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Transcript of Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech

Posted by michael on Fri Feb 27, 2004 11:55 AM
from the preaching-to-the-choir dept.
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.'"
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  • by ansak (80421) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:03PM (#8409116) Homepage Journal
    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

      • 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.
  • Eben Moglen resume (Score:5, Informative)

    by aacool (700143) <aacool@hotm a i l . com> on Friday February 27 2004, @12:03PM (#8409121) Homepage Journal
    Eben Moglen

    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).

  • by IronClad (114176) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:03PM (#8409123) Homepage
    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.
    • by Curtman (556920) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:16PM (#8409259)
      Heh, my favourite part of the speech was where he says that on the same day as Darl was speaking at Harvard, he was meeting with Darl's brother. Then says "The McBride's... Sometimes I feel like I'm in a Quentin Tarantino movie.. The McBride's..."
  • Good message (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh (611166) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:05PM (#8409143) Journal
    "I think we can do that. I think that's a deliverable message."

    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.

    • Re:Good message (Score:5, Insightful)

      by *weasel (174362) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:57PM (#8409736)
      Or we get Instant Runoff Voting [fairvote.org] - and lobbyists lose the stranglehold they have on government (which only exists due our 'lesser of two evils' voting).

      With IRV you could vote for an independent without being concerned that you might 'spoil' an election, or 'throw your vote away'.

      More importantly, you could vote for different independent, if the previous independent turned out to not represent your views, or the values he advocated at election.

      Imagine being able to support Perot without risking Clinton, or voting Nader without risking Bush.

      Imagine being able to vote McCain 2k4 because Bush isn't nearly as conservative as you'd like.

      Or being able to say 'screw Kerry, I'll support Kucinich even if he doesn't get the nomination' - and not having to worry about your vote giving power to Bush.

      (indeed party nominations only exist to tone down the chances of 2 similar candidates spoiling the race and handing it to a 3rd party.)

      Get IRV and lobbying won't work because a single vote will be enough to keep you from re-election - and lobbyists can't buy everyone.
    • Re:Good message (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pavon (30274) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:57PM (#8409737)
      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.

      And the other souless corporations will continue to use the most cost effective solution, which is increasingly becoming open source.

      This is what I love about the GPL. I think everyone can agree, given that a peice of software has been created, it is better for society if everyone to has access to it. The only issue at question is whether by limiting access to the software, we can provide necisarry means and motivation for more software to be written. I look at the GPL as an experiment - if copyright really does provide necissarry means and incentive to produce software then GPL'd software will never be as good as proprietary software, and will reamain on the sidelines. However if GPL'ed software does surpass and surplant proprietary software, then it is proof that there is enough means and motivation to produce software without the burden of copyright. This is increasingly showing itself to be the case.

      The FSF focuses on the first issue, and think that the negative societal aspects of proprietary software are so bad that it doesn't matter whether copyright adds incentive or not, proprietary software is still intolerable.

      The OSI focuses on the second issue, and think that the only important thing about free software is that it is better than proprietary software, and have provided usefull theories which help explain why this is the case.

      But the real clincher is that both issues are true - that not only is software copyright harmfull, it is also unecissarry. It is for this reason that I agree with the FSF in treating it as an ethical situation, because while I am willing to put up with some "necissary evil", there is no reason to put up with proprietary software in the long run.
  • by GillBates0 (664202) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:05PM (#8409152) Homepage Journal
    I live in the Boston area, and would've liked to attend the last 2 SCO related lectures at Harvard [harvard.edu] (yes, Darryl's too, out of morbid curiousity).

    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.

  • My favorite Quote (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2004, @12:07PM (#8409170)
    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.
  • by Random BedHead Ed (602081) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:07PM (#8409182) Homepage Journal
    This was a great speech. I watched the whole video of the lecture, which is in Real Media on this page [harvard.edu]. I viewed it with the Helix player; Real's player obivously works as well.

    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.

  • by swillden (191260) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday February 27 2004, @12:13PM (#8409231) Homepage Journal

    ... and one relevant to a much-debated topic here on slashdot.

    Those of us who believe in the GNU GPL as a particularly valuable license to use believe in that because we think that there are other licenses which too weakly protect the commons and which are more amenable to a form of appropriation that might be ultimately destructive -- this is our concern with the freedoms presented, for example, by the BSD license

    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.

  • by cduffy (652) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Friday February 27 2004, @12:20PM (#8409304)
    Having listened to the speech, I assure 'yall it's much better listened to than read.

    I've put together a BitTorrent share [quackerhead.com] with a Speex [speex.org] encoding of his speech. Please be gentle.
  • by braddock (78796) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:34PM (#8409452)
    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
    • by Magnus Pym (237274) * on Friday February 27 2004, @01:17PM (#8409926)
      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
    • by The Pim (140414) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:20PM (#8409959)
      I hope to at least see Eben Moglen and similar speakers invited to more software conferences.

      I do too, and I bet it will come to pass. But (from someone who attended the speech) there's something we should realize: Moglen and RMS are championing almost exactly the same principles and agenda. The differences are in how they serve the agenda: Stallman by writing code (in the beginning) and playing the visionary, Moglen by plotting legal strategy and fighting the legal ground war; and in their particular communication styles.

      So while I agree that RMS's personality may be getting worn and he is somewhat tainted by politics, it is important that we see Moglen not as a less orthodox RMS, but as a new, and perhaps more effective, conveyor of the same fundamental message. It may help to note Moglen's pointed expressions of respect and admiration for RMS during the speech.

      That said, Moglen did put the free software movement in a wider legal and intellectual context better than RMS usually does. Moglen can play the visionary very well if he wishes! Perhaps if we are inspired by Moglen, we can reconsider RMS with renewed appreciation.

  • The Power of Free (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thoth39 (583059) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:25PM (#8410021) Homepage
    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.
  • by thomas_klopf (672359) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:45PM (#8410253)

    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"

  • Enligthening Q/A (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shane (3950) on Friday February 27 2004, @02:04PM (#8410429) Homepage
    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.
    • by Phil John (576633) <phil.webstarsltd@com> on Friday February 27 2004, @11:58AM (#8409043)
      ...who works Pro Bono for them
    • Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thoth39 (583059) on Friday February 27 2004, @11:59AM (#8409054) Homepage
      Well, Slashdot articles usually carry these links to stories about the subject you can read...

      The way you put it, we should tell who is speaking so people can assess if it's worth listening.

      But I'd expect this is the purpose of the quote.
    • Re:Who? (Score:5, Informative)

      by syphax (189065) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:01PM (#8409086) Journal
      Here are you hints:

      Groklaw
      SCO
      (Richard) Stallman

      With apologies, these names should ring a bell to anyone who occasionally visits /.

      I'm feeling lucky [columbia.edu]
    • Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rakshasa Taisab (244699) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:05PM (#8409151) Homepage
      /. targets an audience that has basic web searching skills.
    • Re:Who? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nurseman (161297) <nurseman.gmail@com> on Friday February 27 2004, @12:06PM (#8409155) Homepage Journal
      He is a laywer who represents/gives leagal advice to [gnu.org]
      The Free Software Foundation
      His Bio is Here [columbia.edu]


      He was responding to the talk given by our buddy Darl McBride Text here [groklaw.net]

    • Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pinky3 (22411) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:49PM (#8410281) Homepage
      It's amazing how many people thought the original poster, gkelman, was asking about Eben Moglen. The post asks a different question, one asked by Eric Raymond in "The Luxury of Ignorance," which was discussed on slashdot yesterday. The real question is why do slashdot postings, as do many configuration utilities, assume the reader already knows the answers?

      All the poster was suggesting was that the original post would have been much more informative if it had included a second sentence that read something like "Eben Moglen is the lawyer for the Free Software Foundation and spoke at the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology lecture on the 23rd on the topic of 'SCO and After SCO: The Legal Future of Free Software'."

      Wouldn't that have made the topic of the article much clearer?
    • by Russ Nelson (33911) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:18PM (#8409282) Homepage
      "Free Software" exists to sell the idea of freedom. "Open Source" exists to sell the reality of freedom.

    • by Communomancer (8024) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:23PM (#8409347)
      For those of you too "young" to remember, it was the "open source" advocates (Eric "ESR" Raymond leading the charge) that, imo, muddied the waters in the first place. The driving notion was that in order to find acceptance in the commercial marketplace (as if that were the holy grail we should all be shooting for), "Free Software" had to change its name and its image, because nobody whose job depended on it would ever use something that was "free". So, they created (and indeed trademarked) the moniker "Open Source Software".

      I'm not saying that their methods were not in line with their goals (though I always had reservations about the goals themselves). Name makes a difference in the image. Which is exactly the point that Eben is making in his speech when he advocates not forgetting the "Free" part.
    • by Telex4 (265980) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:32PM (#8409438) Homepage
      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?

      But they are defining the issue by contrasting those two terms. In a sense, "open source" advocates are doing as much to defend and reclaim our civil liberties as proprietary vendors.

      Free Software is about making software work for communities, whereas Open Source is about development methodologies. By confusing the two you're sending people conflicting messages... we're about better development methodologies, and, oh, you get certain freedoms too.

      In the light of Microsoft, SCO, the DMCA, the EUCD, software patents, the EUIPD and all the other recent examples of the abuse of technology I'd say that Eben Moglen and the Free Software Foundation are spot on in their approach.
    • Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)

      by www.sorehands.com (142825) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:22PM (#8409330) Homepage
      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?

      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.

    • Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)

      by microbox (704317) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:42PM (#8409536)
      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?
      • by the_flatlander (694162) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:51PM (#8409661)
        What a patronizing way to refer to people (like me) who are trying to make a living selling their own work.
        Respectfully, no, it is not patronizing. You are allowed to sell your work. Encouraged to sell your work. Respected for selling your work. But do not claim that an idea you have had is "property". The Freedom the good professor is talking about is the freedom to speak, think and have ideas; and to build on the ideas of others. If your idea becomes your property then I can not legally think that thought; that would be bad. If you are a programmer, like it or not, you are in the service business, and your service should not be free, or at least Professor Moglen has neither said, nor I suspect believes, that it should be.

        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

      • "guys with little paste-it labels with price tags on it who would stick it on every idea on earth"

        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.

        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.

    • Re:The Flip Side (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Soko (17987) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:26PM (#8409377) Homepage
      Does this mean that any piece of closed-source software is a threat fo (sic) Free Speech?

      Is it, now, right this moment? I really don't know for certain.

      Could it be in the future? You bet.

      Keeping the source open pretty well ensures that the software I use only serves my purposes, not anyone elses.

      Soko
    • 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.

      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= 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
      *2-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
      [j],k="7Wo~'G_\216" [k&7]+2^"cr3sfw6v;*k+>/n."[k>>4 ]*2^k*257/8,s[j]=k^(k&k*2&34)
      *6^c+~y;}}
    • by JimDabell (42870) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:49PM (#8409623) Homepage

      Stallman unambiguously made it clear that he considers making money from software to be *bad*, period.

      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 [fsf.org] right now.

      In fact, why not read what the FSF have to say on the matter straight from their own website:

      Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. [fsf.org]

        • by Kismet (13199) <pmccombs@acm.org> on Friday February 27 2004, @02:27PM (#8410701) Homepage
          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?
    • by ryants (310088) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:52PM (#8409679)
      I really need to find it again so that I can post the exact reference when needed. In that rant, Stallman unambiguously made it clear that he considers making money from software to be *bad*, period.
      I'll take this (Selling Free Software) [gnu.org] over your hazy recollections and rants any day.
    • by tybalt44 (176219) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:10PM (#8409858) Journal
      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.
    • 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.
    • by sremick (91371) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:09PM (#8409853) Homepage
      Hmmm... a PDA designed to run a OS created by the biggest closed-source anti-GPL capitalistic monopoly in the world. which can only be programmed using a language created by the same said vendor, which caters to and encourages a similar mindset amongst developers. Many of whom are already used to the same sort of closed-source OS/tool/hardware lock-in on the desktop by same said vendor.

      And you wonder why you're having trouble finding GPL programmers for it? :)

      You might have better luck trying to sell the same idea to the Palm community. Not only do you already have a bunch of "anything-but-Microsoft" folks, but even the new development tools [palmos.com] are based on the Eclipse open-source IDE [eclipse.org]. There are FAR more apps and developers out for Palm, many of them free [freewarepalm.com].

    • by the_flatlander (694162) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:15PM (#8409911)
      If I want to write software and not give it away (and sell it), that should be my business.
      Indeed. That is fine. No one has a problem with that. But don't write your code and then claim no one else can write code that does the same thing. Don't write your code and claim you own the method of doing whatever it is your code does.

      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

    • Re:Differences (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fbform (723771) on Friday February 27 2004, @02:26PM (#8410695)
      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.
      • Re:Differences (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Trelane (16124) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:23PM (#8409994) Journal
        it refers to software for which the intellectual property rights (copyright and so forth) have been deliberately weakened

        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.