Tim O'Reilly, Eben Moglen, and Jane Jacobs

[Updated 5-Sep-2007, 11:38:  Tim has posted his comments and the definitive video.  You be the judge.]

[Updated 1-Aug-2007, 09:28:  Matt Asay was unfortunately out of the room, but has blogged his take on Eben's concerns.  He thinks this post is "hooey".  I've responded in his comments.  All good fun.]

Tim O'Reilly tried interviewing Eben Moglen on licensing in the "Web 2.0" era as one of the sessions at the O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing.   I believe his intent was to expand the discussion he began a year ago when he suggested "open source licenses are obsolete."

Unfortunately, Eben went on the attack.  Indeed, he made it personal.  And it was in poor enough taste that many of the excellent ideas he delivered on the need for a second order debate and tools to deal with conflicts in rights were lost.  (News and blog links are below.)

I haven't seen Tim on stage before with someone directly involved in the freedom  discussion to the level of Eben.  It perfectly cast the debate into positions that I believe are by definition incompatible and incongruous. 

Jane Jacobs (originally famous for "The Death and Life of Great American Cities") wrote a small Socratic dialog called "Systems of Survival".  The characters debate that there are exactly two value systems in existence.  One leads to politics (protecting) and the other to commerce (trading).  These value systems are not opposite ends of a spectrum, but rather different and incompatible.  For each value in one syndrome there is no equal and opposite value in the other. 

I've long maintained in my free and open source software talks that we have understood communities since "you had a campfire and I wanted to sit beside it."  That metaphorical campfire perfectly frames the value systems debate as well.  Am I allowed to sit beside the fire because you're acting as protector?  (And when will you begin to tax me firewood?)  Or did I trade to sit beside the campfire. 

Neither value system is inherently "better" than the other, indeed they each serve their adherents and proponents well (which was Jacobs's point).  But neither can they be mixed together.  (They are not along a continuum.)  One sees this every day.  Businesses and governments have an uneasy alliance in policy, regulation and legislation.  But while trading is as old as communities, the growth of the economy over the past ~200 years owes much to government legislation enabling limited liability, joint ownership companies and the shared risk investment in capital that was thus enabled.

Tim is the embodiment of the trading value system.  Indeed, I would suggest that not only  was the attack on stage unwarranted, but that the Free Software movement has been able to deliver its important message to a broader audience faster because of the stage Tim built with O'Reilly Media.   

Likewise Eben is a veritable intellectual and rhetorical lion for our political value system around software freedom.  Eben may be the perfect person to engage in the necessary debate going forward around conflicts of rights that I believe are invariably created by friction between the two value systems.

Hopefully the debate is not lost in the unfortunate heat and noise arising last week on stage.

Pax.

News and blog links:

• Eben Moglen challenges Tim O'Reilly to "join the conversation" by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier (Linux.com)
• Eben Moglen Berates Open Source by Robert Kaye on the OSCON Conference News site
• Eben Moglen Whacks Tim O'Reilly on the Snaplogic blog
• GPL Whiz Moglen nails  Web 2.0 O'Reilly on "frivolous" charges by Ashlee Vance of the Register.   
  

Comments

[Joseph Daniel Zukiger]

If Tim considers it a personal attack, he has lost his focus on freedom. Constructive criticism can't always be encased in warm fuzzies, and people who are free can take constructive criticism even when it is rather sharply delivered.

Web 2.0 is about using free tools to do the same-old-same-old. Yes, there is something wrong with that, and that something is the reason systems always end up bloated. There is, in fact, a very serious technical error in the concept of centralization, and most of the web 2.0 stuff I have seen have been obfuscations of the return to centralization.

Why should we publish on YouTube instead of publishing on our own servers?

I know, personal servers aren't easily enough managed yet for the average phone customer to each have one instead of the current dumb phones. But that does not excuse wasting time and money on what will ultimately be a blind alley just because a lot of young people think it's cool. (This was one of Bill Gates's original sins, not just selling it because people would buy it, but pushing it because some people would buy it.)

Does that example help?

How about the digital identity business? (Verisign, etc.) Can a central repository really store universal trust? Even though the sellers deny it in the fine print, you know that's what the average customer thinks he's getting.

[stephe]

Hi Joseph: Thanks for commenting. I think a lot of people would have been happy in the audience with the content of what Eben said. The delivery was however personal. Almost verbatim: "You've spent the last ten years making money and building your personal brand instead of having the debate about freedom that needs to happen." Unfortunately, the two accounts of people supporting Eben's position were written by people NOT actually in the room to see the debate. I was in the room. I watched the social reaction. This isn't about making a point that needs to be made. Eben deliberately burned a bridge.

Tim actually took it all gracefully. I think it's only in hindsight that he's feeling a burned by the rudeness of the attack. And I'll be clear: I like Eben and I strongly support what he stands for. What I don't understand is why he didn't choose any of the other ways he could have framed the bigger discussion.

I would argue that Tim's fascination with "Web 2.0" is precisely because he sees a rush to things like YouTube and Google Maps and the content controls and formats that are happening. Ignore for a moment the companies that will likely fail on bad execution and the lack of a value proposition. There is a genuine shift in the commercial world happening. Eben arguing that "Web 2.0 is heat noise" is a bit disingenuous. Historically, this is the sort of things we saw happen in the proprietary hardware world, and the proprietary software world.

I think it's exactly the problems you call out in your Verisign example that worry Tim. (I could be wrong.) It /is/ a discussion that needs to happen before we get burned again as consumers. It's always been my impression that that is the debate Tim wants to have.

Holding conferences and selling books that teach people interesting technology tools is a GOOD thing. I'd far rather give O'Reilly Media and USENIX my tutorial dollars to learn the software tools that give me a choice in construction, than have the likes of Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft dictate my programming platform. I don't see Tim "selling" those courses/conferences/books as a bad thing.

If he never tried to call the question, then he'd simply be a business man. The fact that he's calling the question means he's paying attention to the broader industry. Power to him for doing the hard work of executing.

I just wish Eben had delivered his message in the context of the discussion. I think it IS an important discussion. I think we are about to trap ourselves again.

[Nat Torkington]

Jane Jacobs's point about politics and commerce reminds me of this piece in the Economist explaining the failure to "rebuild Iraq" in terms of the military and commerce being mutually incompatible.