Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Share and share alike
|
Eben Moglen has played a fundamental role in the future of free software with the release of the final draft of the General Public License Version Three (GPLv3). He is now concentrating on writing, teaching and his Software Freedom Law Centre
|
PHOTO: MURALI KUMAR K.
in the right Eben Moglen: ‘I believe there are opportunities here for us because there are principles of civil procedure which are meant to protect the poor against the rich’
Richard Stallman is often considered the father of the free software movement. He is credited with authoring the tenet upon which the movement is based, the GNU General Public Licence (GPL). But the legal eagle behind GPL is acknowledged to be Eben M
oglen, often referred to as Stallman’s right hand.
A professor of law at Columbia University, Moglen became involved with the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1994. He founded the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) in 2005 to defend the free software community.
His involvement has culminated in the acceptance of the final draft of the version three of GPL called GPLv3, which will soon be in use. He says India will profit most from free software in the future and as a consequence he is establishing SFLC’s first office outside the U.S. in India.
In April he announced that he was stepping down from an active role with the FSF to devote time to writing, teaching and the SFLC.
Moglen was in the city recently. Excerpts from an interview with MetroPlus.
What is your feeling on releasing the final draft of GPLv3?
I’m delighted. I think we are in extraordinarily good shape. As the third draft came out, I saw nobody of importance objecting except Microsoft. That is the way it is ought to be. I think we have largely completed building a consensus that can work.
The licensing deal between Microsoft and Novell that includes collecting royalties on Linux has been fiercely criticised. Will GPLv3 allow such deals in the future?
Anybody making such a deal in the future will be violating the license. It is a basic principle of justice. Also we found a way to use the Novell agreement against Microsoft. Microsoft will have to do some hard thinking now. The dates which determines violations are not the effective date of GPLv3, it is the publication of the last discussion draft, March 28, 2007. So nobody can make a deal with Microsoft now and the one deal that exists, we will live with. In the future anybody who does what you do, we are going to punish.
Microsoft alleges numerous cases of patent violations against the free and open source community. How will developers be protected by GPLv3?
The initial purpose of GPLv3 in this area was to insure against betrayal from within the community. No license on a copyrighted work can keep you safe from people who don’t have anything to do with it. So outsiders to the system, not people within the community, are a different problem. We can divide that into two parts – Microsoft and trolls, people who have patents and just want to extract money. Outside defence against those two groups works differently. Trolls are simpler, though we often say they are more threatening. Their weakness is all they want is money. And our developers don’t have money. You can’t sue a guy for royalties, if he doesn’t have any revenue. Trolls will not attack our developers but businesses who use our software.
We will help the businesses resist the trolls. What our community of developers most needs to be concerned about is enemies of freedom, the monopolies who might use patents to block their activity. But fundamentally the license cannot solve the whole patent problem.
Only two things can solve it – changing patent law so that software is not covered by patents and having a strong system of community legal defence.
Linux distribution is fragmented, with many versions of it going around. Will licenses go the same way? Is it binding to use GPLv3, you could still use GPLv2?
Yes, for a while. Then it may very well be that copyright holders might move to label their software ‘GPLv3 or any later version’ or ’GPLv3 only’. So, over time the version two opportunities go away. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) will re-license its software as it upgrades them. I think people will move to GPLv3 because of the globalisation element in it.
At a time when American law is not the most popular, the American law-nature in GPLv2 will work against it. It works particularly nicely for American lawyers like me but sooner or later judges around the world might be concerned about the pro-American style of GPLv2. GPLv3 is insurance against legal nationalism.
Is the Indian legal machinery capable of handling complex lawsuits such as those that involve software patents?
There are three things. There is no major problem in using free software concepts under Indian law. I believe there are opportunities here for us because there are principles of civil procedure which are meant to protect the poor against the rich. India is a challenge to them (patent holders) and not to us. India is important globally and that is why the Software Freedom Law Centre is setting up its first office outside the U.S. here. Finally, here we have an opportunity to look at an economy about free software which is beneficial to the largest established parties.
Wipro and Infosys and other giants of Indian information technology have made a concerted business decision, they want to service software and not make software. It seems to them a more profitable form of industry. Free software is good for that business, they can’t service Microsoft Windows, except pull down that menu and click that button.
To increase its popular usage, does free and open source software require good PR?
If you are Microsoft, you have to pay money to make software. You have to hire people, buildings, paper clips, telephones, pensions.... Then sell software with salesmen... Then have lawyers to protect the software.
We don’t have to pay anybody to make the software. Smart people all over the world make our software. Biggest corporations around the world clamour to distribute the software because it is profitable. And we don’t have armies of lawyers to protect it because we don’t protect it, we just say take it and do good things with it. Just share and share alike.
What are your reflections on the work with the FSF?
What we did was get thousands of people from around the world collaborate on a legal document which replaces law. It establishes an alternative rule set for the entire global environment.
If you want to use these rules anywhere on earth you can. It is very important in a global century. What we did was a very early example of 21st century global legislation.
ANAND SANKAR
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
