Slashdot Log In
Stallman — 20 Years of Explaining Free Software
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 09, 2007 01:13 PM
from the evolution-of-an-idea dept.
from the evolution-of-an-idea dept.
H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "The first recorded talk by Richard Stallman on free software was in 1986, so I've picked from the 2006 recordings and have made a transcript of a recent talk: The Free Software Movement and the Future of Freedom. Those two are the only transcripts of his general free software talk. Others that exist are on specific topics such as patents, GPLv3, copyright, etc. For those who've been reading Slashdot during the gradual evolution of Stallman's pronouncements, it's interesting to see what has changed over 20 years."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
evolution (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing for you to see here; move along.
Truer words never 403'd.
Re: (Score:2)
http://rodolfo.borges.googlepages.com/gnu [googlepages.com]
Open Stallman (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Open Stallman (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Make sure a Free software license is used, so we have the freedom to edit his speeches to make him say whatever we want, provided we allow others the same freedom on our edits...
A directory of free software recordings (Score:3, Informative)
Any misunderstanding of what Stallman said will not be corrected by allowing "the community [to] decide what Stallman said". Unlike the expressions of ancient speakers, we can hear his recordings, read the transcripts of what he said, and email him.
Also, such work is being done (albeit not on a wiki, which poses some minor technical advantages) thanks to the work of the FSF and FSFE.
Finally, it's worth noting that Stallma
Submitter's home page (Score:3, Interesting)
I work within the political system of the European Union to ensure that the development and use of free software is not hampered by new legislation. The best known example of a legislative project I worked on is the "Software Patents Directive".
More on the submitter's home page (Score:4, Informative)
Here's my post directive review [compsoc.com] of that project. But there's more to do [fsfe.org].
Something very important this year is GPLv3 [fsfeurope.org]. Here's a transcript of RMS on GPLv3 [fsfeurope.org], and one of something I said [fsfeurope.org].
Parent
A tear to my eye as I think... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
security (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean that those days are over?
Re:security (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Its a Joy hearing Mr Stallman speak (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
If only he could count (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey Richard, how many freedoms are there?
Four.
What's the fourth one?
There isn't one... Only a zeroth through third.
This nonsense has got to stop. The GPL is fairly readable, but this stupid geekism rig
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Creative Commons "Non-commercial Use" (Score:3, Interesting)
I will usually avoid using "non-commercial use" material in my own work. For one thing, it is incompatible with say GPL-licensed software, since e.g. a CC-licensed "non-commercial use" icon would prevent a commercial entity from using it, defeating the purpose of the GPL.
Is RMS ready to concede he's wrong yet? (Score:2, Insightful)
RMS' rationale condensed (Score:5, Insightful)
A) fewer people will use the software (because it tries to prevent people from using w/o paying)
B) the software is less useful to people because they can't modify the original program
C) proprietary software is less valuable because other developers in lateral areas can't learn from it.
It seems pretty clear to me that his arguments failed on these pragmatic grounds and that he's had to shift his anti-ownership rational to far more nebulous and entirely philosophical arguments about "freedom" for its own sake.
The facts are:
A) Contrary to his "first level" of harm: proprietary software has vastly outcompeted open software despite its barriers.
B) Contrary to his "second level" of harm: that most users still prefer closed source software despite the fact that they can't tinker with it and despite the fact that it costs more/has more barriers.
C) Contrary to his "third level" of harm: that proprietary software still appeals more to its end users despite the fact that proprietary developers benefit little from the pool of open source code. This despite the fact that open source developers supposedly have a huge advantage over proprietary developers because they can exploit the GPL and other copyleft code to a level that their counterparts cannot.
In short, he's given up on his pragmatic rationale since they've been proven almost entirely wrong. I'll concede that there is something to be said for the sharing of code in some cases, but we're to choose rationally between no ownership vs choice of ownership (the status quo) that the latter is the only sensible and pragmatic choice given his own (old) arguments and the empirical evidence (or lack thereof) from his so-called copyleft movement.
Parent
Just a few counterpoints. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thought experiment: if somehow, suddenly, Linux closed all the sources and took a non-free license, would they gain or lose users? If somehow, suddenly, Microsoft opened the sources of Vista under the GPL (or BSD, or whatever), would they gain or lose users? Correlation vs. causation and all that.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To cut to the chase, this is your flawed argument, not mine. The debate truly is not whether the act of open sourcing existing software itself impacts user adoption: most users don't even know what source code is nor would they care. The debate is about whether or not open source licensing creates an environment condusive to the produ
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's do a thought experiment shall we? Let's assume your rendering of his argument is correct and let's change "software" to "information" - as a concrete example, newspaper information available in sources such as the New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and free (no cost) versions available through Yahoo or other services.
Fewer people do use the WSJ versus the NYT. It costs money to get the WSJ. NYT requires registration. Now compare Yahoo and other sources that have no cost and no barriers
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They're not proven wrong yet.
Remember that the copyleft movement is a movement about purity of design; in essence, all of his conclusions about open-source vs. closed-source software are based on the assumption of all else being equal. With no other factors involved, his three points about software are absolutely correct. More people will use a free product over a product they have to pay for, if those produc
Is the article icon ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hard to explain (Score:4, Interesting)
"Liberty" sometimes sounds honorable, like something out of the US Constitution. "Free" sounds cheap... like "free soda".
In the business world, it's not unusual to hear something like "Oh, MySQL? Oh, we don't support freeware." The perception is often that "Free" == "Cheap and unsupported". In reality, MySQL is a good product, and support is available in several forms.
Get your free painted Liberty silver dollar here!
I guess that's why some people prefer "Libre".
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I do prefer libre, and frequently refer to free software as software libre as it's perfectly clear as libre == freedom. It's just it's not English so it's really just as confusing to English speakers as "free software" just in a different way. Just my opinion, but in English both "Liberty Software" and "Freedom Software" sound cumbersome.
The funny thing is that RMS chose "free" in part because it was unclear and would require discussion about the nature of fre
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So that Microsoft could exploit the ambiguity of the word "open" to claim that their software is open source? I'm afraid the word "open" is just as open to interpretaion as any other non-technical word.
Of course RMS provided a technical defintion of what he meant by "Free Software."
The reason a lot of people prefer to use "Open Source" isn't because the term "free" is ambiguous (although I recognize the existence of the "libre" crowd); it's
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason a lot of people prefer to use "Open Source" isn't because the term "free" is ambiguous
Unfortunately, so is 'open.' Look at the different definitions of 'open specification' you have:
The same is true of 'open source.' There is a legal definition on the OSI site, which is very long, and far less concise that the FSF's four freedoms, but without it the term is highly ambiguous. Is Micros
Re: (Score:2)
Source code is a part of that freedom, but there's more to it, like for example rights for distribution, and rights for distribution of improvements.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How good is to be able to see the code, if you can't modify and redistribute it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
He did get over it a long time ago, like when he decided that he is not going to sue anyone for (legally) re-using his code and omitting what would be their trade mark. You cannot blame the man just for being vocal. His peewees provide for comic relief, whereas Microsoft's cost a lot of money and cause headaches.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
When mswindows 95 appeared, it wasn't called "the DOS system". It was the Windows system, running on DOS. Okay, that's too much of a stretch.
mswindows nt/2000 was not the "kernel32.exe".
OSX is not "mach + some apple stuff".
An operating system is a lot more than a kernel, in the same way that a car is a lot more than its engine, even when it doesn't work without it. The user doesn't get to interact with the engine, and the car would be the same car, if the engine is replaced. That happens the same way with Operating Systems and kernels. Debian is not there yet, but they have several GNU distributions with varying kernels.
Linux is a good kernel, and plays an important role for the success of free software. Aside from that, when you get for example, Ubuntu, there is a lot more GNU than Linux included in the CD. And the platform is defined by the GNU system, not the Linux kernel.
When people say they know "Linux", for example the "Linux" console, they are talking about bash. When talking about "Linux" programming, it's usually GCC, the "Linux" desktop might be Gnome or KDE, of course, but it's not Linux either.
The guy will never get over it, because, in that particular issue, he is right, and the people who think different from him are just wrong. There's no way he will change his opinion on that issue.
Parent
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
I beg to differ. The term 'Linux' has gained a second meaning as a short form for 'an OS that uses the Linux kernel' which is almost always the GNU system with a Linux kernel. Language and words change so we can talk more efficiently. It happens all over the place in our language: 'refrigerator' became 'fridge', 'windows' instead of 'Microsoft Windows', even the notorious "where's the internet" is short for "where's the icon to open my web browser". Of course, it causes ambiguity and confusion sometimes, I have a hard time talking to new people about windows as in that box your graphical apps open up in, but that's the price we pay for shortening our language. In the end, it's all about efficiency.
I understand that RMS wants the extra publicity, and I think they really deserve it. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen unless you turn GNU/Linux into a two syllable word: people are too lazy.
Parent
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it. If Linus hadn't done what he did, I think there would have been another kernel by the mid-90s. Perhaps it would have HURD (I think the availability of Linux slowed HURD development), or perhaps it would have been BSD, or perhaps it would have been something else. Linus' contribution was important, but the kernel is one of the smaller components in a full operating system.
And a different license. If RMS hadn't started GNU, Linux would have had a BSD user environment, and probably a BSD license. It's hard to say what the impact of that would have been. It seems clear that a BSD-licensed Linux wouldn't have gotten all of the corporate participation that the GPL-licensed Linux has.
Without GNU, I also think Linux would have been delayed for a few years, because it would have been necessary to either write all the user space tools or wait for the BSD settlement to legitimize the BSD stuff.
Getting back to the question of the compiler, I wonder what Linus would have used if GCC weren't available. What were the options for a poor college student in 1991? I was a student at the time, and I know that the compilers available to me were Borland's Turbo C and compilers from OS vendors, including Microsoft, Sun, HP and DEC. Borland's was the the most accessible to students, because of their education prices, but neither it nor Microsoft's compiler would have run on Linus' fledgling new OS, unless it provided a DOS-like kernel interface. The others were really expensive. The BSD and Minix compilers were around, but I'm not sure if he could have used either of them legally.
Perhaps Linus would have had to write a C compiler as he was writing his kernel? I really don't know the answer to these questions.
Speculating about how Free Software history would have changed with either RMS or Linus removed from it is complex and difficult. There were a lot of interrelated factors.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Glad You're Self-Aware (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
*Ok, nowdays, you can hire someone to assemble the parts for you, but it's the same priciple.
Re: (Score:2)
And the design documents, diagrams, and anything else that would help get potential contributors up to speed.
But perhaps we just aren't up to snuff and the code itself is what is supposed to educate us all on its own.
Mind you, I don't necessarily practice that with the code I hav
Re:Stallman on Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Linus chose to give us freedom, but he still believes that authors have the rights to deprive users of 'the four freedoms', should they want to.
Stallman believes that the user should have the right to those freedoms, regardless of the wishes of the authors. Therein lies the ideological difference.
Parent