may either licence or assign the work to others.

Seminar speaker Mr Mike Brady, chief executive of Dublin wireless applications company Anam, uses open source software as a basis for his company's commercial products, but said he would not use general public licence software since it requires that the code for the entire product be made public.

In contrast, open source software - which Mr Stallman dislikes and carefully distinguishes from "free software" - has a source code that remains available to the public, but which commercial products may incorporate without developers having to release the full product code.

Even using open source code can be perceived negatively by potential company funders, in part because copyright issues are considered difficult to resolve, said Mr Brady.

Nonetheless, Anam used open source code and placed all modified code back into the public domain. Mr Brady also vouched for the strength of open source cryptographic code, which his previous company, SSE, a Dublin division of Siemens, used in secure messaging products.

However, Mr Stallman said the seminar speakers merely highlighted "two fundamental world views clashing here - the humanist and the corporatist". He encouraged people not to purchase any commercial product that wasn't created under general public licence because such products fail to feed back into the wider community. "It's wrong to buttress that anti-social system by buying into it," he said.

Because computers allow information to be easily copied for personal use and distribution, copyright in the digital age is better considered in the context of the ancient world or the early era of the printing press, according to Mr Stallman.

"Computers have transformed the way in which we can copy information. It brings us back to a situation more like the ancient world" of handmade copies, or of the early era of the printing press, he argued. When few printers existed, copyright could be enforced easily and may have helped to promote authorship.

"Copyright in the age of the printing press may have been a good deal for the public," he said. But now, "Draconian regulation is imposed in the name of copyright", because copyright has to be enforced against everyone who owns a computer.

Mr Lambert acknowledged that new technologies challenged existing interpretations of copyright. Software is generally recognised as being protected under literary copyright laws, but these assign copyright for 70 years, he said, an inappropriate length of time for a software program. But definitions of copyright could and probably should change.

"Copyright has never been a constant. It's always been in a state of flux," he said.

Copyright could be interpreted differently even within different geographies, which has already led to scuffles between the European Union and the United States.

Copyleft, free software and open source software all posed major challenges to the concept of copyright and could threaten the established software houses such as Microsoft, added Mr Lambert. For example, he said, "Linux is now a viable alternative". Such approaches to software development are "vibrant" and have "sufficient volume, momentum and popularity to increase".

However, general public licence and copyleft will remain philosophical rather than practical issues until they are tried in court. "The issue for general public licence is whether or not it works, whether or not it's enforceable. But it hasn't been tested in a court of law," said Mr Lambert.

klillington@irish-times.ie