Stallman — 20 Years of Explaining Free Software 218
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."
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)
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...
That would be a bad thing. (Score:2)
Pe
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
Just a few is enough (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just about everyone would be better served if Stallman promoted his own brand of "vridom" (self replicating viral-freedom) instead of insisting on what the very broad word "freedom" ought to mean to everyone else, even though his personal slant on the word is narrow, off-center, and twisted almost to the point of counterintuitiveness. If he would content himself to promote "vridom" (or any such word of his own coinage and definition) then maybe finally we could all agree about our disagreements, but Stallm
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].
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?
Not at the FSF (Score:2)
This line of thinking is not followed at the FSF: they have a policy that programs must not contain arbitrary limits. Not that they always follow this strictly, but at least it's in their coding standards.
Re:security (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not only is securing ones property legal, it seems pretty damn smart to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Having worked in the IT department at one of the larger higher learning establishments, I can say without hesitation that faculty are some of the last folks you want to have roaming about the computers freely. That being said, using a keychain drive is perfectly reasonable. We used to make our students use floppy or Zip disks (this was before cheap flash drives) to store their stuff as the policy was to NOT allow local storage on the "public" s
Re: (Score:2)
Since some people cannot be trusted to not run sotware that consumes all bandwidth for the entire network on file sharing of pr0n on a work computer I am certainly one of those people. If you don't own it you don't get full control unless you show you can be trusted with it. This is where I str
Re: (Score:2)
The person who owns the computer should have that freedom, not some random person who happens to be physically proximate. It's their computer, not the operator's.
If Stallman just got upset about the rules laid down by the owners of the assets he was permitted, at their discretion, to access, then he'd just be a nut. This was just a trigger that got
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)
The 0th Rule. (Score:2)
Rule 0 for free software is -- basically -- the right to run it. Again, so obvious that it's silly that it needs to be there. What use would be a program that you couldn't run? However, sometimes it's helpful to label these obvious rules, just in case someone forgets them.
That said, who really
(from the speech) (Score:2)
Overlooking the forest for the trees? (Score:2)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Raise your hand if you've never had a piece of hardware go unused because of a driver problem and a unresponsive vendor.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny. Millions of people use closed source, proprietary software every day. They've been doing it for a long time, and generally anymore by the time those problems arise, the people or company using it are ready to get a new [printer|computer|whatever] anyway.
Do I advocate open source software? yes. Do I use it? yes, but I also use closed source
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.
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:2)
On the corporation's side (especially the corporation making most of their money from closed source software), it's not such an easy choice
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes this happens. It's called T&M (time & materials).
Every single software company I've worked for would _love_ it if all contracts were T&M. I would. Makes life _so_ much easier.
Guess what ? Customers don't want to pay T&M - they want fixed-price developm
Re: (Score:2)
Truth. It's an interesting economic problem, though. Given a commodity (developer time, in this case), and a party desiring a related/child commodity (the final product), how can currency be exchanged for the most benefit (and least risk) for both commodity-creator and interested party?
Million dollar question right there, folks. Free software and art would both want
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Quality has nothing to do with this. I'm talking "irrational," as in: it's irrational to attempt to completely lock down a piece of information when you must present an external party with the key. The free rider problem again: how are you going to sell this if
Re: (Score:2)
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:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If this is true, can you explain why companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to access newspaper articles as far back as the 1980s? You are looking at newspapers from only one perspective - the perspective of a person buying a single, paper copy of a newspaper. It does not reflect other aspects of the business.
For example, suppose I am a writer or a busin
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
Re: (Score:2)
RTFA. Or should I say, RTFD(ogma)? It was the first link listed in the article! [gnu.org]. Surely your mighty powerful open source software has a search function built in! *HINT*
It may not prevent it in so many words, but its very requirements drastically reduces the potential to generate revenue from software development activities. One might sell the first few copies or pe
Re: (Score:2)
Is the article icon ... (Score:2)
Maybe (Score:2)
Interesting... (Score:2)
I find myself wondering if the FSF will manage to remain visible for another 20. I don't believe the recent shift towards activism is going to be good for them, long term. Software is always where they have brought people the most benefit...and given that Linux is so involved with corporations now, it has become more important than ever that the toolchain be maintained by a non-profit.
Sadly, the FSF don't seem to be interested in making that, which was
Re: (Score:2)
Custom software not unethical? (Score:2)
This is an interesting position I have not seen him express previously.
He seems to have in mind a very constrained set of liberties. His essential software liberties only apply within user communities. Why is this? Because, he says that a single user who contracts to have developed and to own a piece of custom software, can himself b
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".
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:2)
I actually prefer it in many ways to T-SQL as it is alot less arsey about hand written SQL statements. But I have only been programming websites professionally for a couple of years and havent used anything like PySQL or whatever the oracle malarky is called.
I did look on your webblog thingy but couldnt find any reference as to why? I did notice you also dont like PHP but didnt go into any reasoning as to why is that just because they are usually used toge
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
No, he would not. Go to gnu.org and see that all the localized pages struggle pointlessly to translate Free as in Freedom:
Re: (Score:2)
Spanish: Libre, no gratuito
Heh, that's funny. Basically like saying "Cow as in cow, not orangutan".
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure that's really what they want to convey. Seems quite counter to their message...
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:2)
Hah! He has four extremely broad bullet points, then dozens of essays attempting to clarify matters.
"Open Source Software" has a very specific legalistic definition while "Free Software" has a rather loose political and ideological definition, but otherwise they are synonymous. To suggest that people gravitate towards Open Source Software because it isn't as specific as Free Software is silly.
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: (Score:2)
No he didn't write emacs - he "invented" the text macros that inspired emacs on another editor but other people wrote it. When a later emacs developer added in support for X windows (which at the time he deemed counterproductive to gnu becuase hurd didn't run X) he forked it, but he did not become the developer, he appointed someone else that took over a year to release any patches. He did contribute a lot to emacs
Re:Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"And now, with the addition of the Linux kernel, we have
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.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Linux is the operating system--the program managing the resources of your computer. Everything else is specific to a distribution of Linux. That's why the GNU/Linux naming argument is bogus. Linux IS the operating system. Everything else is part of the distro.
Re: (Score:2)
Guess what: that's a different operating system. And it should be called something else.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:BSD license came from Stallman's chatting w/ CS (Score:2)
No Linus wouldn't have used a BSD license, as without RMS and the FSF work on emacs/gcc which inspired it (can someone find a link?) a member of the CSRG wouldn't have started talking the others into a free license, so BSD would still require an AT&T source license to have.
If this is correct, it's huge. What you're basically saying is that without Stallman's work, not only would we not have the GPL part of the F/LOSS world, but we probably wouldn't have the BSD part, either.
We may owe Stallman a bigger debt of gratitude than I realized.
Re:BSD license came from Stallman's chatting w/ CS (Score:2)
No Linus wouldn't have used a BSD license, as without RMS and the FSF work on emacs/gcc which inspired it (can someone find a link?) a member of the CSRG wouldn't have started talking the others into a free license, so BSD would still require an AT&T source license to have.
After a little research, I believe this is incorrect.
Based on what I can find, the four-clause BSD license was applied to 3BSD, released in 1979. The famous sourceless Xerox printer driver that sparked RMS' thinking on Free Software wasn't delivered to the MIT AI Lab until 1980, the GNU project didn't start until 1983, the FSF was founded in 1985 and the GPLv1 was published in 1988. So, just based on the timeline, it seems that the BSD license predates RMS' thoughts and work on Free Software licensing
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
Mod parent up (Score:2)
This is a good point. If a program is released as free software and the source is extensive and hard to read, then it's possible but very costly for users to modify it. For most people, making a change will involve either (a) getting someone on the original development team to make the change or (b) hiring programmers who weren't on the original development team to spend a lot of time studying the code. If you don't have either a lot of money or a lot of time and programming skill, then the original deve
Re: (Score:2)
He answers this point in TFA (Score:2)
He explains this in the talk [fsfeurope.org]:
"only programmers can directly exercise freedoms one and three but every user can directly exercise freedoms zero and two - the freedoms to run the program and copy the program - and the non-programmer users indirectly get the benefit of freedoms one and three. They can't use these freedoms directly, because that means programming, but when other people exercise these freedoms, the non-programmers also share in the benefits. So these four freedoms are essential for all u
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.
It's hard graft alright (Score:2)
It was on a website that's gone now, I think it was called "Linux Power".
Re: (Score:2)
Is this sort of thing common in the USA? Some idiot was taking about 36 "s
Re: (Score:2)
Stallman was asked before what he would do if tomorrow, amazingly, all software users had freedom and it was secured. He said he would work for another charity, a human rights one, but said that he now works on free software because that's what he's effective at.
Free software is not the only thing we need, and it's not even the thing we need most, but it's one of a set of things we need for the future to support just societies. So work on the other things too.
Re: (Score:2)
RMS speeches, transcripts, etc. (Score:2)
Thanks for that.
I keep a list of transcripts here:
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/ [compsoc.com]
The FSFE Fellowship project has an advocacy section with a list of relevent videos:
http://fsfe.org/en/advocacy/videos [fsfe.org]