RMS Views on Linux, Java, DRM and Opensource

An anonymous reader writes "All About Linux is running a transcript of a recent talk given by Richard Stallman at the Australian National University. Stallman discussed various issues facing GNU like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Digital Rights Management, about why one should not install sun's java on your computer, his views on Opensource as well as why he thinks people should address Linux distribution as GNU/Linux."

Comments

Again?

[MoxCamel]

There's a lot to admire about RMS, but I gotta say if you've heard one RMS speech, you've pretty much heard (hurd?) 'em all.

Mox

Re:Again?

[gooman]

Really! I mean how are we supposed to know if this article is a dupe or not?

Re:Again?

[qortra]

This is modded funny, but it really is true.

I think that the most passionate advocates for change throughout history use this kind of repitition quite a bit. Of course, check through your RMS history, and you'll find that it works time and time again. Check out RMS v. Trolltech (about QT licensing), or RMS v. X/Open ("The Open Group" now). And when he wins, he drops it. Also, you can expect him to consistantly push those ideals that he thinks are worthy. Hell, I'd be dissapointed if he didn't.

Plus, he adapts over time, constantly targeting key issues; DMCA, which really shouldn't have diminished in relevance as much as it has in the last 6 years, and now DRM which I believe to be key obstacle to a free future. It's unfortunate that the first point in the article is the GNU name issue, which I believe to be the least important of those the article mentions. I guess it's hard when a speech is transcribed to an article. In a speech the first point is usually the most trivial (you just use it to get the crowd warmed up), whereas in an article, half the people (and about 90% of the /. crowd) don't read past even the first screen of material.

GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like people to answer their phones "Hoy hoy" instead of "Hello," but I'm afraid I've already lost that battle as well.

Re:GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Only littel dick goat fuckers such as yourself post anonymously.


Not at all. We sheep shaggers post anonymously too.

Re:GNU/Linux

[Lanboy]

Has the nature of this debate changed in the last 5 years? I find it funny that RMS who has dedicated so much for freedom is so determined to tell others how to think. It seems a bit propertarian. RMS protecting his trademarks and all that.

Sure without Linux we would be using GCC on sun boxes, but this would be known by what percentage of even the IT community? If sun didn't charge $500 for a compiler I would have used thiers instead. Probably to compile expect on TCL or some other GPL distributed application, but ignore that, it hurts my position on this rant.

What other operating systems are named after the tools that built them or the apps that run on them, even if most of thier functionality comes from them?

This is the stubborn pedantry of a tenured accademic.

Maybe since so many GNU developers were brought into the fold by a stable operating system we should have to call our compilers "Linux driven GCC compiller" or we could type "grep-reverse-engineered-from-att-code" to do global regex searches.

Typed on my Mozilla/Windows system because thats what we use at work.

You have to feel for the guy

[dedazo]

He has a vision and he has spent a considerable amount of time and effort to realize that vision. I respect that. It's fine to criticize Microsoft. Everyone expects that anyway. I'll even give him Sun and this whole "Java is evil" spiel.

But the more he goes around criticizing other concepts (open source) and other people who make his world possible (Torvalds), if not perfect, the more he will alienate them and the farther away his dream will be. It's impossible for Stallman to realize his vision on his own. He needs Sun and Java and Torvalds and ESR and Red Hat and everyone else. At this rate however... calling Linus insufficiently political is not going to win him any more fans. And more fans is exactly what he needs.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[Soko]

Actually, RMS is more a John The Baptist than a saint - railing against the establishment, morally pure, living in the desert eating naught but locusts and honey and using over the top, fire and brimstone sermons to try and draw the masses towards salvation. And abso-fucking-loutley batshit crazy.

He is however, necessary if we are to make it to the promised land. ;-)

Soko

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[killjoe]

"But the more he goes around criticizing other concepts (open source) and other people who make his world possible (Torvalds), if not perfect, the more he will alienate them and the farther away his dream will be."

What an utter bunch of crap this is. So if one disagrees with something Linus does or says what is he supposed to do? Is he not allowed to say that he disagrees with the most holy linus? Linus is not a god, nobody is a god. It's perfectly allowable nay encouraged to speak your mind when you think somebody is doing the wrong thing. That's the way "open source" works.

RMS doesn't call people names, he isn't rude. He does not act like the slashdot hordes who insist on calling him a hippie, freak, smelly, unwashed etc. He talks about his ideas, he carefully explains where his ideals are different and contrasting to other peoples ideas. I have never heard him call anybody names though which is a lot more then you can say about his critics.

"He needs Sun and Java and Torvalds and ESR and Red Hat and everyone else. "

He does? Did you mean that you do? You need them because you want a free operating system that does the things he needs. I don't think he is thinking like you. I don't think he thinks he needs those people.

"t this rate however... calling Linus insufficiently political is not going to win him any more fans. And more fans is exactly what he needs."

GASP!. He called linus insufficiently political!. I bet Linus will never speak to him again.

Thank god Linus is not fragile as you make him out to be. I bet Linus is perfectly capable of being called "insufficiently political" without holding grudges.

Re:You have to feel for the guy

[mOdQuArK!]

While that's true, the net effect of the GPL is to drive the cost of software down to zero.

The net effect of the GPL is to cause software development to be economically effective only as a _service_, rather than as a product. If you want to keep getting paid, you can't rest on your laurels - you have to keep coding. And in a truly capitalism-based market, this is as it should be.

Re:Is it just me ?

[eln]

Stallman is the very embodiment of the Free Software ideal in its purest form, or at least he strives to be. Unfortunately, he is also the embodiment of why virtually any philosophy, when taken to its logical extreme, is unworkable, and usually a little nutty.

Stallman probably deserves more credit than he gets among most Linux users for basically founding the Free Software movement, but his relevance to what the movement has become since then is fading.

Linux vs GNU/Linux

[AuMatar]

This is the best explanation of why he does that yet, IMO. I've always been a little confused and thought he just wanted more credit, which seemed petty. But by pointing out that its basicly advertisement of the GNU philosophy and Free Software makes a lot more sense. I'm not sure if I'm going to join him in doing so, but I'm a lot more likely to now.

Oh, and I know people are going to flame his last Q&A. I thought it was funny. Shows he doesn't need to take himself seriously all the time.

"Recent"?

[D. Book]

The speech the article extracts from was delivered at ANU back in 2004. I believe that was his last visit to Australia (he also spoke at UNSW). There are numerous, more recent speeches by RMS available in audio and video format on the same subjects, and I don't see why this one makes news.

Re:GNU/Old

[Spy der Mann]

It never gets old does it?

GNO, it doesn't.

GNU/Linux flamefest

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

1) calling all software licenses equal is not Microsoft's position. They don't particularly like GPL, and wish they could stamp it out. They don't mind BSD license so much, they still ship with BSD code (some command line tools), had a BSD network stack for a while (NT 3.5 days or so, been ripped out completely in favor of MS code), and AD authentication is from MITs Kerberos, with some extensions.

2) Calling it "like Microsoft" is just an emotional attack. If he said "Linux thinks all licenses are valid" then he'd have to come up with a reason why this shouldn't happen. I've never bought his arguments.

3) "wrong to ever violate them". Stalman makes it sound like this is bad, but never gives reasons why. Can i violate GPL and he'd be happy?

In a way i wish RMS would stop talking about GNU/Linux and get back to the HURD. Instead of a decades old OS with various security patches on top of it to work in a networked world, have some ideas for a truly clean OS. Port stuff to it. WHy in this day in age do most machines have this all powerful root (or Administrator) user? Build in sub-permissioning from Day 1, don't add on later and wait for thigns to break. Why does a bug in glibc put my whole computer at risk? Why cant we re-engineer things to have message passing and isolated address spaces for libraries? Is the inefficiency of message passing vs. direct method calls going to kill a user who really just wants to be on the net safely? Use the HURD as a research project, get new ideas out into the OS world, where it's stagnating now.

Re:What RMS does not get

[DeepHurtn!]

What's true for you is not true for everybody. For example, I switched to a GNU/Linux OS precisely because of the philosophy. I'm not a power user, or a coder, or anything like that, and Windows was "Good Enough" for me, just as it is for the overwhelming majority of consumers out there. I took the leap almost two years ago because the GNU philosophy resonated with me. I think that the values behind the FSF crucially important to encouraging the use of Free software.

For example, take the ODF. I haven't gotten *anywhere* promoting its use (to friends, family, other grad students, etc.) based on its technical merits -- .doc is certainly fine for people. It's when I start talking about GNUish stuff like the right to read that people start paying attention.

Now, obviously, the softare promoted by the philosophy does need to be good. I'm just saying that I think you're being a little overhasty dismissing the power that the GNU philosophy can have in encouraging adoption.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[general_re]

...let me be the first to say "Ghaslespruthmeep"

Actually, that was already said here...

Re:Is it just me ?

[qortra]

What do you mean, "unworkable"? Obviously, Stallman is pushing an ideal. I don't think anybody (including RMS) expects that one day, we'll suddenly find ourselves in an FSF utopia where advocates of software restriction have been totally repressed. However, RMS is the one that keeps us grounded, all the time! Consider the KDE fiasco. I would probably consider this to be "recent" ('99ish?). Because of pressure from RMS, qt was opened up in a copyleft license. And still, he continues to push forward to defend his ideal (just as he should) from subtle invasions by various groups including Macromedia, Nvidia, ATI, and Sun. Do you really think that the GNU ideal will survive if they (we?) totally get it get overrun by closed software? He isn't going to affect change with softcore stances.

People said he was crazy back when he really did change the world, and it's no different now, except that now the people calling him crazy are so called "open source" advocates and individual developers that consider him to be more of a nuisance. They also call him a lunatic because he's constantly advocating the same things, but that, to me, is the sign of a dedicated man. I wonder if people got tired of MLKjr talking about racial equalization, or Gandhi talking about passive resistance? Clearly, the naming convention of GNU distributions is not a human rights issue, but RMS knows how battles are won, and repitition is key

You give him credit, but I think he deserves even more than you're giving him. He's relevant today, and he ought to be respected because (not inspite of) his unwavering devotion to his ideals.

BTW, I don't agree with Stallman on all his entire philosophy, but he is consistant, and that too should be respected.

Re:Will somebody please, please please...

[jonwil]

And just how do you propose to get the behemoth that is the Linux Kernel compiling with something other than GCC???

Re:He Needs...

[mpapet]

He needs Sun and Java and Torvalds and ESR and Red Hat and everyone else

No. Emphatically no. It's the other way around. The corps desperately need him. Most of them tried it the proprietary way for years and lost to Microsoft.

The best analogy I can give regarding a future with RMS serving the corps is an Animal Farm reference. The animals are running the humans off the farm right now. The animals are excited, no animals go into the house on pride. But pretty soon, the Pigs (red hat, et al) will be moving into the house. (I would argue they've already started) After that, they'll declare, "two legs good, 4 legs bad."

A corporation is imbued with extra freedoms beyond what individuals get in the U.S. in order to return a profit to its shareholders. Distorting RMS's message to serve that end is approved by shareholders.

RMS needs no corporation.

Re:Will somebody please, please please...

[orasio]

Ok. I just started.
While you are waiting, please call the GNU/Linux system by it's real name, thre GNU system with the Linux Kernel.
Like the OS/X System, with the mach kernel, or the Windows XP System, with kernel32

Re:Laws need to change

[Directrix1]

Here let me put your psuedo future into real nerd context here:

# tar -xzvf communism.tar.gz ; cd communism
# ./configure ; make ; make install
# communist-artist-music-search *
communist-artist-music-search: This program is just a stub until all those artists start making music for free.
# cd ..
# tar -xzvf riaa.tar.gz ; cd riaa
# ./configure ; make ; make install
# riaa-artist-music-search "Karl Jenkins"
riaa-artist-music-search: Please specify credit card number.
# riaa-artist-music-search "Karl Jenkins" 98766542358979
riaa-artist-music-search: All available albums by artist "Karl Jenkins" have been destroyed in the DRM music server fire of 2006.
# rm -R ~/.musical_heritage ~/.musical_history
# rm -R ~/.human_knowledge

Re:What RMS does not get

[Stalyn]

You don't get it. The OSS philosophy is the product. The various OSS projects like Linux, gcc, etc are direct results of this philosophy. The philosophy itself leads to success.

If you try to sell the projects first without the philosophy, business will think they are two different things. They will try to seperate the philosophy(what they don't like) from the project(what they like). Then you will have removed the very thing that made the project a success in the first place. No we should sell the philosophy first, because without it in essence what is the difference between open-source and proprietary software?

Celibacy

[the.Ceph]

To become a saint in the church of Emacs does not require celibacy.
And strangely enough if this rule changed not a single one of the saints would notice a difference.

We owe him, but he is crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

We owe RMS a huge debt because he single-handedly kickstarted the free software movement. Linus gave us Linux... but he used GNU C compiler to do it. And the Linux kernel isn't very useful unless you have a shell like GNU bash, and you need command line tools like ls, cp, mv... all GNU provided. Thank you, RMS.

But sorry, RMS, you are crazy and I hope your dearest wishes do not come true. RMS believes the only acceptable licenses are the ones he wrote; if he had the power, he would make it illegal to ship software under a proprietary licence. (How do I know this? Eric Raymond publicly challenged RMS about it and RMS did not respond, and I believe it was because ESR was right and RMS didn't want to say it out loud. Google for the words "Freedom Zero" to get the context of all this.)

Somebody asked RMS how can software writers make enough money to live. RMS said that he would be in favor of a "free software tax" to pay the salaries of people writing free software. If it was illegal to ship software under a proprietary licence then maybe you would need something like this, but I do NOT want government involved in deciding who gets to write what software for pay. The free market is better.

Only RMS could think that government paying of salaries to selected software writers is more free than people deciding what software to write and what licence to ship under.

Actually that's an important point. RMS wants to maximise freedom for the USERS even at the expense of the PROGRAMMERS. He is willing to constrain the freedom of a programmer, because he wants all software to come with source code.

The worst thing about RMS is that he doesn't care about anything else as much as his particular ideal for free software. Of all the Linux distros out there, you would think he would recommend Debian GNU/Linux, right? The only major distro that actually puts "GNU/" in their name?

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

But in an interview he recommended some obscure Linux called Extremadura or something like that, because he had read somewhere that they only provided GPL software.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/08/msg029 01.html

If you set up a default Debian system, you will only have free software; Debian's "main" servers have nothing RMS would not approve. But Debian has for years had a server called "nonfree" where you could get things like Netscape Navigator. If you know what you are doing, you can set your Debian system to pull packages from "nonfree", and for this crime, RMS snubbed Debian in favor of the other one. And it turned out that the onther one isn't actually freeer than Debian; RMS had heard it was so, but it wasn't, really.

It's sad that RMS can't even say something nice about Debian, the closest thing the world has seen to what RMS says he wants, because they aren't PERFECT and if they aren't PERFECT they aren't good enough for RMS.

RMS, thank you for kick-starting the free software movement. Thank you for GCC, EMACS, and the other GNU utilities. But you are crazy.

Not true, he has four speeches, they are:

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

• The dangers of software patents (transcript)
• GNU/Linux and the free software movement (his general talk)
• Copyright verses community in the age of computer networks
• GPLv3 (transcript)

There is also a page on GNU.org for audio recordings of (mostly) Richard's talks.