Sklyarov and Free Software

Sklyarov and Free Software

Posted Feb 19, 2004 21:01 UTC (Thu) by gleef (guest, #1004)
Parent article: 321 Studios and the free software community

This company has been fighting many of the same digital rights battles as the free software community. But there has been no big outpouring of support for 321 studios; for the most part, its battles have been ignored. 321 Studios has not been able to obtain the same level of interest and support as, say, Elcomsoft has. One might point out that 321 Studios is a proprietary software company; that is true, but so is Elcomsoft. The real answer, perhaps, is that the community has sensed that 321 Studios does not really share its values; 321 appears to have little interest in any issues beyond immediate sales of DVD copying software.

I disagree, there wasn't really a huge outpouring of support for Elcomsoft. There was a huge outpouring of support for Dmitry Sklyarov, and Elcomsoft benefited from some spillover. There was support for Sklyarov because he was a programmer, and a foreign national, who was horribly mistreated by the US Government and Adobe. Many of us could easily see ourselves or our friends in Sklyarov's position. Once Sklyarov was safely home and out of legal jeopardy, most of the active support faded away to mild interest.

If a company is selling it's stuff under a proprietary license, and someone challenges their software, it's their software, their business. Even if we have a goal in common (eg. getting rid of software patents), it's tough to get worked up for a company getting sued over their stuff.

On the other hand, if a company is sharing (and selling) stuff under a Free License, and someone challenges their software, it's our software too. It's easy to get worked up when someone is challenging our stuff, and the vast majority of the Free Software community has no problem if a friendly business gets helped in the process of us defending our stuff.

True, companies like Elcomsoft and 321 Studios might make appropriate temporary allies towards certain goals, and it's probably politically naive to not help them when they are fighting for goals that match ours. On the other hand, we have enough issues to deal with without going hunting for other people's problems, even if helping them would help us somewhat.

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