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Eben Moglen's LibrePlanet 2010 Keynote on the State of Free Software and the Future

By Pamela Jones et al.

Eben Mogen of the Software Freedom Law Center recently gave the keynote address at the LibrePlanet conference hosted by the Free Software Foundation. He speaks about the current state of Free Software, what some of the challenges will be going forward, and what is needed for stage 2, as he thinks of it. In the course of his speech, he also speaks about patents, Microsoft, the growing value of patent pools to protect the community's interests, and about Oracle and MySQL, and why the community needs corporate allies, suggesting a more nuanced and strategic view of who are the community's allies and why:

We need to think about the grand strategy of our continued forceful campaigning for free as in freedom. But we also need to be extremely aware of the extent to which we can now capitalize upon the achievements we have already set up and the alliances with forces not necessarily concerned with freedom that our technological sophistication has brought to them.

He calls them friends in unexpected places, and he discusses strategic possibilities, particularly with respects to dealing with Microsoft and the noxious patent system. We will need these allies, he says, that we are gaining, and here's why:

Microsoft will continue to attempt to get paid for what we do, by forcing people -- or quasi-forcing people through intimidatory conduct -- to take patent licenses to run our software....If we are to quell this nuisance we can only do so in cooperation with others who see clearly that this is a threat to the welfare of their customers....

We try to know what is going on, and we try and respond to it as effectively as we can, and we try to build coalitions with industrial parties outside the limits of the free world, narrowly construed, in order to protect the free world's interests.

He ends talking about privacy, and he sees a need to provide federated services and a free, compelling replacement for Facebook and then explain to people why they need such replacements.

A member of Groklaw, brooker, has done an unofficial transcript of the video. Enjoy! There are a few places where the audio was unclear, and we've left those without guessing. But if your ears are better than ours, and you can decipher the words, please let me know. We aim for perfection, while recognizing our limitations.

Full post as published by Groklaw on August 07, 2010 (boomark / email).