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The text has been online at faifzilla, that's how I read it. And printed out the whole thing. Going to pick up a 2.0 copy for real this time, though.

The catalyst was actually The Copyright Act of 1976 which brought software under the copyright regime, and Stallman's travails at the AI Lab at MIT with Symbolics. A good source is the well-written and fascinating http://www.faifzilla.org/, and particularly Chapter 9 (http://www.faifzilla.org/ch09.html).

Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation.

What a terrible mis-representation of RMS's motivations. The EFF wasn't founded because RMS thought his software being "stolen" - it was created because he was locked out of fixing bugs in software on equipment in the lab where he worked. Read the first chapter of Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software. -- For Want of a Printer for a description of that seminal moment.

    That company crops up in various stories. Before Richard Stallman decided to launch the GNU project to give people freedom, he spent two years out-programming Symbolics as punishment for their destruction of MIT's hacker community. Here's where some of the story can be found, about half way down.

Circa 1980, MIT AI lab...

"Xerox's 9700 laser printer prints the documents I want to print with the speed and quality that I want them printed."

"For goodness sake already, why won't people stop being so ideological and just USE the damn hardware if it works better than the alternative. Pick what you need from a practical viewpoint, Not on ideology. Life's not worth wasting one's efforts of the ideology of a fucking laser printer already!"



History. Remember, what you choose today might just change what you have the right to choose tomorrow.

Richard Stallman didn't want a political movement either. He wanted to work around a flaky printer. Unfortunately, reality can be such that a political movement is necessary in order to obtain the things that many of us think should be able to be taken for granted.

Right. What RMS said is all in our imaginations.

Talking about a t-shirt which showed Linus as a sword-wielding leader:

"It's ironic," says Stallman mournfully. "Picking up that sword is exactly what Linus refuses to do. He gets everybody focusing on him as the symbol of the movement, and then he won't fight. What good is it?"

From Chapter 13 of the biography of Stallman.

It's well worth a read (URL). It really taught me the value of free-as-in-I-printed-it-out-in-work.

Richard received the MacArthur Genius grant in 1991 which was $250,000, and in 1998 he recieved $800,000 with the Taekedo award. I'm not aware of any other big money he's recieved.

So that's one million in the last 13 years - remember that he has never been paid by FSF, and he pays all of his own travelling expenses, accomadation, car rental, food ect.

Since he is constantly travelling to India, Europe, and South America, I suspect most of his savings are spent on his work.

A biography of RMS "Free As In Freedom"

The man lives to give people freedom, he's dedicated his life to it.

MountainMan thinks that perhaps Stallman offered tips on how to write you Biography in the 3rd person.

From the Sam Williams biography of RMS:

I find Stallman sitting in a darkened room, tapping away on his gray laptop computer.

[...]

I take a look. The room is dimly lit, and the text appears as greenish-white letters on a black background, a reversal of the color scheme used by most desktop word-processing programs, so it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. When they do, I find myself reading Stallman's account of a recent meal at a Korean restaurant.

[...]

Stallman goes back to tapping away at his laptop. The laptop is gray and boxy, not like the sleek, modern laptops that seemed to be a programmer favorite at the recent LinuxWorld show. Above the keyboard rides a smaller, lighter keyboard, a testament to Stallman's aging hands. During the late 1980s, when Stallman was putting in 70- and 80-hour work weeks writing the first free software tools and programs for the GNU Project, the pain in Stallman's hands became so unbearable that he had to hire a typist. Today, Stallman relies on a keyboard whose keys require less pressure than a typical computer keyboard.

From what I read in Free as in Freedom, RMS was really after eir time: ey grew up with the freedom to get any program's source code, modify it and use it (see the relatively famous printer story), then saw those freedoms being taken away, and decided not to participate in taking away those freedoms.

But I agree, RMS is ahead of eir time. :)

From what I read in Free as in Freedom, RMS was really after eir time: ey grew up with the freedom to get any program's source code, modify it and use it (see the relatively famous printer story), then saw those freedoms being taken away, and decided not to participate in taking away those freedoms.

But I agree, RMS is ahead of eir time. :)

"Linux is a copy of UNIX. There is very little new stuff in Linux." Linux kernel forum

Stallman didn't say that. He quoted Larry McVoy who said that.

"I consider the law prohibiting the sharing of copies with your friend the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It does not deserve respect." Richard Stallman, Free as in Freedom, Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software: O'Reilly (2002) at p. 72

That quote was taken completely out of context. What Stallman actually said was:

"I'm looking beyond what the existing laws are to what they should be...I'm not trying to draft legislation. I'm thinking about what should the law do? I consider the law prohibiting the sharing of copies with your friend the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It does not deserve respect."

In the interest of brevity, even that's not in complete context. Stallman is basically saying if you were to thinking about what the law should be, and someone proposed the current copyright law, the current law would not merit much thought.

The final Stallman quote,

"The whole GNU project is really one big hack. It's one big act of subversive playful cleverness..." Richard Stallman, Revolution OS (DVD)

sounds like meaningless babble. I don't know what the heck that's supposed to mean. Maybe if SCO put it in context it would make more sense.

Bruce Perens

"This is becoming a tradition. I go there and break the law every year in the name of free speech." Bruce Perens, explaining his plan to demonstrate how to modify DVD technology to attendees of an Open Source convention.

In a show of civil disobedience, Bruce was planning to circumvent the region controls on a DVD player. He was planning to get arrested so he could put the DMCA on trial. His employer, Hewlett Packard, was afraid that they could be held liable for his demonstration, so they asked him not to do it. In the end, Perens cancelled the demonstration since it would defeat his whole purpose of HP was sued.

"We have to remember that Linux is a follow-on to UNIX. It's not just a UNIX clone. It's actually a UNIX successor." Bruce Perens, mpulse magazine, December 2001.

From the magazine interview:

What does the open source mean to development of devices within the mobile Internet?

We have to remember that Linux is a follow-on to UNIX. It's not just a UNIX clone. It's actually a UNIX successor. UNIX was invented by the phone company and it was very streaming-oriented. No one used the word 'streaming' in 1970, but if you look at the way UNIX works, it's all pipes and filters, and that's streaming.

It's a very good operating system for telecom, and branches out to streaming media and sending video, etcetera, where these things will happen over third generation wireless. Linux fits there very well.

So Perens was referring to the original AT&T UNIX and its stream-oriented foundation. What SCO fails to mention is that they do not have a claim against Linux based on the original AT&T code base. As Eric Raymond pointed out so well in the position paper, AT&T attempted to enforce their intellectual property rights, but ended up settling out of court by paying the defendant's legal fees.

Because the game Hack was named for a definition of the word "hack" that branched off well before "hacking" became synonymous with malicious computer activity.

The history of the word "hack" is detailed in this appendix that trace the word from its origin as a synonym of "goof" in the 1950s at MIT. It subsequently became used to describe explorations in off-limits tunnels under colleges (a practice that is satirized in Neal Stephenson's The Big U). Hmm, exploring forbidden tunnels...does this concept sound familiar?

(Subsequently, when the same students who hacked through tunnels found the new computer on campus, they gave birth to the more recent definition of "hack," involving messing around with computers. Then when journalists got ahold of the word, it took on its more malicious meaning.)

Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software

The GPL is far from perfect, but it offers a hacker solution to a problem which other hackers are faced with. After reading Free as in Free as in Freedom I have seen how and why it came about, and agree with almost 100% of it. But there are some things which might make me think twice about releasing software under it. Though I would probably release it anyway.

You've read the autobiography, right?

Whenever people first encounter free-X (x being anything), their immediate view is to see what it takes away from them. Plenty of newbie programmers harbor dreams of making millions from their pithy little programs, and wouldn't dream of letting anyone copy them.

In a few years, when the programs are lost and forgotten, with nobody using them, it becomes easier to see why free-X wouldn't have lost them any money. In fact, when people realise they can no longer find their lovely software any more, they might start to see some of the benefits of sharing.

Musicians seem to divide easily into classes. Those who know they're crap tend to like restricting use. Top-10 artists selected for their bodies, anyone insecure, or anone who knows they're a fad, they will always become paranoid about people listening without overlords' control. Metallica only became paranoid after their careers dwindled to insignificance - back when they were popular, they encouraged tape-swapping, knowing that it would boost their popualrity.

Similarly, manufactured artists are all for crippled CDs and new laws, but I assume this is because they're pawns under the control of a company: I can't imagine these are personal opinions.

On the other hand, people who are confident in their own work can be confident in trusting their fans, as I'm sure anyone who's posted to MP3.com knows. Even if the 'disillusioned by RIAA_rape' crowd are a small crowd now, we do seem to see more people choosing this view.

Take any music consumer, get them to read a week's headlines on slashdot, theregister... about the music industry, and ask them whether they'd prefer to preview an Aura album with the option of donating money, or whether they'd prefer to pay $20 at virgin for a copy-disabled CD.

It's easier for unknown producers to see the benefits of free-x, as they get the additional benefit of publicity. Baen library (print books), MP3.com, and many others are great places for artists to become known.

Some of them keep their nerves, others lose it when they become famous. Some bands become rich and popular, then the paranoia sets in about mistrusting their fans, and they take off free music. Up to the individual I guess, but many fans will see that as a brush-off, as evidence that the band no longer feel they need their fans.

I've just spent lots of money on CDs, where I downloaded the whole lot first, like it, and bought the CDs later. That was after 2 years of not buying anything, as I was (and still am) loath to give money to people trying to screw me of fair-use rights. The band I wanted lost out, because their publisher was in RIAA. I liked their music, but no way was I buying it. The free-music bands won, because they're ovbiously confident about their music.

Should music compete on its merits or on publicity? I'd like to encourage the former.