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Overloading the Machine
Playing Catch-Up
Outside Wal-Mart, the sidewalk was sloppy with wet Milk Duds and tears, the sky about to split.
"Again? Don't worry, sweetie, we'll get you another ice cream cone." She was trying to reassure last week's empty napkin, failing entirely to grasp the present.
Tears dripped steadily from the crushed carton, their salt a brief costume sugar ball for the swarming ants.
The concrete was cooling. I had to get it out now. I rubbed my ring, blew my nose, and tried to spit.
"You're stepping on my..."
A shoulder-tap turned me around. An aproned greeter eclipsed his toothless grin with a mountained cone, the wrinkled valleys of one hand running with chocolate, the other with vanilla.
"I saw what happened," he began, smooshing a pile of Milk Duds under his loafer and orbiting my head with the planet-sized cone.
Frustrated, I tried to wave him away, but he just waved back.
No, we are not primarily fighting with you about movies. We are
primarily fighting to protect our way of making software. Our efforts
are designed to protect our right to modify and reinstall, improve,
and share software. Don't tell us that we're off on some quixotic, romantic
engagement with reshaping the movie business. We're hackers, we make
software. Our concern is protecting the integrity of the process that
makes software. And all the legal devices that we recommend, and all
the trouble that we are making, is to protect our homeland against
somebody else, who wants to come in and prevent us from doing science
and technology the way science and technology should be done according
to us, the scientists and technologists.
-- Eben Moglen, 2006 FSF Associate Member Meeting
This page was last modified on 2011 December 20. "Playing Catch-Up" by John Sullivan is Copyright ©2003 - 2011, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.