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Transcript of Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech
An anonymous reader writes "Groklaw has a transcript of Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech + Q&A up. Good Stuff. During the Q&A he made a good point to think about: 'We stand for free speech. We're the free speech movement of the moment. And that we have to insist upon, all the time, uncompromisingly. My dear friend, Mr. Stallman, has caused a certain amount of resistance in life by going around saying, "It's free software, it's not open source". He has a reason. This is the reason. We need to keep reminding people that what's at stake here is free speech. We need to keep reminding people that what we're doing is trying to keep the freedom of ideas in the 21st century, in a world where there are guys with little paste-it labels with price tags on it who would stick it on every idea on earth if it would make value for the shareholders. And what we have to do is to continue to reinforce the recognition that free speech in a technological society means technological free speech. I think we can do that. I think that's a deliverable message.'"
Another great slashdot article which assumes you know _exactly_ who the person is featured in the article. Can't we have just a little one line in the first paragraph saying what it's all about?
...who works Pro Bono for them
I am NaN
You see, some of us actually have subscriptions...
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
I was wondering why there so few posts this long after the post. Then I realized that most of the /.ers are actually reading this article.
Evolution or ID?
1) They are both subscribers and had more time than you did.
2) If you read both posts you'll see that neither actually requires reading the article, one just says "But who is this guy", the other says "He's FSF Lawyer"
I read the whole transcript yesterday. I just wish I could have watched it or at least listened to it. The online archive is in perpetual time-out mode. Has anyone got an (unofficial?) mirror of it? Is anyone allowed to? Can we 'torrent this?
I just want to hear Eben's jokes in Eben's voice. Someone worth listening to for an hour and a half is a rare bird.
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
1994-, Professor of Law and Legal History, Columbia Law School.(current)
1987-94, Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School.
1986-87, Law Clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, United States Supreme Court.
1985-86, Law Clerk to Judge Edward Weinfeld, United States District Court, Southern District of New York.
1984, Associate, Cravath Swaine & Moore, New York.
1983, IBM Corporation, Armonk, New York, Associate Corporation Counsel
1979-84, IBM Corporation, San Jose, California, Programmer/Analyst, Programming Language Research & Development
Selected Publications
Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright, First Monday (August, 1999)
The Invisible Barbecue, 97 Colum. L. Rev. 945 (1997).
Jewishness and the American Constitutional Tradition: The Cases of Brandeis and Frankfurter (Book Review), 89 Colum. L. Rev. 959 (1989).
Taking the Fifth: Reconsidering the History of the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, 92 Mich. L. Rev. 1086 (1994).
Did you ever wonder what would happen if we get this guy into the same room with Mr. McBride?
My guess: A flash of gamma rays.
And I know that money talks and bullshit walks. Unless we get some thick-walleted lobbyists on our side, the souless corporations will continue to turn innovation and invention into commodities - and Open Source and Free Software will remain terms that no one but the choir ever hears.
Anybody from Harvard: Am I allowed to attend lectures without being part of Harvard? Are they public lectures? Can I obtain permission to attend them?
Being a recent grad student at a tech school, I know that school ID's are seldom checked at these occasions, but would like to know if it's against the rules or something.
Thank you.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
There is no copyright license in the United States today more fitting to Thomas Jefferson's idea of copyright or indeed to the conception of copyright contained in Article 1 Section 8, than ours. For we are pursuing an attempt at the diffusion of knowledge and the useful arts which is already proving far more effective at diffusing knowledge than all of the profit-motivated proprietary software distribution being conducted by the grandest and best funded monopoly in the history of the world.
At about an hour in length, it was quite good. I really recommend it, because it puts both SCO and the things you hear Stallman say into very nice perspective, and shows how terribly confused Darl McBride really is. In particular you should watch for Moglen's description of the problems with using Eldred v. Ashcroft to support the odd notion that the GPL is unconstitutional. Darl doesn't realize it, but his argument indicates that he and the FSF are actually on the same side of that Supreme Court case.
Does this mean that any piece of closed-source software is a threat fo Free Speech?
Are the store shelves that are stocked with closed-source games and applications threatening the world? The customers who buy them don't seem much to care.
Maybe some legislation is in order to free the source!!!!
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
"It's free software, it's not open source"
I think if they want to make this message strongly they should keep it simple. Making the distinction between "free software" and "open source" will just confuse most members of the public. Isn't "open source" also about free speech? The same general principals apply don't they? Why do they have to confuse the issue?
Moglen is a treat to watch and hear; in an era of dismal public speakers he's a reminder that people once went to Court and campaign gatherings just to hear English rhetoric as a fine art.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
... and one relevant to a much-debated topic here on slashdot.
Moglen makes a very lucid explanation of why the apparently-more-free BSD license is less valuable to people who believe in freedom. He characterizes the the world of free software as a "self-healing commons", that cannot be appropriated, or destroyed, and points out that a BSD-style commons is much more vulnerable to being "proprietized".
The really interesting parts of his talk, though, were the bits about open hardware and radio spectrum, and their implications on technological free speech, and of course his extensive and detailed explanation of why he thinks the free software battle is essentially already won.
Even if you don't agree with him, Eben Moglen is a persuasive speaker with very deep and powerful ideas. Very well worth reading/listening to.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Thank You!!!!! and Amen !!!!
IMHO this is what all the other people (like Lessing) who want a compromize between the copyright lords and the information wants to be free crowd miss. That it's not about copyrights at all, it's about free speech. In the eyes of the internet there is no difference between copyright content, porn content, and free speech content. If you have someone in a position to restrict any information, you have someone in a position to restrict any information they disagree with - it's that simple.
I think in the end though, we will not be able to rely on the government to secure our free speech rights online. We're simply gonna half to do it in ourselves in defiance. We're gonna half to force an all or nothing proposition. A) Shut down the internet, B) have no controll over content online. So other than that, the internet is completely outside the governments juristiction.
If they really mean free as in freedom why don't they just call it that, "Freedom Software Foundation". Just to combat all the confusion about the multiple uses of the word 'free' in the EN-US language. Might also take a bit of the edge off the "terrorist" or "communist" coments directed at it. Although I think they actually would be more appropriately be called the "Software Freedom Foundation". That would require a change to their acronym but be closer to their intent of liberating software. I am in however in some disagreement on the "freeing of the spectrum". I think that if you removed regulation from that it would rapidly degenerate into anarchy ruled by nobody usable by nobody, e.g. bigest transmitter wins. You can have free bandwith on packet radio now under the current regulations. It is generally limitted bandwidth but that is the nature (physics if you want to be precise) of long distance low power radio. Another poster mentioned seeing bandwidth as a service like water or electricity. This is reasonable as the infrastructure (hardware) of the internet is not free. Being a radio node would probably not be as free as he envisions. Would you relay other peoples data? If you would not, would you expect someone else to? Somebody would have to relay packets and could charge a fee for the service (satelite internet service springs to mind as an example).
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Having listened to the speech, I assure 'yall it's much better listened to than read.
I've put together a BitTorrent share with a Speex encoding of his speech. Please be gentle.
Hear hear. Now can someone please point this out to the PocketPC developers out there? I got myself this new fangled PDA from Microsoft and the complete lack of GPL code out there for it is truely amazing.
There are plenty of applications, most of them are shockingly written but the developer has stuck it up on Handago with a tag of $15 in the hope that he/she can make a quick buck off it.
I, on the other hand, tried to garner interest in developing a simple framework to allow embedded visual basic programmers to create today plugins really easily. The idea was that the code to produce the today screen (which had to be eVC++) would be GPL and that the code for interfacing to it would be free (for use under any licence). Anyone who improved the protocol had to share it, but you didn't have to share the code for your own application if you really didn't want to.
Unfortunately I can't programme today screens (or evc++ for that matter) for toffee to I advertised for people to help me.
I had interest from 10 people - not one of them was interested in it being GPL. They would only agree to work with me on it if it was going to be sold and licenced to "approved" people. In short, they wanted to make money from something closed and hidden.
So what can I do? Learning eVC++ is not really an option unless people want to see something in 2010. Is there anywhere I can find good people who are willing to spread the GPL word in the PocketPC community?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It is in danger if you are not allowed to not talk about how bad the BigMac sucks or are sued when you talk about the ingredients. Or, if McDonalds sue Burger King because the whopper is similar. Or the 6 year old is sued for taking apart a whopper.
Fight Spammers!
We need to keep reminding people that what's at stake here is free speech. We need to keep reminding people that what we're doing is trying to keep the freedom of ideas in the 21st century, in a world where there are guys with little paste-it labels with price tags on it who would stick it on every idea on earth if it would make value for the shareholders
Funny... that would make one think that patents are the enemy here, not copyrights. Copyrights protect the embodiment of a single idea in a concrete form. Patents protect an idea which is a process of doing something.
Ergo, both of these guys are barking up the wrong tree.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Or your dear sweet old grandma is sued because her age-old family recipe violates some sort of McDonald's trade secret or patent.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
It went something like this.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!
A mushroom cloud rises out of the room, and both Darl and him are vaporised.
The Slashdot crowd are puzzled at how to feel.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
What a patronizing way to refer to people (like me) who are trying to make a living selling their own work.
That's how these guys think about anybody who doesn't drink their free-everything Kool-Aid.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
There should be an inspiring spokesman like this at every Open Source convention. The community needs it.
Stallman has done a great service to the community by keeping this aspect of the movement alive. I have had direct correspondance with him multiple times and he has NEVER failed to personally write back with elaboration on a point or a rebuff to an argument. He must have spent the majority of every day for the past 25 years spreading the case for Free Software one person at a time like that without compromise, which is how he has achieved what he has achieved and deserves respect in the community regardless of personal wranglings.
However, Stallman is so marred with 25 years of personal politics that it is difficult for him to inspire. It never seems like he can quite decouple the ideals of freedom of expression from a certain "I _AM_ THE IDEALS, RECOGNIZE ME, the GPL is the ONLY way to go" attitude.
If the entire community can be inspired to the real ideals of Free Expression, than the GPL itself would almost be irrelevant. Stallman has used the GPL as the glue to keep the community together regardless of it's beliefs on the issue of free expression, but this needs to be seen as an entirely secondary issue.
I hope to at least see Eben Moglen and similar speakers invited to more software conferences.
Braddock Gaskill
My right to speak in no way infringes their right to remain silent. Those against open source itself, like the MPAA and SCO, are doing so because they don't like what is being said, as well as how it is being said. The MPAA doesn't want fair use rights, and SCO doesn't want a superior product for the X86.
= 2048);write(1,s ,n))if(s[y=s[13]%8+20]/16%4==1){int i=m(1)17^256+m(0)8,k=m(2)0,j=m(4)17^m(3)9^k% 8^8,a=0,c=26;for(s[y]-=16;--c;j*=2)a=a*2^i&1, i=i/2^j&1<<24;for(j=127;++j<n ;c=c>y)c+=y=i^i/8^i>>4^i>>12,i=i>>8^y<<17,a^=a>>14 ,y=a^a*8^a<<6,a=a>>8^y<<9,k=s" [k&7]+2^"cr3sfw6v;*k+>/n."[k>>4 ]*2^k*257/8,s[j]=k^(k&k*2&34)
The code at the bottom of this post is illegal under the DMCA. Its very illegality violates my right to free speech, because it's only legal so long as it's closed source. That's why this is about free speech, and that's why we must protect it.
It's not closed software that's the threat to free speech, it's the attacks that are being made upon open software. You have the right to remain silent, but please leave me my right to speak.
efdtt.c Author: Charles M. Hannum <root@ihack.net>
Thanks to Phil Carmody <fatphil@asdf.org> for additional tweaks.
Length: 434 bytes (excluding unnecessary newlines)
Usage is: cat title-key scrambled.vob | efdtt >clear.vob
#define m(i)(x[i]^s[i+84])<<
unsigned char x[5],y,s[2048];main(n){for(read(0,x,5);read(0,s,n
*2-k
[j],k="7Wo~'G_\216
*6^c+~y;}}
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The ACLU doesn't even have a clue.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This Free Speech/Open Source movement is not just a philosophy. It's a religion
Any philosophy would appear like a religion if you don't agree with it. That's just like saying "all you people are wrong, and why don't you just shut up with your new philosophy".
Is Free Speech in danger when McDonald's doesn't publish the recipes of their menu or when KFC keeps the 13 spices and herbs secret?
How about my favorite Italian restaurants meatballs?
Almost all chefs that I've met keep their receipes secret. This is a tradition amongst chefs, and helps them distinguish themselves, much like an artist has a certain style.
As for those 13 herbs and spices... consider the following transcript from this article...
So let me tell you what I think the owners of culture were doing in the 20th century. It took them two generations from Edison to figure out what their business was, and it wasn't music and it wasn't movies. It was celebrity. They created very large artificial people, you know, with navels eight feet high. And then we had these fantasy personal relationships with the artificial big people. And those personal relationships were manipulated to sell us lots and lots of stuff -- music and movies and T-shirts and toys and, you know, sexual gratification, and heavens knows what else. All of that on the basis of the underlying real economy of culture, which is that we pay for that which we have relations with. We are human beings, social animals.
In there small way KFC is threatening freedom of speech. They've created a secret formula, and made it a celebrity. They own a piece of our culture, like George Lucus owns Star Wars, and that's how they make all that money.
As for freedom of speech, people will publish receipes, (and make movies), and others will take those receipes and improve upon them (there is no requirement to republish), and over the centuries we developed wonderful and complex delicacies and great diversity. KFC gives us a few types of food and they sustain their IP with marketing. Why is this restricted model somehow better for society just because it creates shareholder value in the pockets of a few?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
That's a load of astonishingly ill-informed nonsense. The basis of intellectual property is the promotion of the creation of works that benefit society. To accomplish this, the government grants creators certain limited rights to control certain aspects of how their creations are used. You can read all about this (and nothing about your "absolute" "moral" claptrap) in the foundation of my civilized society, the U.S. Consitution.
I dont get all this.
If you want to write software and give it away, I have no problem with that.
If I want to write software and not give it away (and sell it), that should be my business.
Check out this article.
If I try to sell it and no one buys it, sucks for me, but it doesnt affect you.
Feel free to give away all the software you want. Personally, if someone makes money off a program I wrote, I have no problem if I get paid for my work. But again - to each his own.
Ig
Or, if McDonalds sue Burger King because the whopper is similar.
Wouldn't that be Burger King suing McDonalds because the Big Xtra is really a Whopper in disguise? I guess it wouldn't matter...McDonalds could probably sue over the Big King anyways.
But the big boys know they can fight in the courts for years with each other. Fighting against it's own consumers to prevent bad reviews or "top secret recipes" from getting out would be handle very quickly since no one could really put up a fight. But unlike some businesses, I don't think they are stupid enough to do that. Mostly because there are still too many disadvantages to suing your consumers. But, as consumers, we should be fighting to keep those disadvantages stable, which includes fighting for free speech to say all those things they don't like...
It's very strange that you can't back this claim up, especially as Stallman and the FSF have made money by selling GNU software.
In fact, you can order GNU software directly from the FSF right now.
In fact, why not read what the FSF have to say on the matter straight from their own website:
It is patronizing if you are one of the guys who wants to put a paste-it label with a price tag on every idea on earth, but I doubt he means you.
The Flatlander
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
What a patronizing way to refer to people (like me) who are trying to make a living selling their own work.
No, he is refering to people who are trying to make a living selling other peoples work (and keeping the profits for themselves).
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
I think the OP is objecting to people who want to put prices on all intellectual property, not just some of it. Even RMS thinks that not all software must be free. I agree. I think people who want to write free software (like me) should be free to do so, and companies like Microsoft that want to write non-free software should be free to do so.
The issue is when people try to sue the free software writers out of existence, e.g. SCO. They think all software should come from big companies with big licensing fees. Moderation is key. I use some non-free software. I also use plenty of free software. I do not impose my views of this on the public or the economy.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
If you look into the context (or if you've even read here about the Amazon patents for instance), you'd then know that a better reply would have been:
/. More than a few of them would probably treat you to a punch in the head, rather than a funny one-liner.
"What a patronizing way to refer to people who are making a living selling/appropriating the work of others."
Sheesh, get some perspective. It's not about getting everyone to give shovels away for free, it's about preventing people from claiming that they have an inalienable right of ownership over the very idea of a shovel.
In short, if you are a programmer (or such), you're probably not a person like that. If you are in fact a patent attorney fighting on the side of software patents for megacorporations, you should look around at your "colleagues" on
Not everyone who follows the FSF belittles everyone trying to charge for thought. Some of them actually go out and try to come up with a way where the producers can still make a living, while the consumers have convient access.
Like all the different ways that have been mentioned to compensate artists for work downloaed from peer to peer networks. Or like the premise behind MP3.com (free downloads, and the artists get paid.)
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Wrong. It's no different with the EFF's tacit support of file-sharing, or more recently their tacit support of the Grey Album, in which a DJ appropriated for commercial use parts of others' work.
They have a long and clear record of utter disrespect for the rights of authors. You want to give away your work? Fine with me. But if I choose otherwise, tough.
That's just the way it is, can't you tell?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
The philosophy of the FSF is that Free Speech is endangered when people keep recipes secret. Any time something is created value is added in the world. Keeping the creation in the hands of a select few lessens this value. I don't agree that what the FSF proproses can be executed in the real world all the time, but it is a useful ideal.
Ok, then, isn't that what the Grey Album was? A DJ took other peoples work and created a new commercial work.
The logic always flips this way and that way to suit the politics.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
IANAL. Hell, IAN even a software developer. I'm just an interested, educated computer user who likes to have a bit of variety in his life. I can clearly see the arguments on both sides of this issue. I have no personal problem with people seeking to make money off software they've written, so long as they don't force me into paying them if I don't want it. And yet I find the constant "How free is Free" argument within the FSS community to be extremely off-putting. Zealotry is never friendly to a new convert, and when even asking a simple question about the merits of KDE vs Gnome on an email list results in a flame war of epic proportions, what kind of impression is this supposed to leave upon those who view the movement from outside? I think the real issue at stake here is the freedom of the developer to see what he or she chooses done with their own product. Some will choose to attempt to make a profit off of their hard work. I say, good luck. It's a tough market out there. Others will choose to release their products gratis. I say, good for you. You are giving back to the community from which you came. Yet others will choose to release their products completely, allowing other developers to take them off in new and perhaps interesting ways. I say, wonderful. You have done a brave thing in giving your creation completely over to the world. Ultimately, the freedom which we are speaking of, and, in many cases, fighting for, is the freedom of a creator to choose the destiny of their creation. Should they be forced to accept one route by law, eschewing all other possibilities? I certainly don't think so. No matter what route might be forced upon the creator, legislating compulsory 'freedom' is contrary to the very meaning of the word.
C'mon, can't you see the goal is to socialize art? That's what they're doing with their "white paper" -- creating some quasi-governmental agency to regulate prices and control over art.
That's the sort of shit these guys used to fight against.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
The bottom line of intellectual property is this: The creator of that IP has an absolute moral right to determine how his property may be used.
And it's an idea that is 100% moose hockey.
Unlike the natural properties (things which are capable of being owned), ideas are not capable of being owned. "Intellectual property" is a creature of law, designed solely to encourage the fixture of ideas (not, crucially, the creation of ideas... the purpose of copyright and patent is solely to have people WRITE STUFF DOWN so that others can access it and use it). It's since gone badly off the rails, but that's the animating purpose behind all such laws.
You can't own an idea, any more than you can own the word "dental". You can keep an idea private, but that's different from owning it.
The fact is, that "moral rights" never even appeared on the radar screen of intellectual property until well after the current model of permanent ownership of the products of all human ideas came into being.
There is no theft in the "theft" of an idea, for the simple fact that my appropriation of "your" idea does not alter or harm your own idea one iota. My taking the "idea" under my control does not, in any way, affect the control you have over the idea. As a result, ideas are simply not capable of being owned, since the only purpose of ownership is the taking under human control of those things that can be controlled.
Sorry for the heavy Hegelian slant of this (I'm hauling my concept of ownership, incidentally, out of Hegel's _Philosophy of Right_). But in a nutshell, ideas are not things, and treating them as things is stupid.
MP3.com went broke. Dreamy talk about "free this and free that and get the artists paid" doesn't get the artists paid.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
As the corporations corral little bits and pieces of things they consider important, the rest of the world moves on. Look at Disney, hanging on to that stupid little mouse. Look at SCO, hanging on to ancient old code as if it were their precioussssss.
Sure there's immediate pain and loss when things are imprisoned. But what happends when wild horses are imprisoned? They lose their freshness. Put flowers in a vase? They wither and need replacement.
Let Disney have their mouse. Popular culture has deserted it. Let Disney waste their resources becoming more and more irrelevant to popular culture. Disney made the choice to hang on to the mouse and let go of Pixar, and it is Disney who will rot from staleness and lack of exercise, not Pixar.
Infuriate left and right
In there small way KFC is threatening freedom of speech.
How do you mean?
Why is this restricted model somehow better for society just because it creates shareholder value in the pockets of a few?
Because we don't live in a hive - at least, not yet. The society constructed in the Western world currently has mechanisms in place to allow autonomous, individual pursuit for people or corporations.
KFC Corp. keeps trade secrets because it's in its own interest. If they are going to give back, it will be on their terms. This is perfectly legal and by design.
I should know better than to reply to an AC but yes, you are right, I don't program for a living.
But don't think that I don't release anything under the GNU GPL.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
The good Professor is simply reiterating what Marx said about 150 years ago.
eg. Lets say bicycle is an idea. The state outlaws private ownership of bicycles, because ideas belong to the masses, they are not one man's private property. So nobody can own a bicycle.
But the state places free bicycles at the corner of every street and every avenue.
So you walk to a corner, pick up a bicycle & pedal to wherever you want & leave it at the other corner. No tolls, no insurance, no gasoline, no ownership, no maintainence, no hassle.
Malthus read this and told Marx he was an ostrich.
That's the problem right there. You can't pretend man is an ostrich, so lets be benign & do away with the notion of private property & share & take just what we need & so on. This socialist utopia is ideal, but unfortunately we don't live there.
Capitalism says man is not benign - man is malign. He will want ownership. In that sense of the principle, you can own intangible ideas just as much as you own actual tangible objects - no difference. That's just the reality we live in.
Deal with it.
The software comes with source code. People and businesses are allowed to re-sell and re-distribute it.
The redistributors/resellers must ensure that the software's source code be free for the users to obtain (subject to recovering media and shipping costs) and read. This includes any modifications to the software.
The end users must be given the same freedoms and conditions by the distributor as the distributor was given by the original author (e.g. must be given the source code + modifications, must be allowed to re-distribute and modify)
Synopsis: All end users must be allowed to be resellers/redistributors and developers, including of redistributed or modified versions.
Open SourceThe software comes with source code. People and businesses are allowed to re-sell and re-distribute it.
The redistributors/resellers may make the software's source code available, or they may keep it closed. The same with modifications.
The end users may be prohibited by the redistributor from taking the same freedoms given the redistributor by the original programmer (e.g. the end users might or might not get source, might or might not be allowed to modify or re-distribute)
Synopsis: End users may or may not be allowed to be resellers and/or redistributors and/or developers, including of redistributed or modified versions.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I have enough trouble getting my boss to distinguish b/t "open source" and "shareware". Throwing "free software" into the mix is going to hurt corporate adoption, not help civil liberties.
The thing that Bruce Perens, etc., understand that Stallman does not is "branding". "Open Source" is a distinct, brandable term. It has successfully fought off imitation brands like Microsoft's "Shared Source" concept. It even has a crisp, compact logo. The FSF does not understand this game, and they can't seem to produce a brand name w/o botching it up with recursive algorithms ("HURD"), semantic ambiguitiy ("free software"), or phonetic confusion ("GNU"). And their logo sprawls all over the place.
Furthermore, the FSF appears to have a touch of NIH syndrome ("not invented here"). Stallman tries to draw a distinction b/t the terms "free software" and "open source", but they mean the same thing, practically speaking. Why hair-split the semantics when you could present a unified, prepackaged concept to the world?
Sigh... enough ranting. I just want to see FSF do the little things that would help give it corporate cred.
FYI, the GNU homepage has a lot of actions you can take to support free software politically. Take a look.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I have had conversations with many folks from various countries about Stallman. My feeling is that he is held in VERY high regard by both the technical and political classes in every country except his own. The unfortunate fact is that in the USA, (which, BTW, is my home country) most people are anti-intellectual, and do not have the capacity to comprehend the magnitude of his accomplishments. Even most technical folks in the USA are so decidedly one-dimensional that their frame of reference in worldly matters is like a postage stamp.
In almost any other country, a man who has sacrificed his earning potential to pursue a larger cause is revered. In the USA, that is considered the sign of a loser or a crank. This is the root cause of the differences in perceptions.
Magnus
So the first time they compiled and ran it, it didn't work. That doesn't mean it won't work when someone looks at the business model, applies patches, and tries to run it again.
For now, the lesson to the artist is don't depend on getting all of your income from a single source. Especially if that source is still experimental.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
For those of you who appreciate the irony of an FSF speaker being recorded in a proprietary format, I should tell you I have already asked both Eben Moglen and the JOLT Harvard folks to consider distributing their talks in free formats under licenses that allow at least verbatim distribution in any medium.
Prof. Moglen told me if the JOLT folks did not produce a free format copy of his talk, he would do so himself. The person I spoke with at Harvard said he would take the licensing issue to their board for review.
Digital Citizen
what red hat sells is the same as the doctor sells, a service to help you in need. what microsft sells is the right for you to use theyre product on one computer and by one person pr license bought. can you tell the diffrence there?
basicly microsft sells you the right to do something, mutch in the same way that the mafia sell you the right to set up shop in theyre area;)
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
> Stallman is a Marxist.
Probably right in a sense. Stallman is somehwat of a visionary. He forethought many things now happening in the software world, and with his analysis, he is IMHO fairly correct.
Now Marx, surely a visionary, forethought many of the problems inherent in unrestrained capitalism.
Both of them searched (or are still searching) for solutions to the problems they discovered. From the purely scientifc analysis they got to the merely political task of proposing solutions. Their solutions are radical.
Most people (me included) furtunately disagree about their radical solutions for more or less obvious reasons. But the problems are still not solved.
So instead of abandoning both the solution *and* the analysis, one should IMHO still think about the analysis and criticize it. But the need is still there to invent other, better, moderate ways of coping with the problems.
Incorrect.
While the purposes you outlined are correct, nothing was weakened. It's a use of the existing copyright system to ensure that the end-user is given the same freedoms (and restrictions) given the re-distributors. Those freedoms are the right to read the source, make modifications, and pass the code + modifications on to others.
Regarding patents: both OSS and FS allow patents to be filed. The difference is that FS requires the patent owner to license the patent for free and without much restriction (IIRC) to the end user, such that the end user's freedom to re-distribute and modify are not restrcited.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
On one hand there's the idea of property as a human right or a natural right. You usually see this made explicit in libertarian writings. Viewed as a human right, the idea is that if you can't own anything you are going to be owned by others, the essence of slavery being that you don't *get* anything for your labor. Viewed as a natural right, the idea is that property law simply acknowledges and protects something that existed before the first dog barked at a trespasser.
On the other hand there's the idea that "property is theft". You see this most often in anarchist writings. Here the argument is that for one person to own something, that person has to take it away from everyone else. Then a whole coercive apparatus has to be built up to keep everyone else from taking it away from the owner.
Scarcity, according to Aristotle, is the fundamental principle of economics. If there's a limited supply of something and unlimited demand, then there needs to be some kind of rationing. Property laws provide that function.
A matter duplicator would force us to rethink our ideas about physical property because it would remove the scarcity issue. The Internet is forcing us to rethink our ideas about intellectual property for the same reason.
>whether the *creator* (or creators) of a piece of IP have the moral right to designate its usage
Well put. From a human-rights point of view, "designate the usage" means giving orders to the other six billion people on the planet about what they can do with a piece of "IP". From a utilitarian point of view ("greatest good of the greatest number") useful intellectual work should get spread as widely as possible. The compromise of copyright law was an attempt to ensure the greatest good given 18th-century distribution methods.
If I understand the rms position, it's not so much that it's bad to make money from software, but rather that it's bad to imprison the software and make money by charging for access to it.
Honest and thoughtful people can come to different ethical conclusions on these questions. I just wish more bright people would give those questions the depth of thought they deserve.
You entered a whorehouse and expected to find virtue?
an ill wind that blows no good
What I find most interesting in these great speeches about freedom of information, like what I read in http://www.creativecommons.org/, is that the more strict legislation over what you can do is passed, the more people react to it.
When we were feeling sad about the state of copyright law, feeling that nothing would never enter public domain and become humanity's propery, there comes all these people sharing because they want to. Everything is automagically copyrighted? Fine. I'll explicitly license it to everybody. What are you evil people going to do, tell me I can't license what is mine?
Give them (or us, as I write a little free software here and there) twenty years more; the body of freely licensed knowledge will be so huge there won't be any benefit in anything proprietary. There will be so many musicians and artists licensing their cool stuff that we won't need to infringe on anyone's copyright to listen to good music. Those that try to say "Hey, come here and buy the right to hear this song" will face the question "Why? There's so many free stuff to hear I actually haven't got the time".
The last time I bought a CD was more than two years ago, because they're expensive. But I gladly buy very expensive beer and pay the artist's fee at this jazz cafe I go almost every week. The music is just too good.
-- Pedro
restricted
:)
Dag nabbit.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Back WHAT claim up? Are you saying that Stallman did NOT say what he said in that Dr. Dobb's article? You're out of luck. He did. Has he supposedly changed his mind? I'm sure it's been toned down a bit and made less obvious in recent years. But a major, actual change in his views? I don't see any evidence of that.
As far as "encouraging the sale of free software", that is transparently a cynical ploy. The only way somebody could sell "free software" for more than a pittance is by fooling the end user about the ready availability of the software all over the place for no more than the cost of an internet download, which is as close to free as you can get these days. And in any case, the *creator* of the software, by such design, gets *no part* of almost any of those sales, which is perfectly in keeping with Kant's philosophy of anti-self.
I think Cartman has some good insight when he said, "Hippies, hippies... they want to save the world but all they do is smoke pot, play frisbee [and complain about paying for stuff]!"
Hey, I wish MP3.com did work -- there's nothing I like more than the idea of independent musicians replacing making it on their own. But MP3.com went very broke giving away music, and it's not a simple a recompile.
The question is how will musician have a best change to claim power, and the EFF/FSF of free everything isn't going to help musician, coders, etc. to claim more economic power.
It might benefit all the people who can consume all that work for free, but it doesn't benefit the people making it.
"For now, the lesson to the artist is don't depend on getting all of your income from a single source. Especially if that source is still experimental.'
And especially is the other sources are "give your work away, some magic will come by and compensate you."
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
It's not "Free Linux", it's "GNU/Linux". We need to keep reminding people that what's at stake here is GNU.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I wish you had produced this article rather than related it with what appears to be your failing memory. In addition to the other essays others have already pointed to, I direct your attention to the notes on the use of the term "intellectual property" or "IP". This term is bad, and Stallman misses no opportunity to say as much in his talks, because it conflates a lot of different areas of law (copyright, trademark, patent, just to name a few) and presents them as though they were one cohesive set of laws with a common ground. They are anything but that. The term also prejudices one's thinking to cut short the discussion on how these laws should be thought of--property is one possible way to think about them (not a particularly accurate way), not the only way.
If you understood Stallman's motivation and logic as well as you say you do, you would know this too. Your post is highly overrated and I hope it is moderated down.
Digital Citizen
This is precisely the point of free software.
Surprisingly the foundation of copyright and patent law.
To benefit society, ideas must be shared.
Copyright tries to force an idea to artificial scarceness to encourage sharing.
This has worked very well, think of the amount of additional creative production that has been generated. Books, movies and music come to my mind.
Patent law attacks this directly. You still get a limited monopoly, but the terms require complete disclosure of how your idea works and can be implemented.
Again the idea is to disseminate this information to the world at large, not imprison the idea to a select few.
Does it matter if he said that or does it not?
One should give people the chance to change their opinions, and I agree/disagree about what RMS says *now*.
How free is the speech when there are restrictions placed upon how, when, and where I can use that speech? The GPL is more facist than free as it restricts the way I may use that speech (i.e. code).
I'm not arguing that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do object to calling something free when it really isn't.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
According to "Rebel Code - Linux and the Open Source Revolution" by Glyn Moody (chap. 10), the term "Open Source" was coined in Winter/Spring 1998 (February 3rd?). Eric Raymond initiated the search for a term for this "free software" coming out, and later "open source" was decided upon. It seems they were looking for something less ambigious and more business-friendly than "free software". The term itself was originally suggested by Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute.
regarding Stallman (quoting from the book)
"Richard Stallman always viewed this shift [from terms like 'free software' to 'open source'] with alarm. 'The open source movement is Eric Raymond's attempt to redirect the free software movement away from a focus on freedom,' he says. 'He does not agree that freedom to share software is an ethical/social issue. So he decided to try to replace the term 'free software' with another term, one that would in no way call to mind that way of framing the issue."
So it seems that, historically, there is something of a difference between "open source" and "free software"
The FSF can do that much better than me. They have very interesting articles in their philosophy section. They even have some audio and video material.
The FSF has written an essay to clarify this point. I think it is one of their most underrated essays. This essay has been published by the FSF for years now and is also in RMS' book of selected essays "Free Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman". Please notice how different this essay is from what the Open Source Initiative says about the free software movement (in case you don't already know, the OSI reduces the free software movement, from which it sprang, to "ideological tub-thumping").
Digital Citizen
What you're actually describing is copylefted software.
Here you're actually describing non-copylefted free software.
Probably the best sources of information are the categories of software listing from the FSF, and the Open Source definition from the OSI.
In practical terms, Open Source is free software, the distinction has to do with the goals and priorities of the respective movements.
demi
The Flatlander
so if I build a mousetrap and patent it am I patenting the design of the mousetrap or the mousetrap?
If I am patenting the mousetrap, could someone then look at my patent, and sell plans to make the moustrap?
Could they then offer a service to build a mousetrap from the plans they just sold? They really wouldn't be selling a mousetrap, they would be selling the plans of the mousetrap. and then selling a service to fasten bits of metal and wood together according to those plans.
In reality they are selling a mousetrap that I have patented. So did I patent the mousetrap, or the ideas behind the mousetrap?
In there small way KFC is threatening freedom of speech.
How do you mean?
What if everybody did this... a moral question that kids begin to ask when they are 9ish. So the only new foods we have are trade secrets backed by advertising campaigns, and 100 years later we've still got the same foods.
KFC Corp. keeps trade secrets because it's in its own interest. If they are going to give back, it will be on their terms. This is perfectly legal and by design.
But there is something rotten in our laws. There's nothing wrong with KFC making $$$ by creating a receipe and marketing it as kewl if, over time it is beneficial to society.
So in 50 years the receipe may still be secret. Now I'm not interested in it, but pretend I am... well too bad... someone else owns my culture. Star Wars is a much better example, because it really is part of our culture.
The society constructed in the Western world currently has mechanisms in place to allow autonomous, individual pursuit for people or corporations.
So the George Lucas is rich, and so are many other who worked on this great piece of art. They needed to protect the monopoly on Star Wars for a certain amount of time to get their due compensation. But Star Wars has transcended 'money making', and little kiddies and adults want to do things with Star Wars IP, like write stories and make other movies, but they can't.
Big business owns this celebrity, and they make big $$$ because many people have attachments to it. They have lobbied and subverted IP laws so that they can hang on to such cash cows as long as possible (indefinitely would be nice for shareholders). We need to rewrite IP laws and strike a balance somewhere.
Specifically, if some fan of a celebrity should be able to create (art?) for non-commercial purposes. (Why should Wizards of the Coast dislike fanfiction).
If the original author has already made $$$ from a work, then why shouldn't they be forced to compete and innovate with other authors (commercially) who want to extend that work? Because it's easier to lobby congress with those original $$$, and create a legal situation where you can sit on your thumb playing golf and still wrack in the dollars.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Q: But what about the software writer?
.
Moglen: Ah, the software. .
Q: That's the kind of stuff I think I was more getting at with my question. So you have somebody who creates something useful but it has a zero distribution cost, and it's useful in a way that's not, not useful like celebrity, though I'm not sure, I don't think that's useful in some ways, but it's useful in the different sense that it takes a long time to create well.
Moglen: See, the programmers I worked with all my life thought of themselves as artisans, and it was very hard to unionize them. They thought that they were individual creators. Software writers at the moment have begun to lose that feeling, as the world proletarianizes them much more severely than it used to. They're beginning to notice that they're workers, and not only that, but if you pay attention to the Presidential campaign currently going on around us, they are becoming aware of the fact that they are workers whose jobs are movable in international trade.
We are actually doing more to sustain the livelihood of programmers than the proprietary people are. Mr. Gates has only so many jobs, and he will move them to where the programming is cheapest. Just you watch. We, on the other hand, are enabling people to gain technical knowledge which they can customize and market in the world where they live. We are making people programmers, right? And we are giving them a base upon which to perform their service activity at every level in the economy, from small to large.
[1:15]
There is programming work for fourteen-year-olds in the world now because they have the whole of GNU upon which to erect whatever it is that somebody in their neighbourhood wants to buy, and we are making enough value for the IBM corporation that it's worth putting billions of dollars behind.
If I were an employee of the IBM corporation right this moment, I would consider my job more secure where it is because of free software than if free software disappeared from the face of the earth, and I don't think most of the people who work at IBM would disagree with me.
Of all the people who participate in the economy of zero marginal cost, I think the programmers can see most clearly where their benefits lie, and if you just wait for a few more tens of thousands of programming jobs to go from here to Bangalore, they'll see it even more clearly.
-- You can be a geeklord too
>the purpose of copyright and patent is solely to have people WRITE STUFF DOWN
I would disagree, it to compensate people for their ideas.
If develop a 1W lightbulb, I would patent it so I could sell the lightbulb without others ripping me off and selling cheaper. I could then recoup some of my invention costs.
Hold on a second. The EFF and FSF are about making things better for the consumer. They're also about opposing new restrictions on copyrighted work. That doesn't mean they want "everything" to be free.
If you had a low-overhead system, I'm sure a "paid-for by advertisement" website that performed in the role of the old mp3.com would be perfectly viable. In fact, I'd try to keep it privately held so as to prevent the volatilies of investor opinion from influencing the owner's policies.
An even better idea would be a paid-for-by-advertising p2p system that compensated copyright holders for trafficked data.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
And your support for this statement is where, exactly? You've provided the URL to an interview that doesn't seem to back up your assertion and then not clarified precisely what statement RMS made that backs up what you claim he said.
The closest thing I could find in that interview to backing up your statement is:
This does not support your statement and it looks like you don't really understand what RMS means when he refers to proprietary software. He is not against commercial software, he is against proprietary software.
Digital Citizen
Can someone sum up the differences between Free Software and Open Source Software?
I'll use an analogy that my friend told me once. Think of vegetarians. There are some people who are vegetarian because they believe killing animals is wrong. There are others who are vegetarian because some medical report says it's healthy. In other words, the former have ethical reasons, while the latter have pragmatic reasons.
So far so good. There doesn't seem to be any major conflict. The trouble starts when new findings are released which say that eating meat is actually good for you. The second (pragmatic) group will then eat meat too, while the first group WILL NOT - their point is that killing animals for food is wrong, irrespective of whether it's healthy for you or not.
The first group is Free Software, who advocate freedom as the primary goal and software as merely incidental. The second group is Open Source, who always advocate sharing source for practical benefits (more eyes examining etc), but don't say anything about freedom and liberty. If there is some exploit in the future that makes it seem like closed-source or proprietary software might offer benefits that open-source cannot, then the shear between the two groups will be readily apparent, with the Open Source advocates using closed-source for its benefits, and Free Software advocates holding out on principle.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
There are two problems with your argument.
1) You make reference to a Dr. Dobbs article, but we have no way to independently verify your reference; because it is too vague. We can't go and look at the article to determine if your paraphrase of Mr. Stallman is acurate. Certainly his recent behavior does not back up your claim (as has been pointed out by others in this thread), so your citation is merely manipulative and can't be taken as serious.
2) I have studied Kant, and I am not familiar with any so-called philosophy of anti-self. Kant's well-known contribution to philosophy was his a-priori metaphysics, which was a brilliant and thoughtful counterpoint to the empiricists. Perhaps you could recommend one of Kant's writings in which the theory of anti-self is presented and discussed?
I find your argument manipulative because of its weak backing. The references to Dr. Dobbs and Immanuel Kant do not make me comfortable as to your authority in making such assertions regarding Mr. Stallman.
Perhaps you could enlighten us with some more tangible evidence?
Back WHAT claim up? Are you saying that Stallman did NOT say what he said in that Dr. Dobb's article?
I think it's pretty obvious that he's saying that he's sceptical as to the accuracy of your paraphrasal of what Stallman said in an article that you admit you no longer have access to.
"Hold on a second. The EFF and FSF are about making things better for the consumer."
Correct, but sadly not the artist/coder.
"They're also about opposing new restrictions on copyrighted work."
Ah, but they also want to take away the rights of people engaged in some creative art -- music, coding, and whatever that can be expressed digitally.
That's why they agitate in favor of file-sharing (even when it comes to clearly copyrighted work), and that's why they agitate for commercial reuse without compensation in the case of the Grey Album -- or at least taking an artists right to decide when their work can be sampled into something else.
They talk a ton about copyright when it's protecting the GPL, but disregard it when it's protecting an artist that chose *not* to give away her work.
"That doesn't mean they want "everything" to be free."."
But that's what they want, you may not like it, but that's just the way it is. Everything is socialized into some new quasi-government agencey.
"I'm sure a "paid-for by advertisement" website that performed in the role of the old mp3.com would be perfectly viable."
So go build it! ;) Seriously, you can't pay for servers, bandwidth, tech time, and artists with a bunch of banners. Don't you remember the dot-com boom? And bust?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Absolutely wrong!
The authors and publisher of a newspaper has no moral right to determine how I use my lawfully acquired copy of their newspaper. It's up to me if I want to read it, discard it, or wad it up to aid starting wood burning in my fireplace.
Likewise, Microsoft has no moral right to determine is I use Word to write a business letter, or write advertising material for products I might sell, or any other function. How I use the copy I have legally obtained is up to me. The author has absolutely no moral right to dictate how I make use if it.
In fact, I would argue that it is morally obectional for authors to attempt to control exactly how people may make use of their works, after having lawfully obtained them.
There is a distinction between using work and publically performing it, such as movies.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
No, not confused. They're both flag wavers in the free everything movement. Are you actually saying that you fault the EFF position on copyright when it comes to filesharing and the Grey Album?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Actually my friend does, who cooks for me sometimes.
But truth is, theres only so much culture out there. When you've seen it all, whats new is only variations on the old that you could expect.
I've been down the road of caring, and it leads to Jesus. Then when you find God everything changes.
God spoke to me
> that non-free software is unethical and wrong
about 3/4 the way down.
They don't mean the same thing.
For many practical purposes they are similar, and provide many of the same benefits.
What many people like you don't realize is that the distinction _IS_ important.
It is mostly an ideological issue IMO.
When you have a founding idea that you follow or pursue it can help guide your efforts in a unified and more productive way.
RMS is pursuing a moral/ethical goal, by keeping that in mind has been able to retain this focus and become quite successful in his pursuit.
The Open source is pursuing slightly different goals. If you lump them together you might assume that something that is good enough for the Open source movement is good enough for the free software movement too, and this might not be the case, due to the difference in their respective goals.
No, not confused. They're both flag wavers in the free everything movement.
Admittedly, some here enjoy engaging in hair-splitting, but if you always view everything this simplistically, you're going to miss most of what goes on around you.
The EFF and the FSF are very different organizations with different leadership, different goals and different approaches. The EFF does tend to agree with most of what the FSF says, but there are vast numbers of issues the EFF talks about that the FSF has no position on whatsoever.
Similarly, your mischaracterization of the FSF arises from excessive simplification of the issues. The FSF approves of selling software, both Free and proprietary, and doesn't necessarily want to eliminate proprietary software from the world -- they just want to make sure that there are Free alternatives for everything, so that no one is forced to use proprietary software if they don't want to. Of course, the natural effect of the existence of Free alternatives for everything will be that all proprietary software competes at a huge disadvantage, and so there won't be very much of it, but that's a side effect, not a goal.
I realize that last bit is probably too fine a distinction for you to get your mind around, but it really is an important one.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Still, with respect, no not free everything. And anyway, it is free as in liberty, not free as in beer.
Do I fault EFF over file-sharing? Nope. Unenforcable laws are an abomination. To put a file on a server violates no laws, at least not until the DCMA came along. To donwload it might violate laws. Tell me how to tell. Tell me how to prevent it.
I respect copyrights. I don't download music, or anything else that I suspect may be another's property But if ensuring compliance with the law requires taht the police observe every byte that travels down the wire, then I say to heck with compliance! I am not prepared to give up my privacy for your property rights.
The Flatlander
Yup, that's what I'm saying, and that goal is at odds with the economic position of coders. Tons of free code is good for the people that use it, but it comes at the uncompensated expense of those making it.
FSF, EFF, etc, it's all the same -- devaluing the work of those engaged in creative professions.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
But people do pay for free software.
Lets take an example, like Redhat.
They take Linux, make a distribution. Sell it, people buy it. They realize it needs some improvement to sell more. They hire some experts on thie software, not surprisingly some of the people who wrote it.
Now they have a better version, that they can keep improving. They keep selling it, people keep buying it. The programmers get paid.
You could get it for free, but it is worth the money to some to pay for an expert to make sure things work smoothly.
Redhat makes money by adding value to the free software. The software is still free, you don't have to pay, but they are able to offer something worth paying for.
Now it is more directly support contracts, the software has still remained free, people still pay, the programmer still has a job, and the corporation still makes a profit.
I don't see the problem, and Redhat isn't fooling anyone, Fedora (aka Redhat) is still available for free.
You're not patenting either. The patent is on the process for building the mousetrap. The design cannot be patented, neither can the trap itself. Just the method for building/creating it.
What they *can't*, do, is offer the trap building service. They can - in theory - make an identical trap, so long as they don't use your method. From a practical point of view, that is generally ignored.
Stop thinking about it in terms of 'compensation'! You want society to compensate you for having a brilliant idea? No. No society has ever done this, because people have always had brilliant ideas regardless of copyright/patent law. (Ask Socrates.) Patents and copyrights are both incentives to publish. And there the resemblance between them ends.
Copyright is looking less and less justified in the light of ubiquitous near-free Internet distribution. Any information is now essentially free to publish.
Patents have separate practical enforcement problems which relate to the attempt to allow patents on software. Patents on software are wrong because they constrain the publishing of information (software is information). No other kind of patent can constrain publishing. You might as well let people patent sentences of English. (Imagine the deCSS code as a sentence of English.)
To repeat: a patent on a drug could (say) stop poor people getting the drug. But it would not stop them knowing how to make the drug, and so after the patent expires they could make it. But a patent on a piece of computer code stops people from even knowing how the code works, because no free source implementation of it is legal to publish.
No, it's not. That's not the original purpose of patent law. The original, animating purpose of patent law is to create a storehouse of ideas about industrial process and design. Inventors are given a short window of exclusive use as "payment" for contributing their inventions, ideas, designs, what have you. But the purpose was, and theoretically still is, to collect the ideas and make them available to the public.
(For copyright law, the idea was to encourage people to write stuff down - and the method was to compensate them with certain legal rights, yes. But the purpose is the publication, not the compensation. Go back and read Jefferson, or better yet the early theorists of copyright. Best place to start is the case of Donaldson v. Beckett from 1774.)
> If the original author has already made $$$
> from a work, then why shouldn't they be forced
> to compete and innovate with other authors
> (commercially) who want to extend that work?
> Because it's easier to lobby congress with
> those original $$$, and create a legal
> situation where you can sit on your thumb
> playing golf and still wrack in the dollars.
The answer to the question is that the author gets a reprieve as mandated by law. This is a planned, deliberate economic incentive (without which, btw, George could not have exploited economies of scale to create such a grand, opulent visual orgy. star wars would be a dime novel or nothing without the visuals).
Not everyone rests on their laurels an manipulates laws. Also, not everyone is dead-set against non-profit fan art (Lucas, for example). They are just against coat-tailers, which is their right since that is how the law is designed. In 2050 you can sell all the fan art you want, but until then its George's party and that much at least is fair IMHO.
Let me do a little more history while I'm at it. The very first "intellectual property" laws were the Statute of Monopolies of 1624. This invested "copyright" (literally the right to print copies of anything whatsoever) in the Stationers' Company.
The Stationers' Company acted as warehouse for censorship and prior restraint. (This was the subject of Aeropagitica, John Milton's paean to the idea of a free press). After the Revolution in 1688, the idea of Big Brother deciding what could and could not be printed proved pretty damn horrifying to everyone, so "copyright" by 1695 had pretty much ceases to exist. Result? Cheap books from Scotland were wrecking the English printers' market share. The response was a modern copyright law, designed to encourage the dissemination of books (authors had no rights at all once their works had been bought and published!) and allowed the printer who had bought the book from the author a monopoly on printing it, in order to encourage them to make books widely available (since there was no fear of piracy)
Bandwidth is effectively a "commons". As such, unless there is some economic disincentive to prevent every user from utilizing just as much bandwidth as they can, it is subject to the problem of "The Tragedy of the Commons." Surely Professor Moglen doesn't beleive bandwidth can long continue to violate the basic principles of economics...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I like your ideas, but I have to disagree...
The answer to the question is that the author gets a reprieve as mandated by law. This is a planned, deliberate economic incentive (without which, btw, George could not have exploited economies of scale to create such a grand, opulent visual orgy. star wars would be a dime novel or nothing without the visuals).
Star Wars was expensive in it's day (the first movie), and 'new and risky', and it made bake enormous sums of money very quickly. Many would say that the quality of Star Wars has declined over time, society (through George Lucas) is now investing hundreds of millions into making substandard new movies. If Star Wars was open to competition, then an inspired fan could have written something... inspired , and we could have fed the starving millions in the mean time.
Not everyone rests on their laurels an manipulates laws. Also, not everyone is dead-set against non-profit fan art (Lucas, for example). They are just against coat-tailers, which is their right since that is how the law is designed. In 2050 you can sell all the fan art you want, but until then its George's party and that much at least is fair IMHO.
I agree that not everybody rests on the laurels, I'd say that most don't, because they like creating art. (Creating art is more important than profit sometimes). But "not resting on your laurels" is not required by law, and often not required by market pressures.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
and often not required by market pressures
I should say industry lobbiest attempt to subvert the law so that market pressures don't prevent them from "resting on their laurels"
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Please provide an exact quote of the statement.
Digital Citizen
I suggested this once, since it would require no acronym change and is grammatically correct.
...
...
[60:05]
[1:00:05]
At least on my microwave, these two are exactly the same time... was the transcriber using some timebase not comprised of 60-minute hours?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I have not seen the MPAA (or RIAA) make any stink about open source software. While I certainly will not defend their practices, primarily they are out to stop the blatant theft of their product, which is what they should be doing.
You have the right to remain silent, but please leave me my right to speak.
You're right, just don't confuse that with the notion that you therefore have a right to be heard.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Thank you.
Actually it is not. The source code is not the only issue in Closed v. Open, but also the legal issues of copyrights and patents. My response is not the main topic, but a dervitave topic.
Fight Spammers!
In parent, for "errata" read "erratum." :)
(Ripping off an old Doug Hofstadter example)
"Essentially limitless bandwidth" is a misleading expression; I beleive the best that you can do is to design a system where throughput under heavy use degrades in a way that is fair to all participants.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If you think about these questions, you might come to the conclusion that if the main object of patents was to compensate for people's ideas, they're completely pigheadedly set up.
If I write a book containing I ideas, I cannot copyright the ideas - at least in a logical, rational world. I can, however, copyright the book, and charge you for copies of it. To tell me that I must provide my book for free is nothing short of hare-brained socialist twaddle.
A world that allows copyrights on ideas is one founded upon insane assumptions; a world that allows copyrights on things - books, programs, paintings, whatever - is a perfectly rational one, and a splendid example of capitalism. The problem doesn't lie in the copyright of things, it lies in the fact that the law - and those who profit by it - now regard 'ideas' as 'things' as well.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Yup, that's what I'm saying, and that goal is at odds with the economic position of coders.
I disagree. I'm making a good living writing software, and a good part of it is working on free software.
Your position confuses the welfare of software developers with the welfare of software development companies -- which, by the way, employ only a small fraction of all of the programmers in the world. Most programmers work for companies whose primary business is not software.
As long as there's a demand for new software, and computers can't write it themselves, there will be a need for programmers. As long as there's a need for programmers, there will be a way for programmers to get paid. As Moglen pointed out, it's not the programmers who will lose out in a free software world, it's the managers of software companies.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The bottom line of intellectual property is this: The creator of that IP has an absolute moral right to determine how his property may be used.
One problem I have always had with Objectivism is that the natural property to which an individual is entitled seems always to be quite an arbitrary accident of history.
You accept that individuals have an 'absolute right' to own and control the use of intellectual property, and presumably personal property as well. Yet Objectivists are appear to be the first to act as apologists for multinational corporations engaged in exceedingly questionable practices in developing countries, and the first to cite the profit motive as justification for, say, bribery of government officials in these developing nations, clear cutting, and various other acts which are profitable for individuals but not society as a whole.
It isn't enough to say that, eventually, the invisible hand will step in to correct these sorts of abuses.
Sure, some do, but *more* don't -- and that's the point, the sum total economic power of coders is diminished. There's no shame in putting together a good peice of work and charging for the effort, but the FSF would have us think otherwise.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
If by free, you mean freedom of the software to be applied or used however way anyway wants... it'd be comparable to equation for Newton's first law... F=ma. That expression is free as in beer and free as in free speech. I think Stallman wants software... or rather algorithms to be free as in F=ma.
Free speech is not absolute. And not all freedoms are deemed equal (some conflict). As Brad Kuhn and RMS have pointed out in their talks, your freedom to drive your car on the sidewalk is not deemed as valuable as my freedom to walk down that sidewalk safely (sadly, I don't know of a transcript of Kuhn's talk about how he came to free software or else I would cite the exact language). So, in copylefted free software licenses (such as the GNU GPL), one is prohibited from placing restrictions on the freedoms the license grants to licensees. The FSF argues that it is necessary to place these restrictions on licensees in order to grant these freedoms for derivative works and thus grant more important freedoms to a wider audience.
Digital Citizen
As an ethical vegetarian and Free Software user, upon reading the first two sentences of your post, expected to be thoroughly offended within the next three paragraphs. See, I'm somewhat used to being ridiculed for taking a stand on my beliefs.
Your analogy actually was flawless and didn't piss me off. I suspect it wouldn't even bother a carnivorous Microsoft executive, either! Thanks. I'm going to use that one.
There is no logical basis for assigning moral rights to IP. In fact, we can say that in general, there is no objective basis to rights, they are whatever we want them to be. As a result, there is no absolute, rights only extend as far as people agree that something should be a right. You can say something is absolute all day long, but if you can't get people to agree with you then it's not absolute. This should go without saying.
When evaluating whether or not something should be a right, we need to evaluate the real world ramifications of a system, and avoid asking slanted questions out of the context of reality. When looking at the real world ramifications of IP, it becomes obvious that it can definitely be improved upon.
Intellectual property is a system of rewarding creative endeavours using a metaphor for real property. There is no real evidence that this is necessary, and in fact, most observation of society shows that this lottery system of rewarding creation does nothing to effectively promote the useful arts and sciences. Effectively, the winners in this "game" are those with enough capital to hedge their bets, in other words, large corporations.
Further, when examining how things really work, we understand that most of what is created, is in fact created by everyday programmers, scientific researchers (many of whom make less than 40K), and so on, not "innovators" like Bill Gates. Many of these innovators aren't even paid by the corporations that benefit from patenting their ideas, but instead are paid directly by the government, one example being NIH funded drug research. We can come to the conlusion that in many cases, patents are nothing more than a way of handing control over ideas and markets to large coporations, not rewarding innovation. In fact, this control over markets interferes with innovation, since it effectively discourages small business and fledgling innovators from entering the market at all. Given that most innovation comes from paying people a living salary, not vast sums of money, we have to question whether the obnoxious sums of money that Bill Gates gets paid to control their work is necessary at all. When weighing the "right" of "innovators" to charge whatever they want for a product, vs the right of everyday people to have a stake in the American dream, I think that the latter should take precedence. Therefore, a system that doesn't explicitly go out of it's way to allow smaller businesses and fledgling innovators entry into the market is unworkable. A system of rewarding innovation the doesn't explicitly allow those who are underpriveledged access to the knowledge and information necessary for them to have an equal chance runs against the principles that the US was founded on, and even if it didn't, runs against basic human decency. Again, this is my opinion, clearly you think that corporate dominated society is a good thing.
So, here are some questions:
1. How often do IP laws directly benefit engineers, scientists, and researchers? vs instead massively benefiting their employers, and then giving the real innovators living wages.
2. How much innovation does IP interfere with?
3. Is promoting invention a question of massively rewarding innovators or instead providing them with the resources necessary to create? Which is more important? Don't most innovators create new products on a subsistence salary with large amounts of (currently corporate) resources? Couldn't we promote just as much innovation by making sure that everyone had at least a minimum standard of living, and then give them the resources necessary to pursue their vision?
This is in fact how I get paid. I get paid a decent salary to program. I'm not rich, not poor, but get paid an ok amount. It's highway robbery that employers are able to jack the price of software through the roof. This is not necessary to promote innovation, and makes no sense. It does nothing more than create a bigger divide between the rich and poor, and rewards "innovators" simply for owning enough capital to pay a team of developers for a year. It rewards power for it's own sake, rather than truly rewarding innovation.
This naievely assumes that there is no pragmatic value to liberty. When the markets tend to be quickly dominated by robber barons, something meant to curb their ability to dominate becomes remarkably pragmatic.
"Open Source" is not about "peaceful co-existence". "Open Source" is about watering down RMS rhetoric so that it is more palatable to the likes of Oracle. However, Oracle will still be exploiting the product of RMS rather than ESR.
OTOH, Free Software was born out of concerns that rival interests had unfettered access to freely contributed work. Corporations tend to have the same concerns.
RMS is not as far away from Ellison as some would have you believe.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
nuff said
This also has a practical impact on what software is developed. For open source proponents, non-free software is merely suboptimal, so if there is a need that is met with a non-free program, open source proponents will probably not seek to replace that program with an "open source" equivalent. After all, the practical ends of the user are being met.
Free software proponents, on the other hand, are more likely to seek a replacement for that non-free program with a "free software" replacement because they see non-free programs as unethical. Free software proponents will reject the non-free software out of hand regardless of its function because of its inability to be shared and/or modified.
Also, the difference between the two movements exposes a built-in philosophical weakness of the open source movement that the free software movement doesn't have: if all you value is practical function (runs faster, costs less, is more stable, etc.) the open source movement will sometimes have no way to convince you to use an "open source" equivalent to a proprietary program. You'll either be directed to use the proprietary equivalent or have no reason to reject the proprietary program.
If, instead, you learn to value software freedom (as the free software movement advocates) you value something software proprietors can never offer. Therefore, the free software movement is never put in a position where they are compelled to advocate non-free software. They appreciate the need to meet practical ends, so they advocate either writing a free replacement yourself, hiring someone to write the free software for you, and/or finding a way to do without that functionality until a free replacement is obtained.
Thus, it is the free software movement's philosophy that is the real threat to software proprietors.
Digital Citizen
Considering that the "free" in free software refers to specific freedoms and not price (as has been pointed out in this thread and virtually every other thread discussing software freedom), I don't understand how your post deserved to be moderated as "Insightful".
Digital Citizen
I like Chomsky's response to such philosophical discussion, which is that while it might be very interesting on an academic level, that it can also tend to be a waste of time and distract us from real world problems. Discussing ideas too much outside of the scope of reality can often take one so far away from reality that the discussion becomes abstract to the point of meaninglessness. In order to reach a true understanding, we need to remain cognizant of the real world ramifications of these concepts. This should always be the measuring stick for social policy, the real world ramifications, not logical correctness or academic purity. If an idea is perfect, and logical, but it's result is pain, suffering, and loss of freedom, then the idea should be thrown out, and the problems solved.
The problem with too much academic discussion, is that while we're trying to come up with the perfect logic to explain why things need to change, others are suffering. Devoting too much time to finding a purely logical and abstract solution is metaphorically equivalent to not saving your friend's life because you're busy trying to logically justify why he has a right to live. If we take this approach with such complex problems as intellectual property, market economics, and other stuff, society may well come and go before we come up with any academically pure and philosophically coherent vision. Sometimes, you just need to do what is right because you think it's the right thing to do. Our opponents aren't logical, that is obvious, but they'll be happy to wait for you to come up with a logical argument for your side. In the mean-time, they'll be busy plundering the planet while we come up with philosophical arguments for why they should stop.
What is in dispute is that a lot of people believe it to be totally true. Most people aren't so far-reaching to think that their own creative work should someday be public property for the good of all. Sure, it's okay for other people's stuff to be public-domain. It's great that we can freely embed quotes of Beethoven's Ninth in all sorts of music scores without paying Beethoven's 900,000 descendents. But the other way around? No, that's mine! You can't touch it.
This is why I really respect guys like John Carmack, who (aside from being a freaking genius) can make an honest buck from their "IP" and still let the public benefit before it's completely obsolete or passed from memory.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Sure, some do, but *more* don't
This is not true. At least, if you're claiming that most programmers work on proprietary, commercial software, you're wrong. Most programmers work on in-house stuff that is never sold or distributed in any way.
There's no shame in putting together a good peice of work and charging for the effort, but the FSF would have us think otherwise.
Of course there's no shame in it, but you're wrong that the FSF would have us think otherwise. As I said before, the FSF doesn't care about eliminating or demonizing proprietary code, they just want to make sure that there are Free options available.
For that matter, I put together plenty of what I think is good work and charge for the effort -- using Free and open source tools and sometimes even by actually modifying Free software, for a fee. There's nothing wrong with that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
There is no doubt that the GPL is a bit reactionary and short-sighted. The obvious question of how developers are going to eat is an important one, and we need to come up with a better system than the one we have currently. (However, we could also ask the question of where the money goes in our current system, and the majority of it doesn't go to the developers). In the long run, we will need to figure out a way to feed the people that develop open source software, that is, if we want a self-sustaining movement. There is no reason that someone who forks over $50,000+ to get a degree in CS should have to bag groceries in order to eat.
What makes the GPL unique isn't the amount of control that it has, but instead is the fact that this control doesn't directly serve large corporations. The GPL doesn't directly serve large corporations, and whatever service it does provide to the likes of an IBM, it does much more to free the grip of corporate software control than it does to help it. Just because the GPL benefits IBM doesn't mean that we should quit supporting it. An atmosphere containing oxygen also benefits IBM, that's not an argument against it.
After all, in our current system, what's the alternative? The alternative is handing complete control back to IBM, Microsoft, et al. You don't fight tyranny by giving in to it. I think that's a point of the GPL, is to show that copyrights and patents are a horribly flawed system that gives too much control to the owners of a particular idea. By arguing against the GPL, IP owners such as Bill Gates are in fact supporting the spirit of RMS's ideas, which to me are about removing the coporate control over ideas that is enforced through our current patent and copyright system. The viral nature of copyrights didn't start with the GPL, the viral and hierarchical nature of ideas has been exploited by private power for decades in order to overcharge for the valuable service of being there first. The controversy is over the fact that for the first time the viral nature of copyrights isn't serving to enforce and protect private dictatorships such as Microsoft.
So who's going to be the first to figure out some way to patent/copyright/trademark/whatever the idea of free speech itself?
Normally you would think of this was a crazy idea, but these days, watch somebody try.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You appear to be confused as for what it is precisely that you charge people money.
No one is saying that you should not be able to charge for your service as a software developer. My livelihood, as yours, depends on the ability to charge for the time that I spend solving other people's software problems.
More to the point, if we cannot make a living because all the algorithms and best-practices necessary for our work are restricted by patents, then we have only a few choices. We can starve. We can throw in the towel and become house slaves to some multi-national corporation. We can find another line of business. Finally, and most assuredly, we can stand up and defend our rights.
When Eben Moglin talks about "guys with little paste-it labels", he is talking about the people that threaten our livelihood as independent software developers, small companies, and individuals. He's talking about preserving your Civil Rights.
-Hope
Lawyers suck as they get rich by forcing us to drink cold coffee,smoke overpriced ciggarettes and keep women from installing a realistic giant rack.
If you read the facts about the McDonalds case, you will that the award against McDonalds was clearly justified.
Fight Spammers!
It's a nice analogy indeed, but it could be brought futher in other differences.
Definitions:
* A vegetarian does not eat products of a dead animal.
* A vegan does not eat products of a living or dead animal.
Thus, the ethical people who do not eat products derived from a dead animal, but do eat products derived from a living animal, actually contribute in the exploitation that living animal as well according to ethical vegans. Which makes me wondering what's worse: a long life in torture, or a short life torture and then death? People who commit suicide/euthenasia chose, as they see their future, for the latter.
My point is.. i have no point.
Except the following to consider: do you think that eating a product from a dead animal, which contains certain unhealthy substances according to the vegetarian health-group, are NOT in products derived from these animals?
If the animal had a disease it would be in it's derived products too. Think about milk and BSE for a second.
That said, though i am prejudiced, i think an analogy based on the vegan/ethical and the vegan/health groups is a much clearer one. I could take both "technical software groups" also to a less extreme standpoint: how about an ethical shared source group?
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
More time than it would to contribute to my project and no, it's not my living. But so? Your point being? Who said anything about me wanting those kind of people?
I'm looking for people to work with me (in their free time, as mine) to produce something that will benefit everyone else. I am actually doing some of the work myself (I've developed the protocol, the documentation, the eVB interface), not just bossing people around.
My advice, learn to program, or shut up.
Yeah whatever. For someone who can't learn to register, I don't really hold your opinion in high esteem.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Source code is just another form of speech, because code to hack an XBox just explains how to hack an XBox, how to put an owner in charge of their own processors. It's not crying "FIRE" in a crowded theater, because no one is hurt.
This is why many of us equate speech and code. For us, code is just another way to express an idea.
Just as freedom is the freedom to say "two plus two equals four", freedom is the freedom to type "2+2==4".
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Open Source and Free Software are neither subparts of the other. They have many similarities, and many of the same proponents, but are seperate classes. It happens that the similarities are great enough that there is a large amount of software that fits both classes - which leads to a lot of confusion between the two classes.
Xenu loves you!
In *what* Dr Dobbs article? Your accusations are rather severe, please back them up with some substance beyond hazy recollection of what you interpreted some article you don't know where it is said.
As far as encouraging the sale of free software, call it what you want, but it works just fine for the FSF, among others. Yes, many software companies dealing in Free software go under; the percentage would be comparable to those dealing in non-Free software. The majority of software companies go under, that's the name of the game.
You couldn't be more wrong. The GPL is fascist? You've got something very backwards. Firstly, the GPL doesn't say anything about how you can use the software. This needs to be said a lot more often, because most people still don't get that part clear in their heads. Even I didn't get it until pretty recently, even though I've been hearing about the GPL for years now.
Secondly, the GPL extends the rights given to you by normal copyright law, it does not restrict your rights. You know, the copyright law that automatically applies to any published work, giving sole permission to the author to say how it may or may not be copied. That copyright law is the only thing that might be said to be restricting the way you use the code, because you can't redistribute (copy) the code without permission from the author.
The main point of the GPL is one simple idea: If you promise to abide by terms of the GPL and openly publish any changes you make to my copyrighted work, I will automatically give you permission to distribute (and/or sell!) your derivative version of my copyrighted work at no cost. If you don't want to redistribute your derivative version of my copyrighted work, you can do whatever you want with it. The GPL doesn't even apply, as long as you aren't trying to make copies of my work and redistribute it to others.
If there was no GPL, you would be violating copyright law if you attempted to redistribute code without getting express permission from the author. The GPL is solely a way of automatically extending that "permission to copy" to any person who chooses to abide by the rules of the GPL. Of course, you are always free to negotiate any sort of non-GPL license with the author directly, if you wish to have permission to redistribute his copyrighted code.
I guess if giving you more rights than the normal laws allow is fascist, then by golly the GPL is fascist. But I think several million people would disagree with you quite strenuously, because it's wrong. It's as wrong as wrong gets.
I'm actually finding it difficult to understand what problem you do have with the GPL, as I can't get from your post whether you want code to be absolutely free (Public Domain) or you want to be forced to pay to license all code (commercial code protected by copyright law plus usage agreements that are more restrictive than copyright law!). I think you need to do a bit more research and thinking about this issue.
...as long as it is legal to defeat it.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Your statements remind me of those made by people who rally behind their first amendment rights and then decry other people's exercise of free speech.
If you stand for copyrights and the rights of the author then you should honor the GPL as a statement of the author's intent. If you challenge the legitimacy of that exercise, then you are challenging the legitimacy of copyright law itself. A reasonable man cannot do both at the same time. Your position appears to be that the world must honor your copyrights, but the exercise of their copyrights should be limited to that which conveniences you. That is not a defensible position.
I have yet to see any situation in which an author was coerced into releasing their software for free. Nor have I seen any situation in which 12 year olds trading Britney Spears MP3's have invoked the GPL as the basis for renewed discussion on the legitimacy of copyright. If anything, it's brought up the inefficiencies of the distribution system, both for the dissemination of content and for the artist's remuneration.
Your only point of evidence appears to be that a culture of content sharing is growing. If that content is shared legally and according to the author's intent, where exactly is your complaint?
-Hope
Is Free Speech in danger when McDonald's doesn't publish the recipes of their menu or when KFC keeps the 13 spices and herbs secret?
Even if Free Speech isn't in danger, people who are allergic to any of the secret ingredients certainly are.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.