Eben Moglen on the Global Software Industry Post-GPL3

Dan Shearer writes "Three days before GPLv3 was released, Eben Moglen delivered the annual lecture of The Scottish Society of Computers and Law in Edinburgh, Scotland giving his thoughts on 'The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3.' The text transcription, audio and 384kbit video are up at archive.org. Eben looks back at the 'legislative action' achieved by the GPLv3 community over the last 18 months, and also from the 22nd century. A riveting presentation for all present."

He is PREDICTING. It's what smart people do.

[Anonymous Coward]

You see here on slashdot people frequently go on tirades about how somebody _was_ wrong. Or about how something _is_ a bad idea and is flawed. It's a common misconception that people have about themselves that this sort of behavior somehow means that they are smart.

You see... Pointing out bad things that intellegent people do does not make you yourself intellegent. Very stupid people can find flaws in other things very easily.

However what intellegent people can do is make predictions. That is take what they know, and what history has shown, combined with their own cognitive abilities to make interesting and insightfull comments about the FUTURE.

You see.. You don't need to be a Time Lord to know what is going to happen. You just have to be very smart.

This is how you know your ideas, beleifs, and assumptions are right and other people who disagree with you are wrong. If you can accurately predict the future then you are right.

And by being right and knowing what is going to happen next allows you to be _constructive_. If you can plan ahead and leverage what you know is going to happen. This allows to you change things for the better, or at least what is better for your own self interest. You can be successfull in business; Like Bill Gates did with Microsoft, for example. Or you can create fundamental changes on how society operates; Like how Richard Stallman did when he created the GPL, which created the legal framework that helped make Linux and the open source movement successfull.

This is in contrast to stupid people which generally just going around finding flaws in other people and other things, tearing things down. Then acting all scared at change and mystified about how things are not remaining the same.

You can go back to 1990's and such when things like GCC and Linux were just started.

It was very common for people to say stuff like:
"Nobody in their right minds would ever work on a FREE compiler. Sure it's a interesting toy, but GCC will never be able to replace "

"Ha! Linux in the enterprise? Sure it's a cheap OS for cheap hardware. But nobody in their right mind will ever use it. When people need to get REAL work done they will never give up their "

So what Eben Moglen is talking about is what is going to happen POST GPLv3 release. He is a very smart guy and is probably going to be mostly right.

The lesson to take home here is:
"One does not need to be from the future to know what is going to happen tomorrow with reasonable accuracy"

Re:Predicting the future

[value_added]

But it was the beginning of a joining-together of communities of affect in the global organisation of power, the beginning of affiliation rather than territorial location or political domination, as the source of legitimacy for legislation.

Nice words to read, but this could be entitled The Triumph of Optimism over Experience. My gut tells me that despite the underlying Star Trekish optimism in the evolution of our species, and despite our inherent ability to aspire to greater things, nationalism and petty self-interest will prevail as they always have.

That's not to say we can't find new ways of looking at things. Or establish new institutions.

Re:Shocking! He is 'The architect' in the matrix

[Chandon Seldon]

I had no problem understanding him at all. He does construct some complex sentences, but it's probably worth you while to learn to understand that style of speaking - it's reasonably common when talking about non-trivial topics.

Re:I have a very bad feeling about this...

[david_thornley]

The purpose of my discussion with him was to point out why the GPL3 was inferior to the GPL2 and instead, he just tried to turn it into another case of anyone who was trying to be pragmatic is wrong and we should all worship the prophet Stallman.

Sounds to me like we have a couple of dueling ideologues here. If you're trying to point out why GPLv3 is inferior to GPLv2, as opposed, say, to why you think that, no wonder there's problems.

The FSF deliberately made the GPL3 incompatible with the GPL2.

And how were they supposed to make it compatible? Adding any additional restrictions, such as those dealing with new ways to make end-runs around GPLv2, makes the new license incompatible. There's no way around it. Either GPLv2 is considered perfect until the end of time, or the FSF has to issue an incompatible GPLv3. There are no other possibilities.

The FSF is trying to leverage its code base moving to GPL3 to force others to go GPL3 even if they don't use the GPL for any of the reasons why the FSF wants them too.

Since, of course, nobody has been able to use any license other than GPLv2, since the Gnu software is under GPLv2. It doesn't really matter if the Gnu software is under GPLv2 or GPLv3 for compatibility purposes, since for practical purposes nobody links into it anyway. It won't bother you at all unless you want to Tivoize the software or acknowledge Microsoft patent supremacy or something.

The GPL3 is full of holes waiting to be exploited - the more verbiage you add to a legal document, the more ways you can twist the words.

It was drafted by highly competent lawyers, and exposed to months of intense public scrutiny. It won't be as exploitable as you think.

It's also pretty readable for a complicated license, and it has the very desirable feature that you only need to learn what it says once. It's dense in spots, but no worse than a lot of C++ code I've worked on. If you can't figure it out, maybe you should only hack in COBOL.

Clauses about business use vs personal use and all other kinds of stuff is just waiting to be twisted and exploited.

And, now, please point out more than one such clause (you did use the plural, after all). Are you referring to the approved methods of distributing source code? If not, I don't know where you're getting this. There is a distinction between a consumer device and a non-consumer device, as an exception to the anti-Tivoization clause, but that has nothing to do with business vs. personal use.

On top of that, the GPL3 makes it so some businesses absolutely cannot use GPL3 software, possibly even for stuff like election computers and definitely for stuff like medical equipment.

Blasting what you demonstrably don't understand is not going to get you anywhere. Go and read the anti-Tivoization section. It applies to consumer devices only. An electronic voting system is not a consumer device, and neither are most pieces of medical equipment.

Instead, we're going to see businesses go proprietary or BSD at best because it is cheaper to pay a license (and pass that cost on) than it may be to get sued and have who knows what opened up because you used some GPL3 software.

Nope; the FSF got plenty of comments from businesses who are interested in using GPLv3 and wanted to make sure it was suitable for them. That's why anti-Tivoization applies only to consumer devices, and why the patent clauses were modified.

For almost all purposes, the GPLv3 is equivalent to the GPLv2. Anyone who likes the GPLv2 shouldn't hate the GPLv3 (Linus, for example, considers the GPLv3 to be a reasonable license, although he likes GPLv2 better). Anybody who distributes inaccurate FUD about GPLv3 is probably no friend of the F/OSS community anyway.