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Richard Stallman Audio Interview at Wired
MacRonin writes: "Richard Stallman interview Value Your Freedom at Wired." The RMS [?] interview clocks in at 21 minutes, talking about User Liberation, Amazon Boycotts, Hackers Crackers Pirates, and "Advice to Users." The last one kinda sounds like a William S. Burroughs [?] bit.
Under copyright law, the 'default' license is not the public domain. The default license is no license at all -- which is to say, no freedom at all. If I write some code and give or sell you a copy, and I don't tell you specifically that you may copy it and distribute it, then you may not. If you do, you are violating copyright. That is what it means to say that I hold the 'copy-right' (the right to copy) to my work -- you do not, simply because you own a copy of it, have the right to make more copies and distribute them. Only I have that right.
In that context, GPL is significantly freer for you -- it grants you the right to distribute my work (and your derivative work of my work) under certain conditions. When I license my code to you under the GPL, I grant you rights you would not otherwise have -- specifically, the right to copy and distribute it in certain ways. Compared to not being allowed to distribute it at all (the situation normal copyright leaves you in) you have gained significant freedom.
You might suggest that I put my work in the public domain instead, thus permitting anyone to do whatever they want with it. The problem with that is that I want to make sure that anyone who gets a copy of my code -- or any derivative work of my code -- will be able to make further derivatives of it. Under copyright laws, after all, I have certain control over derivative works of my work, and I want to use that control to best ensure the freedom of users of those works. I do this by placing my work under GPL (or a similar license).
By putting my work under GPL, I am not restricting your freedom, because if I did not license it to you, you would have no freedom with regard to it at all, at all. I am not "restricting your freedom in order to ensure someone else's freedom". I am granting both you and the "someone else" freedoms neither of you would otherwise have.
Again, recall the default situation of no license. If I give you a copy of my code without giving you permission to produce derivative works, and you make a derivative work and distribute it, you are violating copyright, just as much as if you ripped a few dozen copies of Windows 2000 and sold them on the streets of New York City. By giving you permission to produce derivative works, I am expanding your freedom -- and by making sure that your derivative works are also free, I am expanding the freedom of their users as well. You have lost nothing; you and the rest of the world have both gained.
Sure, an occasional recording of the free software song might be fun (at least for some), but I like the Web as a primarily-text medium.
Audio postings to slashdot, anyone? ;-(
FreeBSD isn't a distribution of the GNU system, it's an entirely different system that happens to come with GNU tools extra.
/sbin/init.
If you removed all the GNU tools from a stock FreeBSD installation, it would still boot and basically everything would work.
All current Linux distributions are GNU systems, however. The core system around the kernel is all GNU software.
Remove all the GNU tools and libraries from a stock Linux system, and you'll be lucky if you can get as far as a single-user shell, let alone
Now, Tom Christianson (the Perl guy) had the idea a while back of creating a GNU distribution, but using the FreeBSD kernel. That would be a GNU system, and for that particular system, the GNU/FreeBSD moniker would be appropriate (although I doubt that was his intent).
Alternatively, if you replaced the GNU tools of a Linux distribution with the FreeBSD tools and libraries (after making appropriate changes to accomodate the kernel differences), you'd have something that you could justifiably call FreeBSD/Linux (that would be a much more constructive use of Tom's time, I think).
See how it works?
DNA just wants to be free...
Funny. The fact that the FSF wants acknowledgment of the work they've done, and the fact that the following is posted on their website as part of their argument for free software, seems contradictory:
That's from Why Software Should Be Free, by Richard Stallman, Copyright (C) 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc. [emphasis mine]
I have no problem with them wanting credit for their work, but then they should remove that argument from their website. Of course, doing that would leave a huge hole in their whole argument for free software, so instead they choose to ignore their own hypocrisy.
Want absolute, unarguable, 100% philosophically pure freedom? Release your work to the Public Domain. Why bother with licenses at all? After all, a license is just some kind of restriction.
The system that exists to protect intellectual property, I'm sure, has a noble intent. However, we've seen it abused by business types with the morals of your favorite voracious predator. These people have no appreciation for the hack; they make no considerations towards technical improvement. All they want is financial gain and this is often achieved by hording knowledge. Progress suffers because of this attitude.
The GPL is a hack of the whole license system. It uses the license to, in effect, eliminate a lot of the abuse that licensing allows. But by its very definition, such a license will involve some kind of limitations on what one can do.
It'd be nice if we could live within an environment that allowed total freedom. But history has proven that such anarchy ends up with the rule being "might is right". We all know Corporate might has almost forced this rule into being again. We hardly need to strengthen this situation with a call for a return to anarchy.
In terms of this "debt" do you mean besides those of us HOWTO authors who send any book profits to the FSF, or the coders that contribute back to GNU software? Perhaps you mean the people that use Linux, GNU, and Open Source Software in the same breath and gave GNU the popularity it deserves. Let's face it, GNU helped Linux with software, but Linux made GNU popular.
My personal opinion is that RMS is peeved that Linus is the Open Source poster child and not him. Which is probably a valid point, but shouldn't cause him to be this mean towards us Linux users.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
It should be obvious that someone like Stallman would be against the Amazon patents. The attempt to patent an e-commerce technique goes against everything he, as well as other followers of GNU, believe in. ;)
The only thing I don't agree with is his defense of free music, and his attack on the music industry. Of course, the reason why I don't agree with this is that at the university I attend, the T-lines become totally saturated during the daytime by people downloading the latest crap by the Backstreet Boys, etc. on Napster. Considering I listen to hardcore/punk/emo, I'd wouldn't bother me too much (at least in terms of bandwidth) if MP3s weren't so readily available.
In all seriousness, I do agree with Stallman; anyone who grew up in the 80s knows that the music industry used to put inserts on Cassette Tapes that said "Home Cassette Copying is Ruining the Music Industry". These are also the same people that put a damper on DAT. And yet, the industry is still around. What Stallman says needs to be heard...
By analogy, that would mean that if I (having no association with the FSF) wrote a book using EMACS & GROFF (FSF tools), RMS and the FSF could claim credit for helping to write that book. Sorry, I don't buy it.
The GNU tools have been ported to just about every OS known to man. I run gawk, sed, and a bunch of other gnu tools on my NT box -- does this make it "GNU NT"? Gnu has created a bunch of really good, portable tools and released them under the GPL. Linus & crew didn't have to use the GNU tools. They could have re-invented the wheel & rewrote them all from scratch, or used the BSD versions. Instead they chose to honor the spirit of the GPL and take some existing open-source code, build on it, and release it back to the community. The FSF has achieved great things in it's own right -- without GCC, there would be no Linux, Apache, etc. But it is no more right for RMS to claim credit for Linux than it would be for a teacher to claim credit for a student's work. The student's work may be built on the foundation of the teacher laid; but that is true with all things. All progress is built on the achievements of those who came before us.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Linux != GNU. The article states that Linux is the end result of the GNU project's efforts to create a unix-like OS. Linux was created independently of the FSF - the Linux developers used FSF tools and released it under the GPL. I really hope this is just the ignorance of the journalist and not RMS trying to take credit for Linux.
[IMHO]RMS needs to lighten his stance against Amazon. I think Jeff Bezos's reply to Tim O'Reilly's open letter did a good job of explaning why Amazon had to get the patents it did. Software patents are a Very Bad Thing, I agree; but until the system is fixed they are a fact of life that we have to live with. At least Jeff has acknowledged that the patent system is broken and is advocating change. As bad as the Amazon patents are, just imagine how much worse things would be if Barnes & Noble (or Micro~1) beat them to the punch. Let's see if Jeff keeps his word before we fly off the handle. There are a lot of other companies that are misusing software patents to a much worse degree than Amazon -- why not boycott them instead?
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
GNP - GNP is Not Pizza.
Let's take a some dough, eat it alot and get to know it's properties and then make our own dough recipe. I'll work and that. Someone else can work on a recipe for sauce and cheese, etc. Once it gets to the point where we have lots of people supporting our pizza project, let's start a holy crusade against all other food.
Anyone who doesn't eat our Foodix will be told they are eating inferiour food and because of that, they don't deserve the space they occupy.
Soon Foodix will be the latest buzzword and it will have all started right here!!!
OK, OK, I'm going to feed the troll.
The freedom part of the GPL is that everyone else gets the same rights as you. The source was made available to you, so you have to make it available to others (if you distribute binaries).
No, it's not totally free. IRL, you can do pretty much whatever you like inside your house, but once you get out on the street there are things you can't do (drive as fast as you like, on the wrong side of the road, etc.). These limitations are placed on you to protect the freedom (and life) of others. Likewise, the GPL puts restrictions on you to protect others' access to free software.
Total freedom, IMHO, disappeared the day the second sentient being was born on this planet. Freedom is as much about everyone's freedom as it is about yours.
Oh, and Franklin was talking about essential freedoms. He probably wouldn't include software, even if you could explain it to him.
--
E_NOSIG
I remember the good old days when the Internet just had words on it. Now I can't get what Stallman has to say without turning my sound system on. Why would anyone make available the sounds of an interview, when it would be far more efficient and easier for everyone to access as text?
Is Wired too lazy to transcribe or did I miss a link to the text version?