Slashdot Mirror
Interview With Richard Stallman
An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has a fascinating and lengthy interview with Richard Stallman who founded the GNU Project in 1984, and the Free Software Foundation in 1985. He also originally authored a number of well known and highly used development tools, including the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU symbolic debugger (GDB) and GNU Emacs.
The interview covers a wide range of topics, from rms's early years, to his current role in the Free Software Foundation. He discusses the current state of GNU/Hurd, the problems with non-free software, and much more."
Funny you should mention that. I'm relatively new to /. and thus frequently feel like I must be completely missing something when I see the huge /. devotion to the open source world. But, here I am a bright, worldly, technocentric, system-building, wired guy... and I've just simply not heard good enough sermons to convert. I'm intrigued, periodically very impressed with so much of the work, but at some gut level I'm just not sensing the long-term head of steam and ecomonic viability of the approach (or is it lifestyle?).
Most interviews like this seem to take as irreducible truths that people like me are dumb as rocks... but not a single IT customer of mine (ranging from non-profits, to retailers, to municipalities, and so on) as developed the sense that they're on the wrong track, let alone done anything to go this route.
OK, do your worst (or, save me from myself, if you can!).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...here is a Gloklaw story about a patent (U.S. Patent number 6,836,883, titled "Method and system for compiling multiple languages", described as a method or "process involving the parsing and analyzing of more than one source language to produce a common language file that may then be read by the same or another front end system.") that was awarded to Microsoft. Says PJ, "The patent cites the Free Software Foundation's GCC in the prior art section." Microsoft's motivation for applying for this patent is: "The protection and licensing of intellectual property allows companies and individuals to obtain a return on investment, sustaining business and encouraging future rounds of research and investment in the IT industry."
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
1. What good is a diagram when words work fine? I don't need no stinking diagram!
2. "Headline" also doesn't need the "a" because it is silent. In fact, Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page actually; he was the brains) chose to spell Led Zeppelin without the "a" because they thought people would be too stupid to realize it was not "leed" Zeppelin. Abolish the "a" now!
Um, it is safe to move along now.
How to Download YouTube Videos
I mean I love most of the gnu software I have running on my system and god bless any contributor to that effort but - woh! - he says some of the funniest things like:
The Workplace:
JA: What if your job requires you to use non-free software?
Richard Stallman: I would quit that job. Would you participate in something anti-social just because somebody pays you to?
I mean come on. Both free and non-free software has its place in the modern world and I need to take technology to a religious level like I need a hole in my head.
He is sooo wacky.
ACK
If they were able to capture enough of the value of what they write to pay for the legal defense of their rights they'd probably write a lot less free software.
This gets to a fundamental problem with the incentives created by taxing things other than asset value:
Possession is rewarded over creation.
Think about it: Once you possess something, you basically have no tax burden. You enjoy the benefits of young men dutifully going out to die in wars, the entire legal edifice describing and protecting your rights and without you having to pay a cent. You can just soak the public for these benefits.
Taxing everything but possession (income, capital gains, sales, value added, etc) is just a way to tax the creative process.
Naturally, creators who are trying to get a leg up on the situation end up selling their creations cheap to those whose possession is subsidized by the tax payments of the creators.
Well, there is one exception to this rule of no taxation of possession -- and that is the patent maintanence fee. Patents are the only assets that the government taxes. This is an incredibly regressive tax hitting hardest those who are earliest to support the realization of a new technology's value -- forcing them to sell their rights ("assign") cheap to someone who has been sitting around enjying the government's protection.
It all adds up to a very nasty way of sucking capital out of the hands of creators and giving over to the hands of possessors.
So the creators, unable to change the tax laws to tax assets rather than creative processes (becuse they can't buy the Ways and Means Committee) become socialists.
This is directly related to the issue of outsourcing since if programmers who had created the value of the information industry had been allowed to retain the value they created, they wouldn't need jobs. The corporations would be paying them royalties or be paying companies owned by the programmers for the rights to their software instead of just throwing creators out on the street after extracting their youth and creativity.
A system that would work would elimnate all existing taxes (although not necessarily tariffs) and just tax net assets at a rate equal to the interest rate on the national debt -- exempting from taxation the same assets that are exempted by personal bankruptcy protection: home and tools of the trade.
Seastead this.
There is not taking away that GCC is a good tool. It is.
My point though is that GCC [as it is today, and by that I mean competent and competitive] has little if anything to do with RMS.
It's as if Linus gave up on the kernel in 1995. Would we still go "oh well if it weren't for Linus, who missed the 2.0, 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6 releases we wouldn't have the kernel we have today?"
People also seem to misunderstand my anger a bit. I'm happy that RMS started the FSF movement and got OSS/FS rolling. I think what he did was important and sticking to an unpopular idea shows character.
I'm just trying to dispel this floating myth that all the tools we use today are because of RMS. They're not.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Amongst the flames & trolls there were some detailed & reasonably thoughtful responses (including from someone who's got as 'Foe' - hi spectecjr:) - & the only argument I heard that stood up as not obvious Straw men, irrelevant, or based on a misunderstanding, was that some developers do not consider the four freedoms described by the GNU philosophy page to be fundamental freedoms.
The best counter-argument to that that I can think of is that it is only a matter of degree; the freedom to study, redistribute (etc) software is less important than the freedom not to be beaten to death by government clowns, say, but that does not mean that the software freedoms are not, in themselves, important.
I have a bad feeling I'm getting into areas dealt with my philosophy-101; can anyone else (a) advance sensible reasons why intelligent, informed people might produce non-Free s/w, and (b) refutations of those reasons.
Please, no confusion with 'Open source' development advantages or disadvantages - I'm specifically interested in the purely MORAL arguments made by RMS.
Arguments such as 'my family has to eat', 'how would programs like Photoshop be developed if it was Free?', "I am free to distribute software I write under any license I like", etc etc, are missing the point. I'd hate to find myself deciding that the reason is that proprietary developers consciously dismiss the moral / ethical issues as uninteresting or irrelevant. I know there are a lot of people here working on proprietary as well as Free s/w and you can't all be trolls :)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
You think of RMS as a hippie. One could disagree, about that, but one shouldn't forget hippies are people too. Friendly, freedom loving people with no intent to hurt anyone.
I really don't see any reason for you to spit dirt at RMS.
Well, a previous Slashdot article linked to this:
_ lifecycle.htm
http://www.moonviewscientific.com/essays/software
It's pretty good, and it explains why OSS outcompetes and outperforms commercial software in the long run. Proprietary, commercial, software will always be around for niche markets or emerging market though.
The OSS development model works because instead of tapping the finite resources of individual companies, it taps the nearly infinite resources of human creativity through the internet. The only thing that could suck the steam out of the OSS movement is if the internet broke down (unlikely) or if humans stopped being creative (haha).
As for economic viability, I know this sounds crazy, but a lot of people do things just for fun, for recognition, for pride, for the love of their work or simply just because the problem was there. Money isn't the only thing that can make people produce excellent software.
Is of course the GNU/Darwin. Somehow it is what GNU always wanted to have - a GNU running on a microkernel (at least sort of). (I admit, I don't know what licence applies to Darwin).
You can defy gravity... for a short time
I think Stallman is a bit eccentric about his ideas about freedom. I would venture to guess that he's wired a bit funny. His ideologies are are not practical nor are they rooted in reality. My freedom is not in jeopardy because I elected to use MacOS X on an Apple G5 (my wallet was but not not my freedom). Stallman presumes that his intelligence and knowledge give him the right to not respect the boundaries of others. When someone tells him that he can't have his way with their software (or if it isn't written by his own minions or philosophies), he cries foul and plays the freedom card. This isn't an ideology, this is arrogance and extreme anti-social behavior. This sort of behavior is very consistent with a high-functioning autism known as "Asperger's Syndrome."
Draw your own conclusions...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
charging money for software to cover costs and run a business. Everyone is free to buy it or not. I worked for 12 years on a software package that assists and optimizes the manufacture of printed circuit boards. It has become very difficult to produce PCBs without this type of software. It would never have been developed as free software. Custom "one-off" solutions would force hardware manufacturers out of their expertise. Without charging for software I'm guessing there would be alot fewer choice we'd be able to make.
I do not deny big RMS and FSF contributions to GCC, glibc, and of course the GPL. Yes, they get (part of) the ball rolling. But this does not justify their requests to use the term "GNU/Linux". DEC's (and X Consortium) contribution was of the same magnitude, because without the good graphical interface Linux (and any of *BSDs) would be nowhere near the current state. Yet they do not demand the term "xc/Linux" should be used.
If they recognize the changes as good and accept them back into their code base, that is their right, and that is how free software projects work.
In fact this is precisely the way Open source projects work. I.e. judging the code by its quality instead of some "political" reasons.
Do not get me wrong - I consider freedoms I have from using (and writing) the GPL-licensed code to be very valuable. Let me repeat that: I agree that without RMS (and FSF) we would be nowhere near the current state. But this is about as true for RMS/FSF/GNU as is for Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox et al./Linux, Jim Gettys et al./DEC/X Consortium, */Apache project, and many others (Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie did not contribute much of the code for my system, but they created an excellent API and design; the same for Internet protocol authors, and so on). But nobody except RMS does request that I use the term their project name/Linux. And, unfortunately, the present FSF efforts with respect to GCC and glibc looks less than nice to me.
Currently I can switch the kernel I use for something else (*BSD, may be even HURD) the same way as I can switch my glibc (to dietlibc, for example), and GCC (to Intel CC or lcc). I use Linux, GCC, glibc, Perl, xorg/X11, etc., because they best fit my needs. GNU project is nothing special in this.
-Yenya
--
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
Enforcement of high labor standards in rich countries is a good thing. It imposes higher costs on employers, prompting them to move jobs that become unsustainable under such a regime to more permissive regulatory environments. This increases the demand for labour in these economies and as a result decreases the substitutional value of labor standards in this new regulatory environment, prompting improved conditions of work.
The point being that when you say:
you are largely correct. But unrestricted trade and enforcement of labor standards are not mutually exclusive and the notion that they have to be is fallacy on the part of Ms Klein, a lot of corporations that threaten to outsource jobs if they are not given a free reign of labor standards, and in this case, you.
It's a shame that Stallman seems to be mostly interested in bashing the Open Source movement.
1. Open Source is more like Microsoft than GNU:
"The open source movement promotes what they consider a technically superior development model that usually gives technically superior results. The values they cite are the same ones Microsoft appeals to: narrowly practical values."
2. Linus Torvalds is a corrupting influence:
"People know that Linus Torvalds wrote his program Linux to have fun. And people know that Linus Torvalds did not say that it's wrong to stop users for sharing and changing the software they use. If they think that our system was started by him and primarily owes existence to him, they will tend to follow his philosophy, and that weakens our community."
just because we are competing with proprietary software on issues of technical merit doesn't mean we think people should choose the program for source control based on technical qualities alone. That would mean assigning zero value to freedom itself. If you value freedom, you will resist the temptation to use a program that takes away your freedom, whatever technical advantages it may have.
Proprietary software is unethical, because it denies the user the basic freedom to control her own computer and to cooperate. It may also be of low quality or insecure, but that's a secondary issue. I will reject it even if it is the best quality in the world, simply because I value my freedom too much to give it up for that.
That is in addition to the constant insistance on not useing binary drivers for hardware, which is also again in that article. The only freedom that I'm interested in is the freedom to choose what works. I don't need to see the source, it is useless to me. If it doesn't work or it only partially does what I need it to, it might as well not exist.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
First, there is the good old "free as in freedom (libre)" vs. "free as in beer". I think most slashdotters get that distinction.
Here's the thing, though. There can't be unlimited freedom (libre). If I were free to do anything I feel like, that impinges on your freedoms. My desired right to punch you in the face impinges on your right to personal security. These freedoms cannot coexist.
Upshot: which freedoms do you fight for, which do you value? Which has priority, which is right? Should people and/or corporations be free to earn an exclusive revenue stream from a creative or useful work that fits in the "IP" category? Or should there be, rather, unrestricted freedom to copy said works? Should a corporation/person be free to distribute a program as binary only, or must the public be free to view the source code?
I'm not trying to be redundant (as this may seem obvious to some), and I'm not trying to get everyone to repeat themselves in reply to my post. I'm just stating what I see to be an underlying theme in the discussion, which I think sometimes gets murky when people on multiple sides of the issue all argue for "freedom".
I believe that one of the reasons that Open Source is winning the terminology war with FSF is because it actually supports more freedom, while pointing out the real benefits of this model.
Actually, he has a point. Furthermore, every human exceeds their sodium intake requirements from normal food consumption (without sodium supplements). If Ghandi were alive to day, he'd ask for curry powder on his Lay's potatoe chips. With recommendations like that, an epidemic of "high blood pressure" and "the shits" would soon follow. Ghandi is a doctor's worst nightmare.