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April 28, 2009

Nonprofit Technology Conference
Using Open-Source Software is a Moral Issue, Says Speaker

Using “open source” software rather than proprietary tools is a moral issue that extends beyond technology and affects all of the causes and people that nonprofit organizations serve, Eben Moglen, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, argued at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.

The idea that knowledge is something that can be owned and therefore controlled is the cause of most human misery, said Mr. Moglen, who is also a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University Law School.

“There are people who will die because the knowledge of the molecule that might help them not to die is owned knowledge,” he said. “Someone has secured for the substantial portion of a human lifetime the exclusive right to deploy that knowledge, which raises its price, decreases its availability, and condemns some people to extinction.”

Knowledge as a commodity also explains why such a small percentage of people worldwide have access to education, said Mr. Moglen.

“How many of the Einsteins that ever existed were allowed to learn physics?” he asked the audience. “One or two, maybe?”

But digital technology, which allows information to be duplicated at no additional cost, calls into question the rationale for the ownership of knowledge, Mr. Moglen argued.

“If we could feed everybody by cooking one breakfast and pressing a button, what would the case be, what would the argument be for charging people more for food than they can afford to pay?” he said. “Of course, we can’t just cook one breakfast and press a button, but we can make one operating system and press a button.”

Using open-source software products, then, that were created collaboratively and can be shared freely chips away at the system that seeks to control knowledge for profit, Mr. Moglen told the audience.

“We are not merely making our own businesses cheaper to run or even more efficient, more pleasant, more simple, more stable, we are also addressing a root issue of injustice,” he said, “because we are reducing the political and economic might of knowledge that can be owned.”

— Nicole Wallace

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