Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
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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.
Funny... that would make one think that patents are the enemy here, not copyrights.
Try actually reading/listening to the speech. Moglen says precisely this. You are incredibly confused if you think any Free Software advocate considers copyright law their "enemy". The GPL fundamentally *depends* on the sanctity of copyrights.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
Just so you know, however, the large numbers of programmers available to open source projects, and the many, many eyes taht can review open source projects will probably render your proprietary code worthless in short order. That's not a problem for you, is it?
You intentionally misinterpret the Professors argument. It ain't free as in beer. It's free as in speech. When the code is available, when the algorithm can be examined, fixed, improved upon, everyone benefits.
Red Hat, HP, and IBM seem to be doing okay with software that's "free." How do they do that? Because the *service* ain't free - it's only the code that you can get free.
The Flatlander
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
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
> 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
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!
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 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
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
You are incredibly confused if you think any Free Software advocate considers copyright law their "enemy". The GPL fundamentally *depends* on the sanctity of copyrights.
Copyright law is the enemy of the FSF. That's why the GPL is written the way it is; it's designed to use copyright against itself, as kind of a legalistic aikido.
The FSF would be happiest if no copyright existed for software. If that occurs, then the GPL goes away - which is fine by them, because it's no longer necessary. If it does not occur, they can cause pressure for the same end result, by using copyright to enforce the GPL.
If you seriously think that Free Software Advocates support copyright on software in any form, you've obviously not read up enough on how exactly the GPL is designed.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
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?
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.
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.
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)
SCENARIO A
Copyright exists. The GPL exists. People who break the terms of the GPL are guilty of copyright infringement and can be sued for big bucks. Proprietary software makers play the same game with their EULAs. (Hint: this is the actual world.)
SCENARIO B
Copyright does not exist. The proprietary software people play the same game, but using lots of DRM in the mix instead of copyright law. Free software is all essentially BSD'd. Why? Because once anyone has the source, they can do whatever they like with it including copying, changing, compiling, and distributing binaries for money.
How is scenario B good for FSF types? No-one would need to share source because there would be no threat of copyright violation damages. There would be constant forking and very little would get done.
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.
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
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
The GPL only gives a pre-written license for one way you can use that speech (i.e. code). It in no way prevents you and the developer of that code reaching a different agreement about what you may do with the code.
In other words, it gives you one option, with specific restrictions. You are free to negotiate any other option with the copyright holder.