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Joint Statement by Free Software Foundation Europe and Software Freedom Conservancy Regarding Eben Moglen and Software Freedom Law Center
info@sfconservancy.org (Software Freedom Conservancy)
The Software Freedom Conservancy
A news item from Software Freedom Conservancy.
Both Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and Software Freedom
Conservancy (SFC) are committed to defending and expanding software freedom
and the rights of people to use, understand, share and improve their software.
As part of this work, both FSFE and SFC strive to create a software
freedom community that is egalitarian, fair, kind, and welcoming to everyone.
Sadly, though, we are also aware that toxic behavior, bullying, and other violations of
Codes of Conduct do occur throughout our community.
As such, both
organizations make substantial efforts to protect our volunteers and staff
from bad behavior.
Historically, both FSFE and SFC collaborated and coordinated with a third organization —
Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), and specifically with SFLC's founder/President/Executive Director, Eben Moglen.
However, some time ago, both our organizations ended our collaborations and affiliations with SFLC.
Furthermore, both FSFE and SFC now have internal policies to avoid any situations where our employees or volunteers might work directly with him.
We arrived at these decisions through our organizational processes. After years of reported abusive behavior by Eben Moglen
toward members of the staff and volunteers of both organizations, each organization independently made a categorical rule that we would avoid
Eben Moglen and not invite him to our events and fora.
(Examples of reports of his
behavior — towards SFC staff (page 8), FSFE staff (page 51), and others (page 28) —
have been (with reluctance) documented publicly in the proceedings of the
ongoing trademark
cancellation petition that SFLC filed against SFC in
the United
States Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.)
Today, we share — with the community at large — our policy to not
work with Eben Moglen or SFLC.
We have
chosen to speak publicly on this matter because we feel we have an obligation to warn
volunteers and activists in software freedom that this pattern of reported
behavior exists.
Of course, everyone should read the
publicly available source materials and make their own decisions regarding
these matters. While we are loathe to publicly speak of these unfortunate events, the decades of ongoing
reports of abusive behavior — and the risk that behavior creates for unknowing members of the Free Software community —
ultimately requires that we no longer remain
quiet on this issue.
Abusive behavior is a distraction from the
mission of any activist organization. We urge everyone to separate themselves
as best they can from such behavior (and from those who tolerate and/or
employ it), and focus on the important work of increasing software freedom.