I think it’s not needed to introduce Richard Stallman, however: Richard Matthew Stallman, or just RMS, is the GNU project founder. It’s a little difficult to interview someone like Stallman. I tried to make him talk about some technical issues, but he’s extremely concerned about the ideology behind free software. Freedom is his slogan and he defends it as he defends his life.” Read Interview.
Interview with Richard Stallman
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Every time I read things about him and his free software ideas, I always feel like I’m listening to my favorite good old song. Thank you Mr. Stallman.
…that a lot of you guys either are just trolling or have absolitly _no_ idea about who RMS is and what he has done!
This is the man fronting the organization behaind such tools as gcc, gdb, make, flex/bison, emacs, bash, sed…. and the list goes on and on. Many of theese RMS has been personally part of creating.
So – yes – GNU has meant, and means, a hell of a lot more for the development of the linux kernel and the distributions than QT/GTK/PYTHON/GENTOO or whatever, ever has. All of the mentioned projects fundamentally rely on various GNU tools.
Every time there is a discussion about RMS, somebody has to attack him calling him crazy and super-egoistic etc. I’m always amazed by this…. do you guys know anything about RMS? You are probably using some GNU tool every day – knowingly or not.
I personally think his views are too radical – but I fully respect his opinion (and his authority). The world needs people with radical optinions…
my 0.02$ of locked up anger 🙂
I think in a way he’s right. When I write a program and publish it for no money including source code, then I demand that others do the same. But that’s not freedom. In fact, it’s the opposite – restricting freedom of the individual in favor of all others, including me since I can profit from the modified code too. Of course, there has to be a balance between individual freedom and responsibility.
You could also say, I don’t give my code away for free – just I’m not paid in terms of money, but in terms of add-ons. The GPL is the “contract” that enforces pay-by-code.
Sorry for double-posting, but a good example came to my mind. Saying that free software is *resticting* freedom is not quite accurate. What RMS is doing is trading one kind of freedom for another.
In essence, he’s saying that the freedom to take others’ code and make a closed-source, license-restricted product out of it is worth discarding, in favor of the freedom to use and modify a program freely to solve one’s problems.
That’s like saying, the freedom to enter anyone’s house and take their stuff when you need it is worth discarding in favor of the freedom to _own_ things.
In that sense, I agree with him. But I still think the possibility of being paid by code is important too.
I think Stallman is a unique person. He is not worried about what people think about him.
When he speaks about freedom, I fell he may be sometimes a little unrealistic, but he is not hypocrit, he really believes in his ideals and fight for them.
We can’t forget his efforts in making a free operating system and most of the very good free softwares we use today would not even exist if Mr. Stallman had not worked too hard for freedom.
Some people love him, some others hate him, but the fact is: he is too important historically and he fights hard for other people’s rights.
There are people like Stallman in many other areas. His fight is in software, not in hunger or other illnesses.
He *is* important and relevant. Repetitive sometimes (or always), but always relevant.
Hoverda, if you don’t like free software, stop using it. Tell your friends at SkyOS to remove every piece of free software that’s on the system. That’s what a man that follows through on his ideas and principles does. Not doing so is tantamount to being a self-serving hypocrite.
Ah! Eu! The guy who bears the same nickname as that other evil in the world
.
First, my surname is Holwerda, not Hoverda.
I never said I didn’t like free software, please point to where I said that.
It’s just that I dont really care whether my software is OSS or not. I simply want a product that friggin’ works! And I refuse to use an inferior product, only because it’s open source. I want what’s best for me, and I simply don’t give a crap whether I can look at the code or not.
Again, you show your ignorance in such a blatantly obvious way it starts to get funny
.
But then again, just like in the SkyOS threads, you probably won’t reply.
And to proove I don’t dislike free software: guess what operating system I’ve been using full-time for the past week
.
This is the man fronting the organization behaind such tools as gcc, gdb, make, flex/bison, emacs, bash, sed…. and the list goes on and on. Many of theese RMS has been personally part of creating.
So – yes – GNU has meant, and means, a hell of a lot more for the development of the linux kernel and the distributions than QT/GTK/PYTHON/GENTOO or whatever, ever has. All of the mentioned projects fundamentally rely on various GNU tools.
i guess it should be doable to compile linux without any GNU software… so what?
Should we know prepend to every software that was compiled with gcc a GNU?
“If the goal is to build a society of freedom, it’s not sufficient to put freedom into people’s hands. If they don’t appreciate it, they will let it drop, lose it. If we want freedom to endure, we have to teach people to recognize its value so they will defend it.”
This is very important, not so much for software – which is, after all, only a subset of more important things, – but for society in general: we have given up too many of our freedoms, in the last decades. IMHO.
It’s time not only to regain them all, but also to build upon them in a newly creative way – at the same time, evolving towards more human individuals and societies, hopefully…
P.S.: Personally, I tend to agree with Stallman’s “balanced anarchism”, if one can say so.
Every time there is a discussion about RMS, somebody has to attack him calling him crazy and super-egoistic etc.
About RMS being egotistic, well, at least GNU isn’t called Armix, or Stallmix or what not, unlike a certain kernel.
(I do find the concept and insistance on ‘recursive acronyms’ quite ridiculous, though.)
I couldn’t have put it better. Your open letter hits the nail on the head. It is sickening to see all these ungrateful self-serving hypocrites.
This is very important, not so much for software – which is, after all, only a subset of more important things, – but for society in general: we have given up too many of our freedoms, in the last decades. IMHO.
Name the freedoms you’ve lost?
I mean, I live in The Netherlands, and I certainly haven’t lost any freedoms. Quite the contrary; the Dutch soeciety is the “free-est” of them all (euthanesia, samer-sex merriage, abortion, etc.). I have no idea what kinds of freedom you are talking about… I surely hope you do not see the situation in your country as the precedent for the rest of the world
.
Some people rely on the sales of software they write to put food on the table. just giving away copies of the software kinda makes it hard to make a living for the people who wrote it.
I don’t think its a question of ethics so much as a question of economics and survival.
A hitman relies on killing people to make money, does that mean we should not think of it from an ethical point of view?
Disclamer: I’m not saying that selling software is as bad as killing people, I’m just saying you can ignore ethical issues because some people rely on it to make money.
I work for a small development company of code monkeys and we operate very much like this. We deliver the software and the source and the customer has the right to do whatever they want with it. Repackage it, sell it, hire other engineers to work on it – WHATEVER – they simply paid us to write the original version but they retain full rights to the code we produce for them and if we aren’t available / out of business / high on crack etc. etc. they can take their code and go elsewhere.
Thats just good business sense for our customers and its a very big selling point for us. No strings attached code development. We get paid and they get source code they can use.
We do this everyday without the GPL and without turning something as simple as providing a service/product into some religious crusade.
I wasn’t advocating the GPL, I was countering someone elses argument that it would be impossible to make money without closing the source code and charging for licences.
Hmmm… I meant not from a strictly personal point of view, of course: try to see things from a little broader perpective… 😉 Individual freedom without social equality is rather useless, after all! 🙂
If you look at freedom at a global level… well, I don’t think that we have progressed all that much in the last decades – have we?
For example, the rise of neo-religious fundamentalisms isn’t all that modern: in general, I think that in the current era we are, in some way, witnessing the failure of the “modernity” paradigm (see also the wishy-washyness of the so-called postmodernism) – failure to extend the freedoms that we take for granted in our “western” societies, for example, to the less “developed” countries, and so on. And no, I’m definitely *not* meaning something like “imposing democracy” (what a joke!) with military force, but rather something like sharing freedom, independently of economical factors, and so on.
It would be cool to have an equivalent of free software also among individuals and peoples of the earth. One could also say, on the reverse, that we’ll have free software only when we’ll have free societies – which implies something more evolved than the current concept of “democracy”, of course.
Sadly, our current political systems tend to inhibit all this (see money above all, etc.)…
To the people that have said the GPL is restrictive and therefore unfree:
You have a point. Indeed you could make the case that the a truly free license would allow you to take the code and do whatever you want with it even if that means closed code.
However.
The GPL is not the same as public domain. And by requiring modified code to also be open, you’re ensuring that future generations of programmers benefit from the same freedoms you were privy to. In my opinion, that’s more important than allowing for closed derivitives.
“How so ? By downloading the music I just deprived the record labels of $20 and the artist isn’t getting his royalty on that CD sale.
There would be no need to label something *unauthorized* if there wasn’t a negative effect on someone or something.”
Of course not. I’m not saying downloading music has no negative effect on anyone. However, the act of theft is one with a specific legal definition; taking an existing article or item of property that belongs to someone else into your possession without consent. That $20 and the artist’s royalty never really existed and were never in the possession of the respective parties; you can’t, legally speaking, steal them, only cause them not to transpire.
The “Linux-related sales” thing is a bit of IBM marketing spin – they book any hardware sales with an installation of Linux on them as “Linux-related sales”. If Linux didn’t exist they’d have made a lot of those sales anyway, with a different OS.
“I’m saying that local conditions need to be altered in such a way that food production can take place on the required scale.”
And that is, in fact, exactly what Rayiner was saying. You cite Somalia, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia – great examples! You could go over there with a ton of the world’s most sophisticated farming equipment and achieve…sod all. It’d rust away or be sold off by some corrupt government official for scrap. The *only* way to stop hunger occurring in these countries is to improve their overall economic standing to the point where their infrastucture can support the necessary spending to improve their system of food production. You can’t just graft the food production on and ignore everything else.
“The *only* way to stop hunger occurring in these countries is to improve their overall economic standing to the point where their infrastucture can support the necessary spending to improve their system of food production. You can’t just graft the food production on and ignore everything else.“
… Which isn’t all that easy to achieve in practice, as long as “neo-liberal” capitalism (see only a monodimensional, merely economical/financial globalization) is the dominant “modus vivendi” worldwide: living in a dog-eat-dog world means, first of all, that those who suffer from an initial, “historical” disadvantage (such as the so-called developing countries) won’t ever be able to catch up. OK, all this is not so evident in everyday life in our countries – but it seems to be the crude reality elsewhere, after all. Local corruption in developing countries (see local politicians) can only exist in “favourable” (sic!) circumstances: circumstances also created by the wstern countries’ overall policies – don’t let’s forget that.
People like Stallman are important, IMO, also because they let us think about the consequences of a world dominated by negative ideals such as greed, egoism, secrecy, control-freakness, and so on – which are negativities to be found both in governments and corporations, BTW…
I care about software freedom as much as I car about Ford releasing the blueprints to all their cars, IBM releasing all the blueprints to all their computers, Intel releasing the design of their cpu’s… Honestly, I think most of our laws are fair and just. Stallman is a nut to think software is anything different from the million of other things that are kept secret. Linux hasn’t grown because it was free. It has grown because it is immune to Microsoft. If our laws were implemented as they were written and Microsoft was broken up, Linux will never have come about. Unfortunately, because our laws were not enforced, we will be stuck in a world with little software enhancements and an industry that is going to be a dwarf to the potential it could have had. If only the government broke Microsoft apart back in 1994, People would have had a huge choice of operating systems to run at an affordable price with fair EULA’s.
but obviously there are lots of hardware manufacturers who seem to not have a brain.
If I buy a grafic card I get a driver with it, this driver I would guess is very specific to the hardware I guess. you cannot as a competitor just say: Oh fine, I can stop my driver development because I can use theirs.
The people who do not buy the hardware also are not able to use the driver, even if they could copy its source. And it would be a strong argument for me to buy a graficcard if I know there is a free driver for it, so I can use it with ANY linux kernel, not just with a redhat or suse standard kernel.
By the way, does someone know which is the grafic card with the best free driver (including 3D functions) I would like to buy this card. Because the card I am using currently is abyssmaly unstable when 3D is swithed on (ATI Xpert2000).
Thanx, gustl
A hitman relies on killing people to make money, does that mean we should not think of it from an ethical point of view?
Two totally different ends of the spectrum and they don’t relate in any way.
Disclamer: I’m not saying that selling software is as bad as killing people, I’m just saying you can ignore ethical issues because some people rely on it to make money.
I didn’t take it that way.
To me the ethics behind writing code dictate that I support the code I’ve written. If I decide not to support it then I pass it along to someone who can and will support it.
I don’t personally believe in all software being free. I think there is a place for both OSS/GNU software and proprietary software.
I wasn’t advocating the GPL, I was countering someone elses argument that it would be impossible to make money without closing the source code and charging for licences.
Ah my bad.
Linux hasn’t grown because it was free. It has grown because it is immune to Microsoft.
Er Linux was around long before MS was taken to court. Linux grew because it had interest for many different people for many different reasons.
If our laws were implemented as they were written and Microsoft was broken up, Linux will never have come about.
Linux was written as a hobby originally and as a way of getting around the limitations of an OS that was not written by MS.
If only the government broke Microsoft apart back in 1994, People would have had a huge choice of operating systems to run at an affordable price with fair EULA’s.
Yes if only MS had been broken up. We would be living in some computing utopia and I’m sure AIDs and world hunger would have been solved by now also!
Nevermind there is more OS competition to MS these days that is stronger than its ever been.
You sound like an angry BeOS user my friend
so only spend your time doing things that you (as in Bob) find valuable. so since you dont find software rights as valuable, he shouldnt do them.
he can live in a fantasyland if he wants, thats his choice, and quite frankly, you may disagree, but you have no right to tell him he should be doing something else just because you like it.
Yes if only MS had been broken up. We would be living in some computing utopia and I’m sure AIDs and world hunger would have been solved by now also!
What are you talking about. It’s not utopistic to say that monopolies must be broken up. It happened for the giant AT&T, and not only…
The laws are right there. They just have to be enforced.
You sound like an angry BeOS user my friend
BS. The analysis slash made is totally correct.
Interesting you bring up education. One of the biggest benefits to having access to source code is as a learning tool. Because the code is open, you can learn how the software was created.
“Which isn’t all that easy to achieve in practice”
Heh, I never said it was
Software isn’t (and shouldn’t be) on anyone’s radar except a few shrill, pompous freaks such as Stallman. My suggestion: Instead of wasting your time “fighting” for so-called software rights, work on things in your own community that really make a difference. Donate your time to teaching a kid how to read. Be a Big Brother/Sister. Work a homeless shelter. Help out battered mothers and children. Improve access to health care. Give some time to a church. Visit the elderly at a retirement home. Bring a gift to a kid on a cancer ward at your local hospital. Volunteer to work a phone bank for a crisis hotline. Donate some cash so that a homeless family can eat.
Why do all that?
Just send them a FOSS CD with a note:
You’re now Free! Be warm and filled.
@slash: If only the government broke Microsoft apart back in 1994, People would have had a huge choice of operating systems to run at an affordable price with fair EULA’s.
In 1994, before Windows 95, Microsoft was hardly a monopoly. You blame government for failure to see 10 years in the future.
As for affordable price: a monthly pass on a New York subway (the one you have to buy every month if you use NY subway system) costs almost twice more than an home OS for which you have to pay once every 3 years, at most.
Approximately $1 a month for an OS- that is sure affordable for everyone who can afford to buy a computer.
AdamW: The “Linux-related sales” thing is a bit of IBM marketing spin – they book any hardware sales with an installation of Linux on them as “Linux-related sales”. If Linux didn’t exist they’d have made a lot of those sales anyway, with a different OS.
Yes, I know that.:) I wanted to make the point: so, where did all that money go? I do not see a world a better place or USA a better country because UNIX software companies are in financial trouble and Linux developers live in a Stallman’s world: on salary from big corporations.
We were supposed to get more freedoms from “free software”- it is 10 years and counting, please, comrades, name these freedoms!
The money saved on buying overpriced software from ugly corporations was supposed to help needy: so where is this help? Same (or different) money hungry corproations are profiting on “free software”- not the common man.
You know, it is time to ask these questions. 10 years is a long enough period of time, lets start asking what happened with good intentions.
I care about software freedom as much as I car about Ford releasing the blueprints to all their cars,
<p>Umm.. they do that, it’s called a “manual” and you would care about it if you had the skills to fix and improve your own car.. much like the millions of mechanics and hobbiest tinkerers around the world. If Ford suddenly decided it was going to stop publishing these materials people would stop buying their cars because any problem they have with their car will cost them a fortune to fix (or be just simply impossible) because they’d have to go back to Ford. If you wanted to do something different with your car to what Ford thinks you should do, then you simply couldn’t do it. For example, say you wanna jack up the back end of your car to go offroad on the weekends. The Ford auto shop might tell you to buzz off because if you want an offroad vehicle they believe you should buy another model of car off them. How familiar does that sound? Software has started in this situation and seeing as the vast majority of people who use computers have only been using them for 10 years or less they are not yet aware of this restriction on their ability to get maintainance and modifications. It will happen, and when it does we’re going to see a lot of people using free software because they can hire someone to make it work exactly the way they want it to.
>>>> This is way off topic so mod me down immediately,
>>> but Brazilian Portuguese is regularly referred to
>>> as Brazilian in Brazil.
>>>
>>> NO! It’s not!
>>
>> Thank you so much for clarifying this.
>>
>> I’d love to see a record of how many lies are spread
>> on this >webpage per day…
>Well, yours is one! As I said above, Brazilian Portuguese
>is referred to as ‘Brazilian’ in Portugal.In fact
Actually the below mentioned “Portugês do Brasil” is also widely used, but “Brazilian” is also used in the same way “American” is used in the UK to refer to American English. It’s the exact same situation, and while it’s understandable to use either in that context (i.e. to diferentiate between different norms of the same language) it’s incorrect to use it in the way it was (it’s akin to say “Original article in chinese, here is a link in American:…).
>’Brazilian Portuguese’ isn’t used anywhere, it would be
>’Português brasileiro’ which sounds odd because it seems to
>juxtapose two adjectives. The official designation, which >*nobody* employs because it sounds stupid though not
>confusing as the latter is ‘Portuguese of Brazil’. As for
As I said “Português do Brasil” is used in Portugal… the stupidity of it is in the hear of the listener.
>Brazilians they simply refer to their language as
>’Portuguese’, no doubt wondering why, just as american
>school kids might wonder why is their language called
>’English’.
I don’t quite follow you on why kids in both countries might wonder why, mainly because they are always taught that they speak English or Portuguese. The “American” and “Brazilian” term is, as you said, used in other countries to diferentiate, not within Brazil or the US.
ROFL! Is this guy nuts? Who the hell cares about the freedom of some words when human being aren’t even given full rights in the world? Is he out of his mind? Why would a average citizen give a rat’s rear about his rights to a piece of paper. All they care about is whether of not the book’s instruction does the job. PEOPLE, books are a TOOL, not a RELIGION. It either does the job, or it fails. I can guarantee that Jefferson won’t make a difference in this world, even to the day he dies. (Literature would have been just as successful if it weren’t for freedom of expression, but still openly permitted.)
Here’s the poor original:
ROFL! Is this guy nuts? Who the hell cares about the freedom of some bytes when human being themselves arent even given full rights in this world. Is he out of his mind? Why would a average joe user give a rats rear about the rights of a piece of code, all they care about is whether of not the code does the job. PEOPLE, computer is a TOOL, not a RELIGION. It either does the job, or fail. I can so guarantee that RMS wont make a difference in this world even to the day he dies. (Linux would have been as successful if it werent free software, but still open sourced)
I wonder how many of the whingers and anti RMS people use Linux – guys you’ve all used GCC to compile the Linux kernel or compile software. Sure, you can get other compilers. Wanna pay money for it? sure, go ahead. I wish you all luck!
GNU software is software written by the people, for the people. Very few of the posters have grokked this idea. BSD licenses can be taken, screwed, tinkered with by greedy corporations (Apple anyone), and they’re not obliged to return one ounce of improvements back to the community that spawned the original idea. That’s really great! NOT.
The whole idea of the GPL was to stop companies like Apple from stealing and not re-contributing back. Become part of the community, not take it’s hard work and add a few things and then make a lot of money off (mostly) someone elses work. Public domain is even worse, it’s a total free for all. Proprietary licenses are even worse, you have no control.
RMS has issues with software patents, as do myself, and millions of other developers and users worldwide. Open a copy of word and see how many patents there are involved with it. Go on. These software patents are bad for the small developer – all you so called small developers that dislike the GPL because “you can’t do what you want” with your own creation. Hello! You don’t have to license your software under the GPL. Others have, and that’s their choice. You don’t have to use the software. If you’re a small developer you’re screwed with software patents. Can’t afford to search patents and hire lawyers. If you do, and happen to miss the patent it’s even worse from a legal point of view. The death of the small software coder, disgraceful really, since computing took off initially and for a long time as a hobbysit/enthusiasts club.
Bill Gates himself was a hobbyist coder (and not a great coder either I might add). Microsoft made it big not on their own inventions, but by smart acquisition of 3rd party applications/ideas…
I’ll say the following paragraph once:
Man still has this funny idiosyncricy problem – ME ME ME ME ME ME ME. Stuff everyone else, I just want to look after myself. ME ME ME ME ME. It’s a wonder we haven’t wiped each other out yet due to mutual hatred and inability to share and live together and work together for a common cause and benefit of the species. But again we have ME ME ME ME ME ME ME syndrome.
RMS is trying to get us working together, for a common cause, and a common good. But it seems that the majority of posters just either don’t understand, or don’t want to understand. Pity.
Dave W Pastern