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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."
This is a GNU/Interview. Get it right please!
Someone should teach the editors how to diagram a sentence.
... and as usual the person who makes it his business to inform, impower, and proliferate benefitial technology will be ignored by the greedy, insane corporate monster and comments against him will be moded up by the PR sock-puppets who frequent Slashdot.
btw frell off sock-puppets. `(
Stallman will not change his beliefs because they aren't practical.
No sane person would sit down and write their own C compiler+debugger from scratch because he didn't like the licenses of the currently available compilers.
Stallman is gonzo batshit crazy, and that's why he was able to start a movement - normal people would have evaluated the difficulties and not even tried. If his movemement hadn't caught on, Stallman would still be labouring by himself, in obscurity, trying to make his vision a reality.
BTW, the market hasn't been slowly squeezing out Open Source, quite the contrary.
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.
> Maybe he's ahead of his time or something, but right now, his ideas just aren't
> viable
That's not his problem. Or at least, it's not just his problem. You can't blame someone for identifying problems and coming up with solutions just because most people don't understand their worth at the moment. Current womens/black/animal rights were won through slow, unpopular and sometimes illegal methods, and people criticized those at the time too. When people can't tape programmes off the tv or listen to music they've bought on CD (or wherever) in the car is when people will start to pay more attention to some of these issues.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
...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.
Exactly. The best thing RMS has done [w.r.t. software] was get the ball rolling. I think he deserves all the credit in the world for that.
I don't think he deserves the credit for the current state of things. GCC is now the result of 1000s of contributors and several dozen active developers none of whom are RMS.
But does anyone know their [GCC developers] names? Hell, I couldn't even name one off the top of my head. [Mark Mitchell comes to mind but I don't think thats right]...
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Stallman may be fanatical but you must be blind. I see companies embracing open source and thriving. And you know what. Open source was here before their was a market for it, and it will be here after if it comes to that.
Sounds like "There is no God but Allah; Mohammed is His Prophet".
The subtext of your argument is that (if I'm reading you correctly), because only a small minority see freedom in software as important, free software is not viable. That minority however is important: that minority is a huge proportion of those who make technology decisions for computer companies, which is why we're seeing a situation where most servers today seem to run free software. That minority is also intelligent and educated enough to be able to support free software, to provide the infrastructure that allows it to exist. And free software, to an extent, is self-sustaining as long as someone, somewhere, believes in it. If there's only one person in the world who believes in it, that person can modify and improve the software they have. The same argument cannot be made for proprietary software which requires a large enough market to become sustainable.
In other words, the marketshare of free software is not a serious issue and never has been. Those handing their private parts and a mallet to Apple have more to fear than those handing them to RMS and ESR.
RMS has already won the war, to a certain extent. Free software is no longer a lunatic idea. The second most popular operating system is free software and is just as viable as the first.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That's why I completely support the anti-piracy measures that companies like Microsoft favor. I just think the MS and company don't go far enough in enforcing the anti-piracy measures. I want every person in the United States to know that installing the same copy of a single user license of Windows on their PC and all their friends and families PCs is piracy. I want all of them to know that swapping music and movie files online is illegal and that there are no loopholes no matter how much they might wish there are. I want them to know that even sharing a VHS copy of a TV program broadcast for free over the air is considered to be an illegal action here in the U.S. And I want these things enforced. Once there are consequences behind these actions, I think people will realize how totally screwed they are. Then I can sit back and say, "I told you so"... :)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
If you pull all the Linux based products off the market right now, I guarentee retailers would feel it. If you forced all IT companies into costly contracts for Windows, and therefore reduced the capabilities of their servers, I guarentee they would feel it.
If you don't care about your freedoms, then you're an idiot who doesn't deserve to have them. The beauty is that if you think I'm wrong, by inference you must take Stallman's side as truth.
You talk about RMS like he has "missed" something. Do you think a guy who has been fighting this hard since 1984 hasn't had time to contemplate his goal? I think perhaps it's you who has missed something.
And on a more personal note, you're a fucking retard.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
In no particular order:
- RMS was useful at one time but he should now leave serious persons do the real work.
- RMS is too extreme
- RMS is a crackpot
- RMS is a communist
- RMS is a dirty hippy that smells bad
- GNU/Linux is childish/idotic/ego-driven
- The GPL is not free/ viral etc...
I just wish for once all the idiots who will inevitably spout their mouth would just shut up.
Richard Stallman has consistently proved he was a true visionnary. He forsaw the problems with software and copyright law 20 years ago and devised an extremely clever answer : the GPL.
Not only that but he gave us great software to work with. Some he wrote himself (GCC, GDB, Emacs), some he inspired others to write.
He warned us many times when few would listen. About the importance of protecting freedom. About the importance of tracking copyright ownership. About software patents. About the right to read. Every time he's been criticized, ridiculed or dismissed as a lunatic and every time he was right.
It is time to recognize Richard Stallman's place in history as a great modern philosopher.
So I, for one, would like to thank deeply RMS for dedicating his life to our freedom. For standing tall when no one else would.
Live long, RMS, and never give up.
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
Hmm, somebody is full of themselves.. but it doesn't seem to be RMS.
A bit of reading comprehension and critical analysis would go a long way, you know.
As is amply clear from the article, RMS doesn't see his major contribution to be code. He has coded, and he enjoys coding, but his cause is not to produce code - it is to spread the free software ideology. Now, you might agree with that ideology, or you might not, but to intentionally misread somebody's words in an attempt to characterize them as 'full of themselves' is arrogant, small-minded, and spiteful.
For what RMS considers important (the promotion of the Free Software ideology), he IS indispensable. There is no-one else that is as well-known, respected, and staunchly committed to the FS movement as Stallman is. And that's what he cares about, so he is correct when he calls himself 'indispensable'.
You might scoff at the 'respected' comment, but trust me when I say that there are a lot of people (including me), that are not in complete agreement with his philosophy, who still respect him - because he acts in good faith, has good intentions, and makes his intentions clear. RMS is the fucking ephitamy of a straight shooter. And that's a lot more than you can say about most people.
-Laxitive
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I can already see the way these posts are heading.
Talk about a bunch of ungrateful children...
He is now and has been consistent in his views. He hasn't changed his message. The fact that his message is still relevant after 20 years should say something.
Richard Stallman, over the past 20 years, has done more than most of you put together will do in your entire lifetime and all you can do is complain and make fun of him for it.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
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.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
What he failed to note, however, is that people don't care about doing what's right. The vast majority of the public doesn't even care about losing some freedom (such as the FCC broadcast flag issue he mentions). What the public cares about is discomfort.
As long as a loss of freedom, even a "big" freedom, does not manifest itself in the form of present discomfort, a person has no motivation to change. Folks like Stallman who feel a present discomfort due to future possibilities are a rare breed, and while there is a danger in worrying too much about possibilities there is value in thinking about the future.
However, since most people only care about the discomfort they feel "now", it will be hard to get political change. We will probably see some soon as there are a lot of people feeling "now" discomfort due to the international trade policies (you cannot blame capitalism for sending jobs to lower-cost providers, even if the companies that do it abuse the power, because that is what capitalism is designed to do. Capitalism is working just fine!).
I'm also not quite sure what Stallman thinks people will do for food if people quit their jobs over non-free software. And you have to ask the question, if people "donate" money to you for writing non-free software (i.e., they pay you for your services as a programmer rather than for the right to use and control the software), is it really non-free?
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts. In summary, I don't think any of Stallman's "solutions" are real solutions as they merely mitigate the symptoms; they don't eliminate the cause, which is basic human selfishness.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
You have a very simplistic way of viewing the world.
If a large corporation offers to move one of its factories to a country with a GDP less than that of, say, Nevada, in return for some tax breaks, do you think the government of that country will say no?
After a couple of years, if that corporation says that wages are climbing too quickly and it may have to leave if it isn't stopped, do you think the government will sit by and do nothing? Or do you think they might move ahead with measures to reduce further wage increases?
If you're saying that that's what the people in that country have to put up with in order to be given a better standard of living at some point in the future, that's bullshit. Corporations these days play countries off against each other to ensure that they get the best deal they can, and they ensure that this state of affairs won't change by locking in countries to free-trade agreements, which are enforced for them by larger, wealthier countries.
The world ain't black and white, and smartass soundbites like "protectionism only prolongs the poverty" don't help people living on an annual wage lower than your weekly junk-food budget.
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
As I wrote in the comment to another KernelTrap story, using the term "GNU/Linux" (referring to the GCC and glibc essential role in the system) is totally misleading.
Both GCC and glibc are in the current state despite the RMS and FSF efforts. For GCC, remember the situation from the 2.8 times, when an independent team (egcs) had to fork GCC, because the FSF-managed development of GCC was dead. In the same way remember years of work that H.J.Lu invested in Linux libc, because GNU libc was unmaintained and unusable. And of course the work of Ulrich Drepper, who took GNU libc2 and developed it into a form usable in Linux-based system. Ulrich considers none of his work on glibc to be a part of a GNU project (details here, see the bottom part of the text). And it looks like even the present situation in the GCC development is the same (anonymous comment at KernelTrap).
So I can say run GCC/glibc/perl/X.org/TeX/etc/Linux system, but it has nothing special to do with GNU and FSF, and I just prefer the short name "Linux" (named after a single biggest, always-running, and essential component of the system).
-Yenya
--
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
He really comes across as duplicitous when he says over and over how he is "fighting for freedom" and then says the following:
... I do not think it means what you think it means.
JA: What about the programmers...
Richard Stallman: What about them? The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job.
JA: Such as?
Richard Stallman: There are thousands of different jobs people can have in society without developing non-free software. You can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid.
So if one freely decides to write a program and not divulge the code, then that person is antisocial? Hey - I don't accuse Colonel Sanders of being antisocial just because he keeps his 11 secret herbs and spices a "secret". And I don't accuse Bill Gates of being antisocial because he refuses to divulge the code to Microsoft Bob. He may be a numbnut, but whom am I to accuse someone of being "antisocial".
This word "freedom"
They call me the working man. I guess that's what I am.
There is trade and then there is trade. In one case you have a bunch of totally psychopatic and anti-social artificial personalities called corporations seeking to abuse differences in income between countries to make less then 1% if US population even richer and on the other hand you have attempts to control the flow of goods and services in order to ensure that the local populations' standard of living actually goes up as trade increases and the standard of living of the country to which the goods are exported does not decrease as a result.
Yes I do buy into the Naomi Klein "BS" as well as many other people who thought these sort of things do. It is the prophets of Ayn Randish unrestricted capitalism that is creating such economic wonderlands as Iraq who are in the wrong on this one.
And what a kernel. Personally I doubt it boils down to monolithic vs micro kernels or other architecture decisions. I reckon simply that Linux was seen as a dynamic development process driven by practical requirements rather than politics. An example of this is Linus' decision to use non-GPL SCM tools for developing the kernel, simply because they were better than the free alternatives.
Frankly nothing about HURD supports any notion that Linux is ultimately doomed. It's a hobbiests OS that feels like Linux ten years ago but without any clear purpose. I can't see any possible benefit for using it, except for someone who wants to play with a GPL'd Mach kernel. All other cited reasons such as the supposed stability benefits have long since been disproven.
"Legislate" is the wrong term. It's best desribed as "asking." He's asking you to call it GNU/Linux. That's all. You don't have to do it, you don't have to listen. But he's asking you.
He doesn't want to take it away from you. He never says that, and he says quite the opposite.
From his site:
"Why not sue people who call the whole system "Linux"?
There are no legal grounds to sue them, but since we believe in freedom of speech, we wouldn't want to do that anyway. We ask people to call the system "GNU/Linux" because that is the right thing to do.
Shouldn't you put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system "GNU"?
The purpose of the GNU GPL is to protect the users' freedom from those who would make proprietary versions of free software. While it is true that those who call the system "Linux" often do things that limit the users' freedom, such as bundling non-free software with the GNU/Linux system or even developing non-free software for such use, the mere act of calling the system "Linux" does not, in itself, deny users their freedom. It seems improper to make the GPL restrict what name people can use for the system."
Could that be any clearer?
The GPL gives me freedom to decide how the code will be used in proprietary software. It doesn't, by itself, remove any freedoms from anyone. The BSD license may force a situation (if you're required to license under the BSD license, which, without forking, you generally are for BSD projects), but the GPL merely has the absense of that force.
Generally it's a strange definition of freedom that denies it to contributors.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yes, but OTOH, if Apple wants to improve that software, then they are working for me for free also. Just see what's happening with KHTML/Safari.
It's not slavery if you get to keep (and share) the fruits of your labor.
I can't believe can programmer he doesn't get the fact that gnu linux spell like NEW Linux and every one I know who heard that has always answered : what ? there's a new linux ?,
He not pronounce the GNU "NU", it is be pronounced "GUH-NU". The G-letter be's not silent so. Feel bad, don't. Even the people speak the English got wrong this one often.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Did I claim that installing Slackware on derelict hardware makes for "geek cred"? Did I claim to be a "geek?" I am not a "geek." Following instructions like a good little trained ape and installing Slackware doesn't classify for any credentials. What did you do when /your/ kernel didn't recognise the hard-drive? I know what I did, I hacked it so it would.
Yes, Richard M. Stallman is a very opinionated guy. Thats just how visionaries are. As a visionary he is very good, unlike the dorques who keep proclaiming "200X will teh year of the Lo0nix." And unlike the soap-box material over at Wired, he made his mark on the world. He created the FSF, the GPL and a ton of software you likely use. Please tell me, ThJ, what contributions have you made so far that give you +v to claim Stallman as "obsessed" "overdramatic" and "harming more than helping?" Harming? Don't make me laugh. He created that which you claim he is harming. Of course you're not the only one who thinks that RMS doesn't belong. A thousand years ago you wouldn't be the only one thinking the world was flat too.