Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software Part 20

The story behind this story starts in an Oakland apartment, winding its way through the various locales mentioned in the book-Silicon Valley, Maui, Boston, and Cambridge. Ultimately, however, it is a tale of two cities: New York, New York, the book-publis.h.i.+ng capital of the world, and Sebastopol, California, the book-publis.h.i.+ng capital of Sonoma County.

The story starts in April, 2000. At the time, I was writing stories for the ill-fated BeOpen web site (http://www.beopen.com/). One of my first a.s.signments was a phone interview with Richard M. Stallman. The interview went well, so well that Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org/), the popular "news for nerds" site owned by VA Software, Inc. (formerly VA Linux Systems and before that, VA Research), gave it a link in its daily list of feature stories. Within hours, the web servers at BeOpen were heating up as readers clicked over to the site.

For all intents and purposes, the story should have ended there. Three months after the interview, while attending the O'Reilly Open Source Conference in Monterey, California, I received the following email message from Tracy Pattison, foreign-rights manager at a large New York publis.h.i.+ng house:

To: [email protected] Subject: RMS InterviewDate: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 15:56:37 -0400Dear Mr. Williams,

I read your interview with Richard Stallman on BeOpen with great interest. I've been intrigued by RMS and his work for some time now and was delighted to find your piece which I really think you did a great job of capturing some of the spirit of what Stallman is trying to do with GNU-Linux and the Free Software Foundation.

What I'd love to do, however, is read more - and I don't think I'm alone. Do you think there is more information and/or sources out there to expand and update your interview and adapt it into more of a profile of Stallman? Perhaps including some more anecdotal information about his personality and background that might really interest and enlighten readers outside the more hardcore programming scene?

The email asked that I give Tracy a call to discuss the idea further. I did just that. Tracy told me her company was launching a new electronic book line, and it wanted stories that appealed to an early-adopter audience. The e-book format was 30,000 words, about 100 pages, and she had pitched her bosses on the idea of profiling a major figure in the hacker community. Her bosses liked the idea, and in the process of searching for interesting people to profile, she had come across my BeOpen interview with Stallman. Hence her email to me.

That's when Tracy asked me: would I be willing to expand the interview into a full-length feature profile?

My answer was instant: yes. Before accepting it, Tracy suggested I put together a story proposal she could show her superiors. Two days later, I sent her a polished proposal. A week later, Tracy sent me a follow up email. Her bosses had given it the green light.

I have to admit, getting Stallman to partic.i.p.ate in an e-book project was an afterthought on my part. As a reporter who covered the open source beat, I knew Stallman was a stickler. I'd already received a half dozen emails at that point upbraiding me for the use of "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux."

Then again, I also knew Stallman was looking for ways to get his message out to the general public. Perhaps if I presented the project to him that way, he would be more receptive. If not, I could always rely upon the copious amounts of doc.u.ments, interviews, and recorded online conversations Stallman had left lying around the Internet and do an unauthorized biography.

During my research, I came across an essay t.i.tled "Freedom-Or Copyright?" Written by Stallman and published in the June, 2000, edition of the MIT Technology Review, the essay blasted e-books for an a.s.sortment of software sins. Not only did readers have to use proprietary software programs to read them, Stallman lamented, but the methods used to prevent unauthorized copying were overly harsh. Instead of downloading a transferable HTML or PDF file, readers downloaded an encrypted file. In essence, purchasing an e-book meant purchasing a nontransferable key to unscramble the encrypted content. Any attempt to open a book's content without an authorized key const.i.tuted a criminal violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law designed to bolster copyright enforcement on the Internet. Similar penalties held for readers who converted a book's content into an open file format, even if their only intention was to read the book on a different computer in their home. Unlike a normal book, the reader no longer held the right to lend, copy, or resell an e-book. They only had the right to read it on an authorized machine, warned Stallman: We still have the same old freedoms in using paper books. But if e-books replace printed books, that exception will do little good. With "electronic ink,"

which makes it possible to download new text onto an apparently printed piece of paper, even newspapers could become ephemeral. Imagine: no more used book stores; no more lending a book to your friend; no more borrowing one from the public library-no more "leaks"

that might give someone a chance to read without paying. (And judging from the ads for Microsoft Reader, no more anonymous purchasing of books either.) This is the world publishers have in mind for us.See "Safari Tech Books Online; Subscriber Agreement: Terms of Service."

http://safari.oreilly.com/mainhlp.asp?help=service Needless to say, the essay caused some concern. Neither Tracy nor I had discussed the software her company would use nor had we discussed the type of copyright that would govern the e-book's usage. I mentioned the Technology Review article and asked if she could give me information on her company's e-book policies. Tracy promised to get back to me.

Eager to get started, I decided to call Stallman anyway and mention the book idea to him. When I did, he expressed immediate interest and immediate concern.

"Did you read my essay on e-books?" he asked.

When I told him, yes, I had read the essay and was waiting to hear back from the publisher, Stallman laid out two conditions: he didn't want to lend support to an e-book licensing mechanism he fundamentally opposed, and he didn't want to come off as lending support. "I don't want to partic.i.p.ate in anything that makes me look like a hypocrite," he said.

For Stallman, the software issue was secondary to the copyright issue. He said he was willing to ignore whatever software the publisher or its third-party vendors employed just so long as the company specified within the copyright that readers were free to make and distribute verbatim copies of the e-book's content.

Stallman pointed to Stephen King's The Plant as a possible model. In June, 2000, King announced on his official web site that he was self-publis.h.i.+ng The Plant in serial form. According to the announcement, the book's total cost would be $13, spread out over a series of $1 installments. As long as at least 75% of the readers paid for each chapter, King promised to continue releasing new installments. By August, the plan seemed to be working, as King had published the first two chapters with a third on the way.

"I'd be willing to accept something like that,"

Stallman said. "As long as it also permitted verbatim copying."

I forwarded the information to Tracy. Feeling confident that she and I might be able to work out an equitable arrangement, I called up Stallman and set up the first interview for the book. Stallman agreed to the interview without making a second inquiry into the status issue. Shortly after the first interview, I raced to set up a second interview (this one in Kihei), squeezing it in before Stallman headed off on a 14-day vacation to Tahiti.

It was during Stallman's vacation that the bad news came from Tracy. Her company's legal department didn't want to adjust its copyright notice on the e-books.

Readers who wanted to make their books transferable would either have to crack the encryption code or convert the book to an open format such as HTML. Either way, the would be breaking the law and facing criminal penalties.

With two fresh interviews under my belt, I didn't see any way to write the book without resorting to the new material. I quickly set up a trip to New York to meet with my agent and with Tracy to see if there was a compromise solution.

When I flew to New York, I met my agent, Henning Guttman. It was our first face-to-face meeting, and Henning seemed pessimistic about our chances of forcing a compromise, at least on the publisher's end. The large, established publis.h.i.+ng houses already viewed the e-book format with enough suspicion and weren't in the mood to experiment with copyright language that made it easier for readers to avoid payment. As an agent who specialized in technology books, however, Henning was intrigued by the novel nature of my predicament. I told him about the two interviews I'd already gathered and the promise not to publish the book in a way that made Stallman "look like a hypocrite." Agreeing that I was in an ethical bind, Henning suggested we make that our negotiating point.

Barring that, Henning said, we could always take the carrot-and-stick approach. The carrot would be the publicity that came with publis.h.i.+ng an e-book that honored the hacker community's internal ethics. The stick would be the risks a.s.sociated with publis.h.i.+ng an e-book that didn't. Nine months before Dmitri Skylarov became an Internet cause celebre, we knew it was only a matter of time before an enterprising programmer revealed how to hack e-books. We also knew that a major publis.h.i.+ng house releasing an encryption-protected e-book on Richard M. Stallman was the software equivalent of putting "Steal This E-Book" on the cover.

After my meeting with Henning, I put a call into Stallman. Hoping to make the carrot more enticing, I discussed a number of potential compromises. What if the publisher released the book's content under a split license, something similar to what Sun Microsystems had done with Open Office, the free software desktop applications suite? The publisher could then release commercial versions of the e-book under a normal format, taking advantage of all the bells and whistles that went with the e-book software, while releasing the copyable version under a less aesthetically pleasing HTML format.

Stallman told me he didn't mind the split-license idea, but he did dislike the idea of making the freely copyable version inferior to the restricted version.

Besides, he said, the idea was too c.u.mbersome. Split licenses worked in the case of Sun's Open Office only because he had no control over the decision making. In this case, Stallman said, he did have a way to control the outcome. He could refuse to cooperate.

I made a few more suggestions with little effect. About the only thing I could get out of Stallman was a concession that the e-book's copyright restrict all forms of file sharing to "noncommercial redistribution."

Before I signed off, Stallman suggested I tell the publisher that I'd promised Stallman that the work would be free. I told Stallman I couldn't agree to that statement but that I did view the book as unfinishable without his cooperation. Seemingly satisfied, Stallman hung up with his usual sign-off line: "Happy hacking."

Henning and I met with Tracy the next day. Tracy said her company was willing to publish copyable excerpts in a unencrypted format but would limit the excerpts to 500 words. Henning informed her that this wouldn't be enough for me to get around my ethical obligation to Stallman. Tracy mentioned her own company's contractual obligation to online vendors such as Amazon.com. Even if the company decided to open up its e-book content this one time, it faced the risk of its partners calling it a breach of contract. Barring a change of heart in the executive suite or on the part of Stallman, the decision was up to me. I could use the interviews and go against my earlier agreement with Stallman, or I could plead journalistic ethics and back out of the verbal agreement to do the book.

Following the meeting, my agent and I relocated to a pub on Third Ave. I used his cell phone to call Stallman, leaving a message when n.o.body answered.

Henning left for a moment, giving me time to collect my thoughts. When he returned, he was holding up the cell phone.

"It's Stallman," Henning said.

The conversation got off badly from the start. I relayed Tracy's comment about the publisher's contractual obligations.

"So," Stallman said bluntly. "Why should I give a d.a.m.n about their contractual obligations?"

Because asking a major publis.h.i.+ng house to risk a legal battle with its vendors over a 30,000 word e-book is a tall order, I suggested.

"Don't you see?" Stallman said. "That's exactly why I'm doing this. I want a signal victory. I want them to make a choice between freedom and business as usual."

As the words "signal victory" echoed in my head, I felt my attention wander momentarily to the pa.s.sing foot traffic on the sidewalk. Coming into the bar, I had been pleased to notice that the location was less than half a block away from the street corner memorialized in the 1976 Ramones song, "53rd and 3rd," a song I always enjoyed playing in my days as a musician. Like the perpetually frustrated street hustler depicted in that song, I could feel things falling apart as quickly as they had come together. The irony was palpable.

After weeks of gleefully recording other people's laments, I found myself in the position of trying to pull off the rarest of feats: a Richard Stallman compromise.

When I continued hemming and hawing, pleading the publisher's position and revealing my growing sympathy for it, Stallman, like an animal smelling blood, attacked.

"So that's it? You're just going to screw me? You're just going to bend to their will?"

I brought up the issue of a dual-copyright again.

"You mean license," Stallman said curtly.

"Yeah, license. Copyright. Whatever," I said, feeling suddenly like a wounded tuna trailing a rich plume of plasma in the water.

"Aw, why didn't you just f.u.c.king do what I told you to do!" he shouted.

I must have been arguing on behalf of the publisher to the very end, because in my notes I managed to save a final Stallman chestnut: "I don't care. What they're doing is evil. I can't support evil. Good-bye."

As soon as I put the phone down, my agent slid a freshly poured Guinness to me. "I figured you might need this," he said with a laugh. "I could see you shaking there towards the end."

I was indeed shaking. The shaking wouldn't stop until the Guinness was more than halfway gone. It felt weird, hearing myself characterized as an emissary of "evil."

It felt weirder still, knowing that three months before, I was sitting in an Oakland apartment trying to come up with my next story idea. Now, I was sitting in a part of the world I'd only known through rock songs, taking meetings with publis.h.i.+ng executives and drinking beer with an agent I'd never even laid eyes on until the day before. It was all too surreal, like watching my life reflected back as a movie montage.

About that time, my internal absurdity meter kicked in.

The initial shaking gave way to convulsions of laughter. To my agent, I must have looked like a another fragile author undergoing an untimely emotional breakdown. To me, I was just starting to appreciate the cynical beauty of my situation. Deal or no deal, I already had the makings of a pretty good story. It was only a matter of finding a place to tell it. When my laughing convulsions finally subsided, I held up my drink in a toast.