> suing another free software organisation for trademark infringement
Trademarks have to be enforced or you lose them.
> threatened to ruin the life of an FSF board member
Can you please backup this claim? I've found nothing to validate it.
> and who was fired by the FSF for briefing against the FSF's interests
According to every source I've found he resigned himself and voluntarily stepped down and left "on good terms" to take care of SFLC which he had recently founded.
It might be political jargon, but there is no way to prove he was fired.
> FSF's interests while being paid by Oracle.
AFAIK Moglen never worked or took money from Oracle.
> Trademarks have to be enforced or you lose them.
His trademark is on "Software freedom law center", and he's suing the Software Freedom Conservancy. He doesn't hold a trademark on "Software Freedom".
> Can you please backup this claim? I've found nothing to validate it.
I was there when it was reported and had confirmation from a witness.
> According to every source I've found he resigned himself and voluntarily stepped down and left "on good terms" to take care of SFLC which he had recently founded.
> It might be political jargon, but there is no way to prove he was fired.
I was on the board when he was fired.
> AFAIK Moglen never worked or took money from Oracle
> He doesn't hold a trademark on "Software Freedom".
Has he ever claimed that?
> I was there when it was reported and had confirmation from a witness.
It is true because I say so it's not really an answer to the question.
> I was on the board when he was fired.
So you can confirm you fired him?
That's interesting.
Back then you wrote
> This, in conjunction with his behaviour over the ZFS issue, led to him stepping down as the FSF's general counsel.
You did not say "fired" anywhere.
Why didn't you just say "fired"?
> Why would you be in a position to know?
I'm in the position to ask why you're accusing someone of taking money, without proof.
It's just human decency, I happen to be a contributor (a tiny one, but sill one) of both FSF and FSLC and I would like to know if Moglen took money from Oracle to sue other FSF foundations.
You seem to know though, but you don't say.
And even if it was true, is taking money from Oracle a crime per se?
What about taking money from Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft? more than a few FSF folks work there.
You said that it's necessary to sue to protect trademarks. In this case, where is the necessity?
> It is true because I say so it's not really an answer to the question
You can choose to believe me or you can choose to believe I'm lying - entirely up to you.
> So you can confirm you fired him?
Eh. Asked him to resign with the understanding that he'd be fired otherwise.
> And even if it was true, is taking money from Oracle a crime per se?
It's not a crime, it's just inappropriate to take money from a company and provide legal opinions that serve their interests while serving as general counsel for an organisation that strongly and publicly holds a different opinion.
> You said that it's necessary to sue to protect trademarks. In this case, where is the necessity?
I understand you don't like questions.
Moglen founded SFLC and helped SFC come to the light.
He even registered SFC trademark, he asked for the cancellation of SFC, not the trademark of "Free Software".
Now it's sure that no one will try to register a trademark similar to FSLC or FSC dealing with free software.
With that move he protected both.
There's no need to double down on the false accusation line.
Facts are well know by now.
> You can choose to believe me or you can choose to believe I'm lying - entirely up to you.
I'm not a believer.
I prefer the sane way of doing things: reviewing evidence.
You are not providing any, just "believe me or not", which is not what I'd like to do when it's about my money.
You said something about Moglen that upset me, I've just asked for a clarification, that you refuse to provide.
> Eh. Asked him to resign with the understanding that he'd be fired otherwise
So you did fire him, but issued a different statement.
Good to know.
> It's not a crime, it's just inappropriate to take money from a company and provide legal opinions that serve their interests
When did this happen exactly?
Wasn't Moglen providing legal opinions to Debian, the FSF, Canonical, but not Oracle?
And What interests are you talking about?
Is Google any different from Oracle?
One of my favourite programmer ever, Alan Cox (who also kinda look like Stallman), worked for a long time on the Linux kernel but was also being paid by Intel for a few years. What's wrong about that?
> as general counsel for an organisation that strongly and publicly holds a different opinion
The different opinion was a minor difference though.
I remember the OpenZFS problem: the only difference was that Moglen believed that users can legally distribute copies of OpenZFS binary blobs as the result of the compilation of an openly licensed source code, while FSF said no.
They had the same opinion on everything else.
Even Linus said in the past “But one gray area in particular is something like a driver that was originally written for another operating system (ie clearly not a derived work of Linux in origin). At exactly what point does it become a derived work of the kernel (and thus fall under the GPL)?”
Is this enough to fire people?
BTW Canonical have been distributing OpenZFS for years now and the sky has not fallen, nor Oracle have become richer thanks to that. They still distribute the real ZFS (the proprietary one) which is a much better implementation of ZFS.
He protected the Software Freedom Conservancy by accusing it of violating the Software Freedom Law Center trademark? You're going to need to explain that more clearly.
> I've just asked for a clarification, that you refuse to provide.
I've clarified as much as I can. When there's no other public evidence available, what do you want me to do?
> The different opinion was a minor difference though.
> You're going to need to explain that more clearly.
I think you are intelligent enough to understand it on your own.
BTW, I know asking question is good, but sometimes try to answer other people's questions, it's good too!
> When there's no other public evidence available, what do you want me to do?
So we can safely assume he did not do anything you say, he's innocent until proven guilty, like any of us, right?
> It really wasn't.
It really was.
I'm with Joshua Gay (former employee of the FSF Licensing & Compliance Team) on this:
It is not clear to me that there is any contradiction between the SFLC statement and the FSF’s statement on the matter of Linux and ZFS. That is, I can’t really find how the SFLC and FSF differ in their interpretation GPLv2 and CDDL.
Trademarks have to be enforced or you lose them.
> threatened to ruin the life of an FSF board member
Can you please backup this claim? I've found nothing to validate it.
> and who was fired by the FSF for briefing against the FSF's interests
According to every source I've found he resigned himself and voluntarily stepped down and left "on good terms" to take care of SFLC which he had recently founded.
It might be political jargon, but there is no way to prove he was fired.
> FSF's interests while being paid by Oracle.
AFAIK Moglen never worked or took money from Oracle.
Can you please clarify what you mean?