Eben Gets Testy 1
Man oh man, am I sad to have missed this one. By this I am talking about the O’Reilly Radar: The Executive Briefing at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference( in Oregon, titled “Licensing in the Web 2.0 Era”.
The topic of the talk, between Tim O’Reilly and Eben Moglen, was to be:
“How does open source licensing need to adapt to the realities of software delivered as a service? We’ll talk with Eben Moglen about GPLv3’s and the AGPLv3’s attempt to deal with this issue.”
Instead it apparently turned into a lopsided smackdown, where Eben pretty much let loose with some direct (and arguably harsh) criticism of Tim.
By reading the most excellent blog post by Stephen Walli titled Tim O’Reilly, Eben Moglen, and Jane Jacobs, you will find links to the conference pages, as well as additional posts on other blogs about the event. As expected there are some pretty strong emotions and varied interpretations of what happened, however it is critical to note who actually attended the event, and who claims to know what happened but wasn’t actually there…
As I didn’t attend the event, I have little to say, other than the fact that I’m a little surprised that Eben would make such personal attacks in such a public fashion – however he might have been upset about a lot of things, as some of his comments make it sound that he’s been waiting for this opportunity for a while. Maybe Tim saw this coming, as his response was supposedly quite muted. Ok, maybe he was speechless. I have no idea, and wished I’d been there to see for myself.
For the record, I love Eben Moglen. He’s fought tirelessly for a worthy cause for a loooooong time, and has always been the source of a few good zingers, which of course I appreciate :-) I’ve met him several times, and have tremendous respect for him, as well as the causes for which he fights. It’s hard for me to criticize his actions when I wasn’t there, and have no context to interpret what happened.
On the flipside, one thing he said that brings me into a good great mood was about the GPLv3 and the desire by some to add verbage to restrict SaaS(Software as a Service). Ultimately, the debate rages, and one side says that companies that take GPL software and just host it on their servers should not be exempt from the restrictions of the GPL. They say the GPLv3 should be amended to include those scenarios, so your typical Web2.0 company (such as Facebook) is compelled to share their modifications to existing GPL works with the public.
Eben responded (and I quote from another blog post by Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier for Linux.com, for fair attribution):
“Moglen also took several questions from the audience. One attendee asked how we could take Moglen seriously when the GPLv3 didn’t close the software-as-a-service loophole. Moglen says that the GPLv3 could have closed the “loophole” but then it would have violated two of the fundamental freedoms: the freedom to run code for any purpose, and the right to private modifications. Moglen says that he’s not interested in legal work that removes people’s rights, but that he is more interested in doing work that finds a way to support the rights of both parties. When rights are in conflict, he says that lawyers need to find ways to protect the rights of both parties.”
There are a lot of people out there supposedly fighting for open source and free software and they clearly don’t care about both parties. I am relieved to hear that someone with the stature of Eben Moglen still remembers that there are several pieces in this puzzle that need to be put in the right place.
It is in fact that fear of rampant one-sided zealotry run amok that I’ve started this very website. I’m working on a new post that outlines one event that triggered the creation of this blog titled “Standing On The Shoulders Of…DELETE”. A tornado and a couple concerts are keeping me from getting it done, but all things in good time :-)
Back on topic, I’m elated to see Eben using the correct definition of freedom. Now to work on the rest of the group! ;-)