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."

Re:

[ScrewMaster]

Most people don't know this, but the Gallifreyans have been interfering, or should I say, intervening, in Earth history for centuries. Usually, it's when we're about to screw up bigtime, or the Master does something he shouldn't be doing and screws us up bigtime. They've never bothered to maintain an ongoing presence here, so far as I'm aware, so I don't think Moglen is an actual Time Lord.

On the the other hand, they may have given him a few hints.

Predicting the future

[benhocking]

In case you were wondering:

"Seen backward through the end of the 21st Century, our achievements will seem very primitive. They thought that it was something that they got a few tens of thousands of otherwise hierarchically disorganised people around the world to cooperate on a single act of limited purpose legislation, regulating the share of software," the 22nd Century will say. "How quaint." 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. It was the beginning of the idea that cooperative private agreement can substantially oust public law institutions without challenging the legitimacy of the Governments that participated in making the public law. And it provides an escape from the moral dilemma presented by the myth of endlessly acquisitive homo economicus, the little homunculus of economic dream, the independent entity with the exogenously derived preference schedule, competing with sharp elbows in the market against every other homunculus economicus seeking only the same narrow benefit off the same asocial schedule of what I need today.

Re:

[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

Re:

[the eric conspiracy]

It takes time to build new institutions but I am optimistic that ever improving communications infrastructure will be what gets us there.

Re:

[Eli Gottlieb]

Are you implying there's something wrong with nationalism and petty self-interest?

Re:

[Antique Geekmeister]

Really? Tall that to the negroes, and women without the vote. There are places both still happen, but it's gotten radically better for them in the last 200 years. Even in the last 50.

It takes time. It takes resources. And it's not universal. But change does occur.

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:

[Riddler Sensei]

This is how you know your ideas, beleifs, and assumptions are right..

You spelled "beliefs" wrong.

MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL

[PatrickThomson]

I regret not having the points, this is by far the most insightful post I've seen on slashdot. So many uuid's here only seem to post belittling smarter people than themselves.

Re:

[Tanuki64]

The post surely is correct and good and deserves to be modded 'insightful', but it is an 'Anonymous Coward' post. I never waste mod points on those.

Re:

[tlapale]

Or maybe there are so many predicting people that it is just random.

Re:

[Bill_the_Engineer]

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.

Actually we seem to measure the intelligence based on the outcome of the predictions. Thosed that have guessed correctly are seen as visionaries while those who didn't are not. "Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then."

While meteorlogists, stock analyst, economists, and etc. are us

Well said. I'd only add one more thing

[btarval]

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"

Your entire post was very well said. Thank you for those insightful and well spoken words. A pity you are anonymous, as you deserve credit for them. But that does show the power of allowing people to choose anonymity when they so want it. Thank you Slashdot, for allowing anonymous postings.

I'd only add my favorite quote, from the well known Peter Drucker, which h

Re:

[syousef]

This gets modded insightful????

Take a look at the stupid things that smart successful people have predicted and you'll see "smart" people can be terrible at predicting the future. Why?

1) There may be important things the person has overlooked or is unaware of. Technologies, politics etc. This is more likely if the "smart" person is commenting on something outside their own expertise.
2) Rare events can and do happen, albeit by definition less frequently than common ones.
3) "Smart" people are often surprised

Why Streaming

[Mateo_LeFou]

Is it that hard to find a link to the actual file? I've just spent all morning visiting interesting-looking media links only to find that the site doesn't like my version of javascript or flash or both.

Here are the video files

[Mateo_LeFou]

91MB http://www.archive.org/download/EbenMoglenLectureE dinburghJune2007StreamingVideo384kbits/EbenMoglenL ectureEdinburghJune2007_384kbits_64kb.mp4 [archive.org] 210MB http://www.archive.org/download/EbenMoglenLectureE dinburghJune2007StreamingVideo384kbits/EbenMoglenL ectureEdinburghJune2007_384kbits_256kb.mp4 [archive.org]

Re:

[twitter]

Don't forget the 365 MB MPEG 1 version [archive.org], which is the only patent unencumbered file other than text. Sad how the formats that save 2/3 of the bandwith are owned.

Re:

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Look harder, the links are on the left sidebar. No flash or javascript required to get either the transcript or the audio.

Re:

[Mateo_LeFou]

I know; I'm just encouraging story submitters to use those links when available. Helps some of us out

Finished, gosh

[Realistic_Dragon]

If your comment appeared before this post, you didn't watch the entire video.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

Sounds like the GPL is moving away from a distributor and developer license and closer to an EULA. What's next, FSF DRM that forces all your code open?

Re:

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, I predict a lot of flaming trolls will invent FUD wholesale, to try and obscure its usefulness and the history of how it has evolved.

I'm sorry, but is irony somehow missing on Slashdot?

Re:

[Azuma Hazuki]

Oh, quit bitching. Unlike with certain other EULAs I can name (hint: distributor begins with an M and ends with an icrosoft), there's always an alternative. There have got to be BSD, MIT, etc. licensed versions of programs that do what you need, or programs that are close enough to work. Plus the GPLv2 is still valid, and I have a feeling a lot of programs are going to stick with it. Remember that the FOSS community is just that: a *community.* It's not a monolithic corporate entity that all follows one lic

Re:

[mgiuca]

I shall bite.

Your comment has missed the point of not only Eben Moglen's speech, but the GPL and the entire free software movement.

Sounds like the GPL is moving away from a distributor and developer license and closer to an EULA.

A point he made very early on - which I really liked by the way because I haven't heard it explained like this before - is that the GPL is *not* a EULA. EULAs add additional terms on top of normal copyright. The GPL takes copyright and subtracts terms from it. The GPL does not add any restrictions on top of what normal unlicensed copyright offers. If you violate or disagree to

Re:

[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 h

good quote :)

[howlingmadhowie]

(38:30) about bribery and corruption often present in legal decisions:

"i don't think anyone actually thought there was any point in offering stallman money"

Shocking! He is 'The architect' in the matrix

[7-Vodka]

Did anyone actually watch the video? Can someone describe to me what 'style' of speaking this guy uses?

He is honest to god harder to understand than 'The architect' character in the matrix.

It's not that he's trying to be precise, he is a lot more formal than precise. Why is it so hard to follow?

I'm completely familiar with the words he uses, however the way he throws them together into a monotone slush is almost like purpose obfuscation at times.

Re:

[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.

I find him quite eloquent

[Geof]

Actually, I find him wonderfully eloquent and inspiring. Lawrence Lessig calls him "the truly inspired rhetorician of our age [lessig.org]". Here's one passage that struck me:

The monopoly isn't in any intellectual sense interesting, it isn't in any ethical sense tolerable, it isn't in any economic sense necessary, it's simply a thing that happened to happen, and that we will soon be finished making no longer there.

What a put-down. The slight complexity of the last two phrases ("happened to happen" and "we will s

Re: I find him quite eloquent

[stebbo]

I agree with the "eloquent and inspiring" finding. I've sent links to three friends, listened to it three times and watched some of the video.

He doesn't seem to be reading from a script or even prompt cards. To talk through a subject so comprehensively without going off track and having to stumble and back track is excellent. No presentation either, which so many people rely on.

Very cool.

Re:

[7-Vodka]

To be perfectly honest, he became a bit less monotone and easier to understand later in the talk.

He also handed M$ their arse, which is a good thing.

honeycombing copyright law

[bl8n8r]

...or rather Copyleft. All rights Reversed.

"..the tendancy of the market, if left free to itself, to extirpate ignorance and cultural deprivation."

"like all other monopolies, they obeyed the laws of the free market, they produced lousy goods at very high prices and they stifled innovation"

- Eben Moglen

Listening to Eben Moglen

[mgiuca]

This man has such an excitingly eloquent and passionate way of speaking. He is devoted to his cause and he makes you think about things in a whole new light. Truly a great man. I hope that more people will hear what he has to say.

Funny how sure he is that MS (or "The Monopoly") will be beaten by this community. I believe him .. but I'm not sure "we win" yet!