Q&A: Open-Source Backer Eben Moglen Says Software A ‘Renewable’ Resource

“How did you get so passionate about free and
open-source software? When I went to law school in the
fall of 1980, I thought that I was in all likelihood, like my
mother, going to be a university professor. I didn’t think I was
going to be either a practicing lawyer or a practicing programmer.
I also thought, however, that the technical environment around me
was changing in unfortunate ways. I believed then as a technical
matter–and I still believe–that the linguistic interaction
between human beings and computers afford human beings better ways
of knowing and solving problems. [In the early 1990s, after
Stallman heard of Moglen’s work] he got in touch with me to tell me
that he had a legal problem that he needed some help with.
Stallman, knowing I was available to do that sort of work for him
for free, sent me some more work to do. And I realized that he had
the best listening post on the planet. And everybody who had
problems concerning the technical embodiment of control or freedom,
everybody who had an interest in the philosophy of freedom in
technology, they all knew one e-mail address [Stallman’s], and I
realized that if he forwarded to me everything that to him seemed
to need a lawyer’s attention, I would be able over time to gain a
really thorough knowledge of what needed doing…”

Complete Story