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(Note: While the majority of the events described below occurred while I was a member of the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation, I am no longer. This is my personal position and should not be interpreted as the opinion of any other organisation or company I have been affiliated with in any way)
Eben Moglen has done an amazing amount of work for the free software community, serving on the board of the Free Software Foundation and acting as its general counsel for many years, leading the drafting of GPLv3 and giving many forceful speeches on the importance of free software. However, his recent behaviour demonstrates that he is no longer willing to work with other members of the community, and we should reciprocate that.
In early 2016, the FSF board became aware that Eben was briefing clients on an interpretation of the GPL that was incompatible with that held by the FSF. He later released this position publicly with little coordination with the FSF, which was used by Canonical to justify their shipping ZFS in a GPL-violating way. He had provided similar advice to Debian, who were confused about the apparent conflict between the FSF's position and Eben's.
This situation was obviously problematic - Eben is clearly free to provide whatever legal opinion he holds to his clients, but his very public association with the FSF caused many people to assume that these positions were held by the FSF and the FSF were forced into the position of publicly stating that they disagreed with legal positions held by their general counsel. Attempts to mediate this failed, and Eben refused to commit to working with the FSF on avoiding this sort of situation in future[1].
Around the same time, Eben made legal threats towards another project with ties to FSF. These threats were based on a license interpretation that ran contrary to how free software licenses had been interpreted by the community for decades, and was made without any prior discussion with the FSF (2017-12-11 update: page 126 of this document includes the email in which Eben asserts that the Software Freedom Conservancy is engaging in plagiarism by making use of appropriately credited material released under a Creative Commons license). This, in conjunction with his behaviour over the ZFS issue, led to him stepping down as the FSF's general counsel.
Throughout this period, Eben disparaged FSF staff and other free software community members in various semi-public settings. In doing so he harmed the credibility of many people who have devoted significant portions of their lives to aiding the free software community. At Libreplanet earlier this year he made direct threats against an attendee - this was reported as a violation of the conference's anti-harassment policy.
Eben has acted against the best interests of an organisation he publicly represented. He has threatened organisations and individuals who work to further free software. His actions are no longer to the benefit of the free software community and the free software community should cease associating with him.
[1] Contrary to the claim provided here, Bradley was not involved in this process.
(Edit to add: various people have asked for more details of some of the accusations here. Eben is influential in many areas, and publicising details without the direct consent of his victims may put them at professional risk. I'm aware that this reduces my credibility, and it's entirely reasonable for people to choose not to believe me as a result. I will add that I said much of this several months ago, so I'm not making stuff up in response to recent events)
Eben Moglen has done an amazing amount of work for the free software community, serving on the board of the Free Software Foundation and acting as its general counsel for many years, leading the drafting of GPLv3 and giving many forceful speeches on the importance of free software. However, his recent behaviour demonstrates that he is no longer willing to work with other members of the community, and we should reciprocate that.
In early 2016, the FSF board became aware that Eben was briefing clients on an interpretation of the GPL that was incompatible with that held by the FSF. He later released this position publicly with little coordination with the FSF, which was used by Canonical to justify their shipping ZFS in a GPL-violating way. He had provided similar advice to Debian, who were confused about the apparent conflict between the FSF's position and Eben's.
This situation was obviously problematic - Eben is clearly free to provide whatever legal opinion he holds to his clients, but his very public association with the FSF caused many people to assume that these positions were held by the FSF and the FSF were forced into the position of publicly stating that they disagreed with legal positions held by their general counsel. Attempts to mediate this failed, and Eben refused to commit to working with the FSF on avoiding this sort of situation in future[1].
Around the same time, Eben made legal threats towards another project with ties to FSF. These threats were based on a license interpretation that ran contrary to how free software licenses had been interpreted by the community for decades, and was made without any prior discussion with the FSF (2017-12-11 update: page 126 of this document includes the email in which Eben asserts that the Software Freedom Conservancy is engaging in plagiarism by making use of appropriately credited material released under a Creative Commons license). This, in conjunction with his behaviour over the ZFS issue, led to him stepping down as the FSF's general counsel.
Throughout this period, Eben disparaged FSF staff and other free software community members in various semi-public settings. In doing so he harmed the credibility of many people who have devoted significant portions of their lives to aiding the free software community. At Libreplanet earlier this year he made direct threats against an attendee - this was reported as a violation of the conference's anti-harassment policy.
Eben has acted against the best interests of an organisation he publicly represented. He has threatened organisations and individuals who work to further free software. His actions are no longer to the benefit of the free software community and the free software community should cease associating with him.
[1] Contrary to the claim provided here, Bradley was not involved in this process.
(Edit to add: various people have asked for more details of some of the accusations here. Eben is influential in many areas, and publicising details without the direct consent of his victims may put them at professional risk. I'm aware that this reduces my credibility, and it's entirely reasonable for people to choose not to believe me as a result. I will add that I said much of this several months ago, so I'm not making stuff up in response to recent events)
