FOSSwire

Eben Moglen, the Free Software Foundation's top lawyer and the guy who oversees the writing of the legal code of the GNU General Public Licence and other GNU licences, has announced on his blog that he is leaving the FSF:

The release of Discussion Draft 3 has been greeted as warmly as I dared hope: all the recorded outrage has been emitted by Microsoft or its surrogates, which is at it should be. We had prepared Discussion Draft 3, after all, with the assumption that it was going to be the Last Call Draft, and I thought, and continue to think, that it would serve beautifully as the final GPLv3. I agree with RMS that it was very important to add another cycle of public discussion, and I’m sure the Free Software Foundation will be making some changes based on that discussion, as it has in response to comments all along. But I think the big issues have been correctly addressed, and that the detail work-which as lawyers we have to take more seriously than everyone else–is ready for the pressure of reality.

So it’s time I began to think about life after GPLv3.

[...]

In particular, it’s time for me to leave the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation, where I’ve been since 2000. FSF is in great shape under the continued leadership of Richard Stallman and his executive director, Peter Brown. Completing GPLv3 successfully underlines the credibility with which FSF combines the most uncompromising principle with the depth of knowledge and experience needed to build broad coalitions in our community. Leaving is always hard, but there couldn’t be a more appropriate or less disruptive time.

Mr Moglen is a highly respected and very influentual person in the free software community and this is quite big news.