"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.
"You mean license," Stallman said curtly.
"Yeah, license. Copyright. Whatever," I said, feeling
suddenly like a wounded tuna trailing a rich plume of
plasma in the water.
"Aw, why didn't you just fucking do what I told you to
do!" he shouted.
I must have been arguing on behalf of the publisher to
the very end, because in my notes I managed to save a
final Stallman chestnut: "I don't care. What they're
doing is evil. I can't support evil. Good-bye."
As soon as I put the phone down, my agent slid a
freshly poured Guinness to me. "I figured you might
need this," he said with a laugh. "I could see you
shaking there towards the end."
I was indeed shaking. The shaking wouldn't stop until
the Guinness was more than halfway gone. It felt weird,
hearing myself characterized as an emissary of "evil."
It felt weirder still, knowing that three months
before, I was sitting in an Oakland apartment trying to
come up with my next story idea.
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