Professor Moglen gets tough with Google:

Google spokespeople have pointed out that the company... has contributed to open source projects (including Linux), but Moglen makes it clear that his view is that the community comes first.

"(Google has) ethical and community responsibilities to return at least those modifications that are not critical to their business and that are of general value to the community... We will see... whether there are additional measures necessary in order to secure cooperation in the community."

Moglen's notion of "ethical and community responsibilities" is disturbing. Its certainly intended as a mechanism with which the Free Software Foundation would try and force innovators to deal with it. Innovators would certainly prefer something more objective like legal standards on which to base business decisions, rather than fuzzy responsibilities for which the Free Software Foundation is the ultimate arbiter.

And who is the community that Moglen refers to? One answer is the community of FOSS contributors, for which the Free Software Foundation considers itself the voice and vision. That conception of community is inherently awkward. Many volunteer FOSS developers view paid programming jobs as their goal, but the Free Software Foundation is one odd choice for a career agent. Another explanation for the community is that the Free Software Foundation is the community; take note when the Foundation aims to shape business agreements to which it is not a direct party, and to hound innovators on what they can and cannot do. The community may be a third-person construct of the Free Software Foundation.