JanneJalkanen links to an interesting conversation ¹. Tim O’Reilly wants to talk about Web 2.0. Eben Moglen wants to talk about freedom. ²
I didn’t like Moglen’s apparent lack of tact. Who knows, maybe you need that kind of stubborness, the quality that keeps you talking while the other is trying to interject something.
What I really liked was the following thought:
The GPLv3 doesn’t force service providers (like Google or EmacsWiki) to make their source code available. This is a problem because in the old days, users of Free Software had that right because software was always a local thing. So people ask: Why isn’t this a requirement?
Moglen says that this is a conflict of rights: People have the right to make private modifications. People have the right to study the software. It’s a conflict. Concentrating on the second right by eliminating the first right is not a good solution, he argues. The correct solution is to treat this as a public policy issue.
And he provides and example: Corporations can protect their dirty secrets from the press by keeping the press off their private premisses. This is a conflict of rights: People have a right to privacy, and they have a right to uncover the dirty secrets of others. Abolishing privacy in order to prevent crime is not the correct solution, he argues. The correct solution is to treat this as a public policy issue, take it to the next level, and find a more complex solution. A gazillion details govern this conflict of rights: Search warrants, whistleblowers, public interest, privacy – all these issues are part of the solution.
I assume that Moglen would like a similarly reasonable and thoughtful regulation for the conflict of interest regarding freedom and computation.
Interesting.
#Copyright
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
⁂
Didn’t listen, yet. Recently ran across a profile of Brad Kuhn on Linux.com that has some related background information and commentary about the SaaS and/or freedom conversation.
profile of Brad Kuhn on Linux.com
– AaronHawley 2008-05-16 18:16 UTC
---
The Brad Kuhn interview talks about licensing and incorporation, but when Tim O’Reilly asked Eben Moglen to speak about the licensing challenges ahead in the Web 2.0 era, *Moglen refused saying that the challenges ahead were not licensing challenges but matters of public policy*, ie. society figuring out how to handle all freedom issues surrounding the use and development of software. I think that was an interesting way of seeing it, and clearly O’Reilly was struggling with this turn of events – specially since Moglen never stopped accusing O’Reilly of having wasted the last ten years by refusing to push the freedom agenda and instead squandering it by talking about Open Source Software all the time. The refusal to see it as a licensing issue, the assertion that software service providers are under no obligation to publish their source, and to underline the conflict of rights nature of the issue was an interesting rhetorical move, I think.
– Alex Schroeder 2008-05-16 23:13 UTC