Rethinking: Free Software for All

The following is from a previous entry dated Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Last night, I attended a lecture at the Law School here at NYU held by a patent lawyer. And not just any patent lawyer. He’s one of leading proponents of the Creative Commons (GPL) and is currently defending against Microsoft at the Supreme Court level. I was pleasantly surprised to learn this.

“The Empire & the iPhone: ‘Technology Platforms,’ the Commons, and the Way We Live Now.”
Eben Moglen
Professor, Columbia Law School and Director, Software Freedom Law Center
Monday, March 19, 8 PM

Some notes I took:
the pursuit of “prosumer culture” – production & use of products by the same person

- Paypal decentralizes the traditional bank structure
- Youtube, myspace, etc. decentralize the music culture

Hours that Microsoft actually spends, as a whole, producing software in a week: 3.8 million
This is what he called “a microsoft”
- a few years ago, there were 468,000 programmers on sourceforge.net
- 10/hrs approx. per person per week
- about 1.4 “microsofts” on sourceforge
- about 1.6 “microsofts” in GPL entirely

so, who’s producing more software? and who is spending more of their resources on advertising, middle management and twiddling of thumbs?

Commons is motivated by politics; to fight against the incumbents after all the power.

Free software is a “cultural outlook” – universal knowledge is possible through sharing of resources – our own expertise.

So share. Learn about GPL and the Creative Commons. It’s really up to us to figure out a way to not have everything patented.

“You forgot to ask, who’s making more money?”

It’s given me something to think about considering a few posts I’ve read recently about not giving away your work for free.

Give away some blog content and then get a book deal? Etc etc. Some food for thought on this rainy Thursday afternoon.