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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."
...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.
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.
Did it ever occur to you that people work on proprietary software to make money, because they like to buy all sorts of things that require money, and they don't see software as a movement, but rather as "stuff" that runs on a computer? The main issue the people you cannot understand have is you try to equate the 1's and 0's of binary software with the issues involving civil rights or religious freedom or democracy. They're not the same. Software is just a "thing" that people use. The others are real issues that are important to fight and die for. One really sounds like a loser when one tries to elevate software to that level. I know the first thought in *MY* mind is "Why don't you find a REAL cause instead of pretending you have a valid crusade with this free software business"?
Everything is just "stuff"; programs are just "stuff" than run on a computer and books are just "stuff" that are spewed out by a printing press. Would you call me a crackpot for equating the 'A's 'B's and 'C's of the printed page with civil liberties?
The question of civil liberties is never about the "stuff", because it's just "stuff". The question arises when humans decide what they're going to allow other humans to do with the stuff. When you're allowed to have a printing press, but restricted in what you can print with it or in whether you can change how it operates, that is a civil rights issue.
The computer is the printing press of our time. It has been made abundantly clear that certain forces wish to take as much control of this society-changing invention out of the people's hands and into their hands as possible. All the speculative warnings about where non-free software is taking us is coming frighteningly close to reality. The only reason this may fail is because some people started to treat this like a civil rights issue ten, twenty years ago and now a system that respects your rights exists.
Nobody has had to fight and die for these rights; thank God. That doesn't make it a non-issue. And I guarantee you I would fight and die for them just like I would fight against a person who said a printing press was just "stuff".
Its like trying to make a moral issue out of wearing white shoes after labor day.
Yeah, that's ridiculous, because shoes are just stuff! By the way, I'm the government and if you wear white shoes after labor day you'll be imprisoned and/or shot. Have a nice day.
The enemies of Democracy are