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RMS Says Free Software Is Good
NYU Information Systems chairman Mike Uretsky and NYU computer science professor Edmond Schonberg briefly introduced Stallman to a standing-room-only crowd at NYU's Courant Mathematical Institute.
Stallman drew laughter and applause during Uretsky's introduction by calling out "I do Free software, Open Source is a different crowd" when Uretsky made a reference to Open Source software. Rather than a point-by-point rebuttal of Mundie's speech advocating Microsoft's current "shared source" initiative, Stallman's speech presented both an overview of the Free software movement -- several times emphasizing how it differs from the more pragmatic Open Source movement -- and a defense of Free software at several levels. Though peppered with jokes and historical asides, the bulk of Stallman's talk was devoted to explaining the benefits of Free software and comparing community-based, non-proprietary software development to the "deliberately inflicted waste" of proprietary software.
The publicity that Mundie's speech has stirred up around software licensing is obviously not forgotten, though. Stallman began by saying "I'd like to thank Microsoft for providng me the opportunity to use this platform. For the last few weeks I've felt like an author whose book was fortuitously banned somewhere, but all the articles about it are giving the wrong author's name, because Microsoft describes our license as an 'Open Source' license." Stallman emphasized at several points that the approach he and GNU project have is at its core philosophical, not merely pragmatic.
Beginning with cooking rather than computers, Stallman pointed out the advantages of being able to share functional documents in the form of recipes. He pointed that while nearly everyone cooks, "unless you're great, you probably use recipes. You've probably had the experience of getting a recipe from a friend -- and unless you're a total neophyte, you probably have also had the experience of changing the recipe. If you've made changes and you make it for your friends, and they like it, you can write down your changes for them." Imagine, he said, if recipes were packaged in black boxes, unavailable for inspection.
Stallman named the qualities he uses to define Free software. He began with "freedom zero" -- the freedom to run the software for any purpose -- noting, "If you're not even free to run the software for anything you want, it's a pretty damn restrictive license."
He went on to describe three additional freedoms which distinguish Free from proprietary software: the right to change software to suit user needs; to redistribute the software; and to publish improved versions.
These freedoms are absent in proprietary software, Stallman said, and cited what he said was his first taste to the evils of non-disclosure statements, which took place while he was working as an operating system developer at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Stallman knew of a computer scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University with a copy of the Xerox source, and asked for a copy in order to add this feature. He found his request was denied, because his fellow academic had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
"He had refused to cooperate with just about the the entire population of the planet Earth, because he had signed an non-disclosure agreement. This was my first encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and I was the victim -- my lab and I were the victims. The lesson it taught me is that NDAs have victims, they aren't harmless."
Toward the close of his speech, Stallman pointedly applied the advantages of Free software to businesses, giving examples of ways in which a community of more than 100,000 developers leads to more robust and maintainable software, all issues of price aside.
Describing his experiences after releasing GNU-Emacs in 1984, Stallman said "I got a msg that said 'I think I saw a bug, and here's a fix.'" Others emailed him with new feature requests and bug reports, and in many cases, the code to implement an improved version, "until they were pouring in on my so fast that just making use of the information I was getting was a big job. Microsoft doesn't have this problem."
The iterative, inclusive software development process resulted in constantly improving code for the GNU Project's various pieces of software, said Stallman. "What people began to note around 1990 was that our SW was better -- it was more powerful than the proprietary alternatives."
Since that time (before the Linux kernel was developed and employed alongside many GNU utilities), Free and Open Source software has increased dramatically in use and public acceptance.
Citing the large number of companies now paying to develop Free software, and that the majority of pages on the World Wide Web are served with Apache running on GNU/Linux systems, Stallman scoffed at claims that the GPL was unfriendly to business. "Microsoft says that busineses can't get along with the GPL. So if businesses don't include IBM, and HP, and Sun, then maybe they're right."
Addressing one persistent myth, Stallman said "It's not true, sometimes I wish it was true, that if a company uses GPL in any project, that the whole project has to be GPLd. If programs operate at arms' length from each other, then they're legally separate, in general."
Again, though, Stallman was careful to point out that the advantages and intent of Free software had more to do with ethics and social good in a variety of fields than any particular bottom line. Closed software, he said, "causes psychosocial harm which affects the spirit of scientific cooperation. Progress in science crucially depends on people being able to work together. Nowadays you see scientists act as if they're in gangs at war with other little gangs of scientists ... we're all held back." And not just scientists -- of anyone who uses computers in the workplace, Stallman said that in the absence of a broad right to modify and improve the software they use, "Their lives and jobs are going to be frustrating -- people protect themselves from frustration by deciding not to care. When this happens, it's bad for those people and for society as a whole."
The argument was indeed that. Read it straight from Microsoft:
A new product or service that disrupts an industry and eventually wins most of the market share.
The term "disruptive technology" was coined by Clayton M. Christensen in 1997 to describe new technical inventions that distrupt the established industries and economic patterns and cause existing, dominating companies to be replaced by new players based on the new inventions. Yet the distruptive inventions do not have to be technical. Can the GNU GPL, a 12-year-old software license and a hack on the copyright law, also be called a distruptive technology? It seems so. Microsoft is the most successful example of the proprietary software business model and dominates today's software market. Microsoft's recent attack on the GPL shows the attempt of an established player to try to suppress something new, up and coming. Except this time, the new player does not play by the rules. Instead, through viral-like propagation properties, the GPL establishes a new social model where software is passed freely and shared. The GPL distrupts the proprietary business model by social engineering, building a new way of life based on freedom and cooperation. Microsoft can assimilate anything following the proprietary business model but will have problem dealing with the social model of Free Software.
As the GPLed software domain further expands, the proprietary business model is graduately pushed aside. How will the Borg assimilate the virus inherently incompatible with the Borg's nature? Will the virus distrupt and ultimately destory the Borg?
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Everyone knew that RMS was going to be critical of Microsoft, but I personally didn't expect him to lay into Ransom Love.
Here's how eWeek is reporting it. To whet your appetite here's a direct quote from the article:
RMS: Free Software Good,
Dog Bites Man, Sky Blue
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Or you go to an expensive restaurant, pay an exhorbitant amount of money, eat the best dish you have ever tasted in your life and still have no idea how it was made, maybe not even what it was.
Recipes can be propietary, expensive, and for good reason. Good luck trying to get that famous chef to tell the secret ingredient.
The lesson? If you're paying for prepared, closed-recipe food, and you're paying big money, it better be good. Really good, to be worth it.
Win9x is the OS version of the Hungry Man dinner.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
In news today, Bill Gates, upon hearing RMS reply promptly said "Oh!" and vanished in a puff of smoke. The smoke, of course, was blue, tinged with streaks of red.
In related news, all multinational corporations trying to extend and embrace their software and hardware patents and copyrights promptly decided to throw in the towel, and relinquish all rights to the public good.
As a result, previous estimates of GDP growth for the world have been quintupled for the forthcoming year, due to the increase in useful knowledge for the world's citizenry.
Refusing to comment at press time are holders of patents for biological innovations in gene therapy.
(c) 2001 All Of The Above (TM)
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
What Stallman said about the recipes awakens some interesting thoughts. IMHO, it's a brilliant metaphor for the open source situation.
- You get a recipe from an online database, go to the store and buy (or order online from the comfort of your own toilet seat) the ingredients. You cook and improvise. You eat. You enjoy. Next time, you improve your skills and the resulting meal by improvising even more.
- You buy a finished heat-and-eat meal in the store, witch may or may not be protected by several patents and trademark protections, you nuke it, eat it, burp and discard. You'll never know exactly what you just ate, and it's difficult to make improvements the next time you want something to eat.
.../Bosse
Looks like a fish, drives like a fish, steers like a cow.