The Open Road

Larry Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School, is leaving the West Coast to head to the Stanford of the East, Harvard Law School, according to Harvard. Lessig used to teach at Harvard Law School, so it should prove to be a comfortable change, and perhaps in keeping with his shift from "West Coast code" to "East Coast code", to an emphasis on overcoming corruption in politics. (No, not that kind of corruption.)

Lessig was my professor at Stanford Law School, and became a mentor to me there, though I fought his ideas for the first year that I worked with him. In his class "Open Sources" I rejected what I then viewed as a cavalier attitude toward the growth of open source: he saw a rosy future for open source, but I was less sanguine, believing that without viable business models open source was doomed to niche status.

We were both right. As it turned out, open source has done just fine, but precisely because we've figured out how to integrated open-source code with commerce. My early foray into this idea was, in fact, my third-year thesis paper [PDF], which Lessig advised.

I've developed a huge amount of respect for Lessig over the years. He's an exceptional person, and an amazing scholar. I'll be sad to see him leave Stanford for Harvard, but if it makes him more geographically proximate to the problems he's trying to solve, all the better for the industry.

Larry Lessig was my thesis advisor at Stanford Law School and one of the most influential people in my life. I have profound respect for him.

This is precisely why I hope the rumors that he may run for Congress are untrue. Think about it. It's hard enough for a Senator - one of 100 - to make her voice heard. But to be one of 435 Representatives? That's an exercise in futility.

No, Larry has a much better chance of changing Washington from the outside than from the inside. Idealism counts outside Washington. It gets crushed within Washington, as Jimmy Stewart's "Mr. Smith" might tell you. I'm not sure I would wish the tortuous process of turning ideals into laws on my worst enemy, so why wish it for Larry?

Larry isn't dead. It's not time to bury him. His voice sounds better rifling into Congress than whimpering from within Congress. His presentation style is better spent endorsing candidates than in being one.

Years ago I remember when my then-professor, Larry Lessig, announced that he was hanging up the speaker's mic to concentrate on his research (and to give time back to his family). I pleaded that he would not abjure his freedom fighting. I asked who would take up the mantle in his absence?

Larry's answer was typical of him:

You.

By which he didn't mean "me" per se, but rather those who looked to him to help promote open source, net neutrality, etc. Tim Wu of Columbia Law School has taken up that charge. Tim studied under Larry at Harvard and has been particularly involved in opening up the wireless world to competition, innovation, and capitalism. (Yes, you read that right - it's one of those ironic offshoots of freedom. It tends to lead to greater financial opportunities.)

Businessweek recently profiled Tim and noted the following of his growing influence, from the Googleplex to Capitol Hill:

OK. This feels a bit odd, referencing an interview with myself. (Actually, Glyn Moody did the interview the last time I was in London.) I only include it because, reading back through it, I can't help but be grateful for the serendipity that led me to where I am right now. Glyn noted before that I've "had what amounts to the perfect career in open source."

But I had nothing to do with it. i never consciously set out to do anything with open source. It just happened to me. Despite my best efforts, at times.

Talking through my last 10 years, it all flows with a unifying trend toward an appreciation for freedom in code at its heart. But I didn't start there (I was a mixed source zealot of sorts), and I never intended to land where I am today. It felt chaotic living through it. Only hindsight reveals the theme.

Anyway, in this interview I comment on the Microsoft/Novell patent deal, the dilution of the meaning of "open source," Alfresco's shift from MPL+Attribution to 100% GPL, the founding of the Open Source Business Conference, my departure from Novell, and my law studies under Larry Lessig.

On this last/first point, here's a snippet from the interview:

I spent some time today reading Plato's classic, The Republic and, in particular, his famous Allegory of the Cave. I have many good friends who work for proprietary software companies, and I'm always puzzled by their inability to see how open source could benefit them. They persist in believing that maximum money derives from maximum control over their software and, hence, maximum control over their customers.

This strange insistence on seeing the world through proprietary glasses perplexes me as the software world moves online and companies like Google show that you can make huge mountains of cash by giving your core service away for free. Infatuated as they are with bits and bytes, they have completely missed the movement of software away from software, per se, to service.

Which brings me back to Plato's cave.

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:--Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets....

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True, he told us five years ago that he was moving on, but then he didn't. But now, I think Larry has left the free culture movement "for real," as he announced today. Larry was my mentor and thesis advisor at Stanford Law School, and someone for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect (though he hated me when I took Open Sources from him - I contradicted every point he made, as I was heavily skewed toward proprietary open source back then).

What will he be doing now? Focusing on reducing "corruption," as he defines it: