Following the meeting, my agent and I relocated to a pub on Third Ave. I used his cell phone to call Stallman, leaving a message when nobody answered. Henning left for a moment, giving me time to collect my thoughts. When he returned, he was holding up the cell phone.
"It's Stallman," Henning said.
The conversation got off badly from the start. I relayed Tracy's comment about the publisher's contractual obligations.
"So," Stallman said bluntly. "Why should I give a damn about their contractual obligations?"
Because asking a major publishing house to risk a legal battle with its vendors over a 30,000 word e-book is a tall order, I suggested.
"Don't you see?" Stallman said. "That's exactly why I'm doing this. I want a signal victory. I want them to make a choice between freedom and business as usual."
As the words "signal victory" echoed in my head, I felt my attention wander momentarily to the passing foot traffic on the sidewalk. Coming into the bar, I had been pleased to notice that the location was less than half a block away from the street corner memorialized in the 1976 Ramones song, "53rd and 3rd," a song I always enjoyed playing in my days as a musician. Like the perpetually frustrated street hustler depicted in that song, I could feel things falling apart as quickly as they had come together. The irony was palpable. After weeks of gleefully recording other people's laments, I found myself in the position of trying to pull off the rarest of feats: a Richard Stallman compromise.
When I continued hemming and hawing, pleading the publisher's position and revealing my growing sympathy for it, Stallman, like an animal smelling blood, attacked.
"So that's it? You're just going to screw me? You're just going to bend to their will?"
I brought up the issue of a dual-copyright again.