Reposted from SiliconValley.com. Dan Gillmor is attending the O’Reilly Open Source Conference, he reports from there as the conference speakers take the podium:
Dan Gillmor
My column today reflects on the condition of open source, which I consider a modern version of the old-fashioned barn-raising. You can read it here. My running notes follow:
Larry Lessig
Lessig is doing his usual wowing of the audience. He’s showing the dangerous hypocrisy of the copyright industry, both in the endless extensions of copyright and the technological clamp-down on old-fashioned things such as studying the work in question and fair use.
At the moment he’s showing Adobe’s e-Book restrictions in the license agreement. It would be absurd, but it’s more scary than anything else.
Law plus technology produces together a regulation of creativity we’ve not seen before, Lessig says.
What once were unregulated uses of copyrighted material are now heavily regulated, due to technology. Unregulated uses are disappearing, and so are fair uses, as laws combine with copyright and technology to stamp out creativity, he says.
Lessig shows Sony’s Aibo mechanical pet. Someone set up a site showing how to “hack your dog,” but Sony shut it down.
“Never has there been more control” of creativity, Lessig says. “Never in our history have fewer people controlled more of the future of our culture, ever,” he says.
Worried yet?
Open source’s job is to build a world of “transparent creativity,” says Lessig. In 1790 it was nature. Today open source is re-creating nature.
“You remind the rest of the world what it was like when creativity and innovation was a process where people added to common knowledge,” he tells the crowd.
But “free code threatens,” Lessig says, and the threatened—such as Microsoft—are fighting back. He quotes Bill Gates’ statement that startups will someday exist only if the incumbent giants allow them to exist., and Microsoft’s own threats to use its patents against open source.
The growth of software patents is a huge danger. “What have you done about it?” Lessig asks.
Insane rules are now affecting the entire world, he says, citing the “broadcast flag” that the EFF has so smartly watched.
Ask a venture capitalist how much he’s willing to invest in new technology Hilary Rosen or Jack Valenti won’t sign off on. The answer is zero, says Lessig.
“What have you done?” he again asks the audience. “We’re bigger than they are. We have right on our side and we’ve let them control the debate.”
“If you don’t do something now, this freedom you’ve built will be taken away,” he says. The crowd is remarkably silent.
If you don’t fight for your freedom you don’t deserve it, he says to weak applause.
“This is not about left and right; it’s about right and wrong.”
Lessig talks up the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a valuable force. “If you don’t do something now” watch freedom disappear.
Message of the day: “Do something.”
Richard Stallman
“Unlike some of you, I am not an open-source developer,” he begins. “I’m an activist in the free software movement, free as in freedom.”
Stallman’s GNU Project and Free Software Foundation has been some of the most important work in recent history. Once viewed as a crazy radical—he still is seen that way in many circles—he’s more recently been understood to be a prescient radical.
He’s talking about the development of the GNU System, a free operating system and various components, in which the Linux kernel turned out to be a critical piece. Stallman has always been unhappy that Linux isn’t called GNU/Linux, and he does have a point.
The major freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).
Now he’s asking O’Reilly to make all of his software manuals free.
Stallman emphasizes that he’s not a supporter of open source, because it’s not spreading a moral message of freedom. Free software and open source can work together, however, and they must.
“We’re going to have to fight” the people and companies that are trying to shut down free and open source software, Stallman advises.
“We’re going to have to organize politically, to campaign,” he says, noting that California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, is a supporter of Hollywood, not users of technology, in the entertainment cartel’s push to stop innovation it can’t control.
Adding to Lessig’s plea, Stallman tells the audience it can no longer stay out of political action no matter how much tech people may want to stay out. You can stop paying attention to politics, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop paying attention to you, he says.
Good line: Please don’t call it Digital Rights Management—it’s Digital Restrictions Management.
Copyright is an “artificial system of incentives” designed to help the community, not the copyright owner, because what’s produced adds to our knowledge and common good.
“It’s the public that matters most,” not the big corporations that own more and more knowledge. The opponents of the terrible laws have always argued on “tangential side effects” without disclaiming the entire premise of laws such as the DMCA.
I wish I had my camera. Stallman just put on a “saintly” costume, including a halo made from an old vinyl record (it’s red)—or is that an old data disk platter, as someone says? (Don’t know). He’s humorously addressing a frequent criticism of his style, being holier than thou.
He’s pitching the “Church of EMACS”—one advantage of being a saint in this outfit is that you don’t have to practice celibacy. But you do have to live a holy life, including using only free software on your computer.
Larry Wall, of Perl fame, goes to a microphone. He says he views himself as also fighting for freedom. Why is he less worthy?
When you look at the open source movement actually says, according to Stallman, FSF-style freedom is the not banner being flown most of the time.
Posted by Dan Gillmor from the O’Reilly Open Source Conference in San Diego. Doc Searle is also covering the event.