Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Freeing the Mind: Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture

2004; University of Maine School of Law; Volume: 56; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

0025-0651

Eben Moglen,

Legal and Constitutional Studies

The subject matter we’re going to talk about is variously named, and the words have some resonances of importance. I’m going to use the phrase ”Free Software” to describe this material and I’m going to suggest to you that the choice of words is relevant. We are talking not merely about a form of production or a system of industrial relations, but also about the beginning of a social movement with specific political goals which will characterize not only the production of software in the twenty-first century, but the production and distribution of culture generally. My purpose this morning is to put that process in large enough context so that the significance of free software can be seen beyond the changes in the software industry alone. BUSINESS WEEK, we can assume, as Rita Heimes suggested in her very gracious introduction, needs to hype its material in order to make people want to read below the first paragraph. But I think BUSINESS WEEK here is probably guilty of low blood pressure. Earlier this week in Brazil, the chief technology officer of the Microsoft Corporation, Craig Mundie, made a public speech, in which he said that my client the Free Software Foundation (the Free Software Foundation, and only the Free Software Foundation) was destroying the global software industry. Now, The Free Software Foundation, which I have represented for ten years and on whose board I have the honor to sit, has an annual budget in the neighborhood of $750,000, and total assets slightly under two million dollars; it is supported entirely by donative contributions, mostly from individuals. The Microsoft ∗Eben Moglen is professor of law at Columbia University Law School. He serves without fee as General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation. You can read more of his writing at http://moglen.law.columbia.edu. These remarks were the keynote address at the University of Maine Law School’s Fourth Annual Technology and Law Conference, Portland, Maine, June 29, 2003.