It happens to come via SJVN, but the poor lad is just an honest reporter in this case.
Are you worried about lawsuits from the FSF?
Does your code have that certain smell?
Jim Zemlin has the answers! He will soothe! He will comfort! In extreme cases, he will rub a valuable and unique ancient balm into corporate crevices that other ancient balms cannot reach!
The best thing about all this, of course, and to quote Eben Moglen, is that “participation in this program, along with necessary legal advice and training, should allow any organization to meet its FOSS license compliance responsibilities completely, at very low cost.”
FreeAsInVeryLowCostForNecessaryLegalAdviceAndTraining™.
So, what do we get for our pennies? I’m glad you asked me that.
Dependency Checker: This is a very useful tool that uses static and dynamic analysis to produce a report that you then send to the FOSS Compliance Officer. There’s probably one of those on Ubuntu forums. If not, you can hire one yourself. He’ll be cheap, honestly! Not necessarily nasty, unless you made the mistake of consulting Ubuntu forums, but certainly cheap.
Bill of Material (BoM) Difference Checker: Seriously. I’m not making this up. It’s unspecified, but I assume it involves hand-crafted XML exports with some sort of schema and the mandatory use of diff on a dedicated Linux server.
The Code Janitor: Yes, it’s just what it says; but worse. This wonderful piece of software will analyse all your source code (note: I’m not talking about Open Source code here; I’m talking about all your source code) and report on the comments. Praise Freedom!
Self-Assessment Checklist: Anal probes for prostate cancer? Nipple twiddling for fun? Counting the number of testicles? NO! We’re not quite there yet on the draconian self-enforced FLOSS auto-checking of code and BoMs and frankly anything else we might have left out, so guess what? It’s up to you! It’s almost like starting from scratch, without the compliance program, but then the great thing about GNU is that it’s recursive.
The Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) Standard and Workgroup: See XML, above.
Compliance Directory and Rapid Alert System: Fascism isn’t fascism without a rapid alert system.
Training and Education: Oh, honestly. This is beginning to sound like the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, only with gummier chewing, and more expensive, and involuntary.
Community: No FLOSS list would be complete without community. Even though you’d have thought all the above would have strapped you to the rack, you also need this: “the above resources join the existing FOSSBazaar workgroup, an existing community of software and compliance professionals.”
Jesus. Even the US Government at its most paranoid can’t beat this crap. From God’s gift to the basement, to God’s gift to accountants and lawyers — in one fell swoop.
Comments
At least Sarbanes-Oxley is understandably a result of the Enron debacle. FLOSS, on the other hand, is just a sorry excuse for an ex-programmer to take control over your code with a bunch of lawyers.
I like “The Code Janitor”. Are they talking about something like this:
http://tinyurl.com/39z8kkc
or
http://tinyurl.com/2ubwugy
?
No, those examples are in FOSS code. Profanity and FOSS code are natural, some would say inescapable, bedfellows.
There are obvious GPLv3 contract breaches involved when your own code includes profane comments, because … er, what was the question again?
They are rather splendid, though. I particularly like the “Niggaz” one.
I wonder how you configure the “Code Janitor” to stop it checking up on third-party code that has nothing at all to do with FOSS? I wonder how you get around NDAs and stuff like that when “Code Janitor” broadcasts this stuff on the Web?
You must be signed in to leave comments.