Finally catching up on my blog clippings after a week of travel, and I found out that ACT has apparently won the inaugural “Scum of the Day” award from some angry British guy with a blog!  I’ve ordered a case of Cristal for our DC and our Brussels offices in celebration. So try not to call us on Tuesday…the ringing will hurt my head.

Anyway, it seems that the prize is in honor of all our work to identify some serious problems with the GPLv3 during the drafting stages.  What is truly amazing about the accomplishment is the competition we beat out!  There were so many who did so much to highlight the dangers of the new license.  Other “libelous” critics of the GPLv3 read like the a Who’s Who list of the World’s biggest Linux haters!

  • The Notorious DLC (Debian Linux Community) did some really ground breaking work FUDDING the GPLv3 on behalf of their corporate masters of Microsoft.  Wish that we too had noted that the GPLv3 fails the “Dissident Test” and could be used by repressive regimes as “a weapon to be used against people holding unpopular or illegal views.”
  • The Linux-Hating Members of the Linux Kernel Development Team which made some crazy claims about the GPLv3’s “potential to inflict massive collateral damage upon our entire ecosystem and jeopardise the very utility and survival of Open Source.”  They also noted the same concerns WE had about the patent provision.  Obviously, these blatant lies were a favor to Bill Gates after he loaned them his Lake Washington home for a massive kegger and promised to open source Microsoft Bob.
  • That Guy Who Hates Linux So Much He Put His Name On It.  I figured Linus Torvalds’ refusal to move the Linux kernel to GPLv3 would have made him the frontrunner. But, after he called the Free Software Foundation and its acolytes a bunch of “controlling,” “condescending,” “hypocrites,” that are full of “hot air,” it seemed like a foregone conclusion…Linus did more than anyone else to raise concerns about the GPLv3 and the FSF’ers that were designing it. 

Yet, somehow little ol’ us won the award… funny that.

If I were to hazard a guess why, perhaps it’s because reminding the world that most of the open source community’s leaders have criticized and/or rejected the GPLv3, would undermine Mr. Angry’s entire version of reality:

“the oceans of FUD Microsoft has bought itself, including low-key payments to academics (never forget academic kickbacks), were at best able to slow down — but never to defeat — adoption of this evolutionary licence.”

The reality is that Microsoft didn’t need to do anything to FUD the GPLv3.  There were so many legitimate problems with the license that the Open Source community led the charge on the so-called “FUD” campaign. 

ACT engaged on GPLv3, because we believe that the development of the license was a turning point in the software industry.  After years of moves toward collaboration and mutual respect between open source and proprietary software companies leading to hybrid solutions, the GPLv3 was akin to the Bonfire of the Vanities.  It was an effort to purify the Open Source community back to its Free Software roots, a move that was destined to split the community… and, as you can see above, we were right.  In the end, the Free Software Foundation even made some of the changes that we pushed for including rewriting the DRM section and parts of the patent provisions.

In the end, though, we stand ready to accept our award with open arms.  Mr. Angry, just tell us where the awards ceremony will be and what the dress code is and we’ll bring our own red carpet.  Just one question…does the award resemble a tin foil hat or is it more like a Faraday cage?